Living well in Tamarindo, Costa Rica: Travel, Land Cruisers, Gardening, Food, and Jewelry: Ahhh. Vacation.

Ahhh. Vacation.

We took a vacation. A real, live, no-computers, no-phone vacation. And we took it in the tropics. The real, warm-water, blue-skies, wear-your-bathing-suit-all-day tropics. "Don't you live in the tropics?", You ask. "Why, yes, now that you mention it, we do.", We reply. "So why on earth would you go on vacation in the tropics?", You ask? And that would be a very good question, and one we asked ourselves countless times as we bloodied our heads banging them against the wall of airline routes out of Costa Rica to other tropical vacation destinations.

We don't live in a place conducive to airport hubs and direct flights to out-of-the-way islands, and this fact was never more apparent than when desiring to travel east a couple thousand miles and having instead to travel north, then south, then east over two days to do so. But, the good news is that we would gladly do it all again to see what we now firmly believe is the most beautiful water in the entire world. Now, we should probably cut the water in the Meditteranean and the water off the coast of Africa, and probably the water somewhere off the coast of South America some slack, as we've never seen it, so we are more than likely under informed judges, but be that as it may, we're in love with the British Virgin Islands (and the American, French and Dutch ones, since really, as far as the islands are concerned, it's really all the same thing.)

We bareboat chartered a 42' Catamaran to more fully indulge in our love affair and spent our days, well, sailing. And eating. And wearing our bathing suits all day. And drinking - rum being the beverage of the BVIs et. al. And really, that's about all I have to tell of our days spent on the boat. We carelessly (and I mean this in the frivolous, worry-free sense, not the thoughtless, mean-spirited sense) whiled away our days with the concerns of sailing, snorkeling, eating and rum drinking. And within that carelessness does not lie much of a story. Which, I suppose is the mark of a truly, deeply and well spent vacation. So I will let our photos tell you what we did. I'm posting only a few here today. As time permits, we will post more than you could possibly want to see!