Well, since Steve is blogging so much, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. Actually, it just occurred to me that he was brilliant (this has occurred to me before, but not in accordance with this particular action) to post his six-day-tour reply. We get lots and lots of emails asking us for information, and we both often offer it up before people even ask. But low and behold, there is now the mighty blog, where we can put it online for everyone who cares (and doesn't) to see! (And really, for us to reference when we get asked again.)

Here's what I said about day-trips from Tamarindo, slightly modified to make more sense for the general public. These are specifically places that are all under an hour from Tam., making it an easy and enjoyable trip, while leaving you suitcases at your hotel.

1. Avellanas - about 20 minutes south of Tamarindo, there's a great restaurant called Lola's. Eat there, sit there, drink there.

2. Playa Grande - about 20 minutes north of Tamarindo. You can drive there, but you can also just cross Tamarindo's northern estuary - this is most easily done during low tide if you're on foot. If you're with board, it's a just a short paddle depending on tide.

3. Playa Langosta - The surfing is good by the rivermouth and just to the north and south of it. The beach is good at low tide for laying out, but surfing is better at mid-high tide. Low tide also opens up a very large, shallow, estuary where the water is often crystal clear and warmer. Especially beautiful early in the morning when it is empty. So, um, don't go there early in the morning or it won't be empty for us. Just kidding. Mostly.

4. Playa Negra - for advanced surfers only, but beautiful and a different looking beach than the others. Darker sand, more rocks, but you can lay out. It's just south of Avellanas.

5. Playa Junquillal - about 45 minutes south of Tamarindo. Decent surf, cute little town, couple of beach bars on the sand. Good laying out. Just a nice place to visit that's different from Tam.

6. Playa Conchal - Beautiful white sand beach, totally different from the other beaches mentioned above. Decent snorkeling, great swimming, laying out, picnicing, etc. Better to go during the weekdays, the place is PACKED on the weekends with locals and tourists alike.

7. Marbella - Further away than the rest, just over an hour on sometimes-dicey roads. But frequently deserted and very pretty. The "sand" here is pea-gravel on one beach and dark, sort of dirty, sand on the other beach.

8. Playa Hermosa - We would argue that the name is a bit of a misnomer. Playa Hermosa is about an hour's drive north from here, by Playa Coco. It isn't particularly beautiful with very organic-rich sand and water that tends to be tepid and greenish. The immobility of the water means no waves at all, which can be good for kids or anyone who is not confident in their water skills. There are some nice places to eat/drink there. Coco is a good spot to take off for Witch's Rock or to go diving.

Labels: beach, day trip, tamarindo

Since we surf, scuba, sail, swim, play with our dog in the ocean, visit the beach at least three times/week and generally spend a LOT of time in, on, or under the water, we tend to consider the ocean pretty darn important. In case you weren't aware, there are some problems out there with the way some people are treating the ocean. Fortunately, there are also some people out there who spend time trying to help improve the situation. Oceana is one of those groups. The website has some good info, take a look.

Labels: beach

Our intrepid web developer just put together some code that generates a tide chart for our area. You can check it out here if you like. Or you can refer to the sidebar on the left of your screen where we've included a link.

The chart hasn't meant much to us recently as we've spent most of our time the last few days avoiding Easter crowds by sitting at home by the pool, reading and chatting. Nice mini-vacation that, alas, seems to have come to an end. Oh well. At least the crowds are also thinning out at the beaches so we can get back into the water for some surfing.

Labels: beach

Finished off the day yesterday with a long walk down a nearly-deserted beach (we saw only one other person) as a huge fiery sun dripped into the ocean. The one person we did see is Luis, a turtle volunteer. He was shooing vultures away as some baby hawksbill turtles struggled towards the surf.
Times like this, watching baby turtles on a deserted beach with tropical breezes blowing... well... sure is nice living here.
Caly loved it too, of course, as she found one of the biggest sticks yet (about 4" diameter, 4 feet long) and carried it with her the whole way.

OH! And mangos are in season. Steve loves no food more. So life is pretty darn good right now.

Labels: beach, food

Just because we didn't write about it for a week or so, doesn't mean it wasn't fun. Right?
We had a great sunset beer and pizza with our close pal Christi. Then we headed to a great little party with new friends and soon-to-be neighbor Joseph, who is about to open a restaurant down the street from us. It'll be nice to have TWO places within walking distance where we can buy dinner. Even more exciting is that we may even have a place to get morning coffee!! Not that we can't pour boiling water over grounds ourselves, but there is something about buying a coffee drink on a lazy morning that is hard to beat at home.
Speaking of lazy, we stopped on the way back from Avellanas and shoo'ed some piglets out of the road. Not very lazy, piglets. They were pretty darn active- jumping around and making all manner of crazy little sounds. Calypso was entranced but we opted out of letting her chase them- who knows what a mother pig would do to a puppy?

Steve surfed some, but the waves were small, mushy, and inconsistent. Other than that it was a good time. Bb even came one morning to shoot pictures but the sets were so unimpressive that she didn't bother to swim out and thus we had mediocre pics of mediocre surf. We'll share one anyway, just so that we can honestly say we've included at least one picture of surfing.

The highpoint of Steve's rather long professional week was a horseback tour of a spectacular finca north of here. If you've got $6 million and the desire to own nearly 1500 acres of land abutting the beach, with views of Witch's Rock, drop me a line and I'll set you right up.

Labels: beach, food, sunset, surf

Fortunately for us, the dog is getting big enough to start actually asking to do fun things- like take a walk to the beach at sunset. Ok, she wasn't quite that articulate, but she did want to get out of the house, and it was near sunset, and we extrapolated from there...
...and headed down to watch what turned out to be a truly beautiful sunset. The rain we've been getting makes mud and some mildew, it's true, but the clouds make for technicolor evening presentations that shame all of the fancy shmancy stuff that the big studios put out.
It is like having our very own ultrabigscreen theater, just 200 yards away. Lovely.

Labels: beach, photo, sunset

After finally getting some things squared away with a grossly overdue debtor, we had the displeasure of spending a couple hours in the bank taking care of various things that we've put off, knowing it would take a few hours at the bank...
As a reward to ourselves, we took a long stroll on the beach this evening and just enjoyed living in paradise. As the sun went down, we zipped home to take poor Caly out to the beach too. She had spent most of a hot afternoon in her crate, presumably awaiting our return. She played fetch long after we couldn't see the stick anymore, then the three of us headed home. Bb whipped up a delicious Southwest style salad with fresh tuna and sweet corn (Yum!) while Steve got all wrapped up in reviewing a new business card design from our friend Dyna (thanks D!!).

Labels: beach, food, sunset

We've been talking about heading down to Nosara for quite some time to explore the possibilities for Bb's jewelry, so Tuesday we finally decided to make the drive. Funny how around here things seem so much further away- it only took us about 2.5 hours to drive down, and for the most part the road was in good shape. Yet for some reason we've put this off for months.
The weather was beatiful the whole way down, high patchy clouds kept it cool and recent rains made the whole world look fresh and new. Sandy has been having some alternator/battery problems, so this was a great opportunity for Steve to fiddle with some different things and trouble shoot. By the time we hit Nosara he had finally gotten the system working well, which was great!
Nosara itself hasn't changed much in the last two years (some of the same places are still under construction). We were relieved to discover that the 'rampant growth' of which we've heard was somewhat exaggerated. We were also happy to realize that we are both awfully glad that we settled in Tamarindo instead of Nosara. Not to say that it isn't a beautiful place, it is! Not to say people shouldn't visit, they should! But living there seems, to us, a very boring proposition. The town just isn't much of a town. And that road.... dear heavens! We were following in the track of a grader that had clearly passed within 1 day, yet the road surface was still bumpy enough that Steve finally got out and aired down to about 20 psi in an attempt to keep our teeth from rattled right out of our heads.
After eating a great lunch at a cute little deli, we did a wave check (large, but mushy) and poked around a little bit, then headed back home. The drive back was slightly rainy and generally very pleasant. As we hit one of our favorite areas near Tamarindo (long views of rolling hills and fields) we were treated to that beautiful golden light that makes everything look hazy and slow and like childhood memories of summertime. Just beautiful.

Labels: beach, Costa Rica, day trip, jewelry, landcruiser, sunset

Since Steve is still fighting off what has become his worst head cold in years, and thus hasn't been surfing, we've taken to morning walks on the beach with Caly. Not only does it give us a little exercise, but absolutly whoops the puppy and she ends up sleeping for the next four to five hours, which allows us to actually get some stuff done around the house or get some work done. A win for all concerned. Of course, Caly still gets plenty of attention from us, but at least now *we* get to decide when, which is a nice luxury.

When we hit the shore yesterday, Caly was so excited she could hardly walk. Even the most frozen stoic has to feel just a little warmth at the sight of a cute little puppy whose backside is wiggling twice the width of her entire body with every step. Makes walking her on a leash next to impossible, but it sure is cute. What started out as excitement turned into disappointment for us as we realized that the tide was so high that there wasn't any beach to walk on!

We followed a little path through the trees to get to a wider section of beach, figuring that while it was likely to more crowded in front of the big hotel, at least there would be beach upon which to walk and play. The reason the beach is wider there is because there is an estuary that meets up with the sea and has dumped a bunch of sand. What we hadn't anticipated was the idea that the estuary itself, while very full, was slow-moving enough that Caly could actually play in the water without us worried about big waves crashing on her. She LOVED it. After watching her yip and snap at the wavelets (still chest-high to her) we finally went in ourselves and persuaded her to swim about five feet out to us. After two or three times she sat on the beach and howled at us... but eventually relented and jumped into the water again.

While we were excited to take her back to the beach this morning, we opted instead to run out to our lot and put some plants in the ground. We started them months ago on the patio and they were starting to outgrow their pots. So we loaded up the 40, dug some banana sprouts out of a neighboring vacant lot, and headed over to play gardeners. We were a little shocked to discover just how much the weeds have grown in the last month. WOW. Next time we'll remember the machete! After clearing out some space with much shovel-whacking and little grace, we planted everything that we had. Sure looked like a lot more on our patio than it does in the ground! Caly was, of course, very helpful. In the "You didn't really want that planted there did you? How about I dig it up and you try again?" sense of the word helpful. But after putting some broken cinderblock chunks around the basil garden, she seemed to understand that maybe we actually *did* want those to stay planted there. Not a pretty solution, but living downhere, sometimes, you just have to be glad to have a solution at all.

Labels: beach, dog, garden, tamarindo

Since it was Sunday and all that, Ken (good friend and fellow off-road vehicle enthusiast) came by to convince us to do something fun. After very little thought we decided to head on over to Playa Conchal. The beach is about 40 minutes away and absolutely beautiful. And there are a few stretches of loose sand that you have to drive over to get to the place we were headed, so it sorta counts as an offroad trip, well... not really, but at least it contains a brief portion where 4wd is useful, and sometimes necessary.
But I digress. The real reason we liked the idea of going there is the sheer beauty of the place and the fact that it has nice clear water and snorkeling and is a fine place to play with the new waterproof housing for our camera (by the way, visit www.thegrowcerystore.com. Good people).
So to the beach we went after loading up, meeting up, loading up some more, etc etc

Ken and Tirin	(fore)Bb, Kira, Tirin, Sawyer, Kreek, Scratch, Yurlani, Elias, (back)David, Chris, Jen, Volker, Tinika	Kreek

The day was spectacular, the kids were fun to play with, the water couldn't have been more comfortable. Due to some wind it was a little turbid and choppy, so snorkeling wasn't all that great, but we took a couple of pictures anyway. Fun day, fabulous place.

Here we see Steve getting a little artistic and trying out the macro capabilities of the camera and housing. Bb and Jen did some mermaid impressions too. Takes a touch of photoshop to restore colors, but the pictures come out pretty well.

Labels: beach, Costa Rica, photo, tamarindo

We've got some friends in town, which is always fun. Jen and David came down from San Francisco to visit and vacation for a week. Their pal Chris met up with them here. So the five of us have been hanging out. Unfortunately, on their second night here they had their backpack stolen- containing all the important stuff- so that was a pretty rough and awful night. If we haven't said it enough yet: Thieves stink. Scum of the earth.

After getting up late on Saturday and making a bunch more phone calls to help them cancel cards and whatnot, we all finally motivated to head down to the beach. It was a little cloudy, but around here that can actually mean a better beach day as it isn't quite as hot.
Of course, since we were headed to the beach anyway, Steve just had to try out his, um..., OUR new toy. Yessiree folks, thanks to the fantastic generosity of the folks at www.thegrowcerystore.com we now have our waterproof camera housing! Very cool. So far we haven't done anything worthy with it besides try it out... but keep your eyes peeled for many more aquatic images around here. They can't be much worse than Steve's first attempt at taking a picture while body surfing -->

Giving up on the body surfing and the camera for a bit, Steve paddled out into an angry sea to catch a wave or two while Jocelyn and Chris played Set (a card game introduced to us by our good friends Donn and Nora) After a few hours of intense laying-on-beach therapy, Jen and David seemed to be enjoying their vacation again, which made us happy.

Labels: beach, photo

Feeling a little out of touch with US politics, Steve checked out the Department of Homeland Security web page for the first time today. Other similarly themed websites can be found here and here.
There are also more than a few websites that address the political and security changes made in the USA in the last few years. Hermes-Press.com makes some comparisons between modern US politics and those found in Germany in the Thirties. These posters reference Homeland Security's role in our society. The Homeland Security Institute contains several essays on current event topics and terrorism in general.
Finally, this site contains a long list of news items in a reverse chronological order. It has numerous links to what they claim are "opinions of the Arab street" as well as links to some of the horrors that are being faced by members of the military and civilians in the Middle East.
Interesting stuff. While I'm trying pretty hard to avoid infusing this with my own opinions, I am curious to hear other's opinions, so please feel free to leave a comment. If you aren't into commenting, no worries, poke through the links above if you like, or come back later to read more about surfing, landcruisers, our dog and the rest of the regularly scheduled program.

And speaking of our regularly scheduled program: We are now taking advantage of the puppy's need to pee at 4:30a.m. every day. As dawn um... dawned... we drove our landcruiser down to the beach for an early morning session. Frequent sets of chest high waves (with some overhead sets) for over two hours with a total of seven surfers in the water made for a nice, exhausting workout. Breakfast at Gil's place (amazingly delicious burritos) didn't do much to perk us up, but it did fill us up. Eating too much after early morning exercise is just the sort of thing to make one want to sit in front of their computer and read a bunch of rhetoric online....

Labels: beach, blog, food, news, surf

Thursday sure was a long day!
Started out great, we took a long bike ride down the beach in beautiful sunshine and a strong, dry breeze. Living here in Paradise we get a little jaded about 'beautiful days', after all, most of our days are darn nice. But Thursday... was exceptional even by local standards.

Wow! One of those days that just foolin' around on a bicycle makes you want to shout out with joy at how fantastic it is to be alive. Great morning!

Unfortunately, the afternoon was lousy. Poor little Calypso, who has learned to charge up the stairs to our place, and sorta work her way down, took a shortcut and fell off the side of the stairs. We were both standing at the bottom when it happened and I can't begin to describe the horror we felt watching our sweet little puppy scramble to hold on for a brief instant before falling 12 feet to the ground below.After sitting with her for a few minutes, we gingerly took her upstairs where Steve got on the phone to the vet. He assured us that as long as she was playful and alert, we needn't worry too much, especially if she took a little food and water, but to call him if she started acting funny. So for a few hours we sat on the floor, watching for absolutely anything out of the ordinary. Seeing as how she is only seven weeks old, just about everything she does is unusual. She walks funny, rolls around on the ground a lot, falls over when playing, flops down and goes to sleep at the drop of a hat, etc etc. The real challenge was trying to figure out if any of the above was any *more* funny than normal. We were miserable- which only served to make Caly act a little odd, as she couldn't seem to figure out why the two of us were watching over her so closely.

Finally, with visions of invisible life-threatening internal bleeding dancing in our heads, we decided to take her in to the vet- if for no other reason than to put our own minds at ease. After poking and prodding and stretching and listening and looking... the vet diagnosed Calypso as being fine. Just fine. The relief in the room was palpable.
While we were there, we got her toenails clipped.

Long day for us, long day for the puppy. Needless to say, she won't be going downstairs solo for a little while, and we sure are glad that there is a shaggy lawn below the stairs instead of gravel or concrete.

Labels: beach, dog