a weblog by Dax

Day 1 – Arrival to Costa Rica

Posted on October 20th, 2006 by Dax.
Categories: blog post.

Today, Spracky and I began our adventure down to Costa Rica. We landed in Liberia, Costa Rica to a deluge of rain. The airport in Liberia (Daniel Oduber International) isn’t so much an airport, as it is a runway with a large open hanger. After taking off from Hartsfield airport in Atlanta, this was definitely a little bit of a surprise.

We were rushed over to immagration and through customs. Before we knew it we were out among a dozen or so different car rental employees with signs that stated their customer’s name on it. I saw our guy, from Europcar, and his porter quickly grabbed our four bags, including my 7’6″ surfboard bag. The driver escorted Spracky and I with an umbrella, to his shuttle and told us we could get in to stay dry while the porter loaded our bags.

Spracky and I did not speak much spanish, so we were a bit worried about communicating with the locals on this trip.

Luckily, our driver spoke english. Our driver, I beleive he said his name was Jason, was very accomodating, and drove us to pick up our car. Along the way Spracky and I started to get a glimpse of what we would see over the next week. The roads were really bumpy, and the landscape was breathtaking. Most of the country lives below poverty and it showed. But the people that we saw were almost always smiling.

We pulled up to a small building on a grassy, bumpy lot and got out. Jason told us to go inside and he would load our bags into the vehicle. Spracky and I went inside and met Jorje who filled out the remainder of our paperwork, and made some pretty good recommendations that saved us potentially a $1000 U.S.

We asked Jorje for a map and directions to Tamarindo. I had already read on the net that there wasn’t much in the way of street signs or signs stating what town you drove into, these types of niceity’s that we take for granted in the U.S. were not to be expected here. Jorje tried to explain the route to us, but he told us to follow the signs, and that worried me.

We headed out on our adventure in a Toyota Prado, which is equivalent to the 4Runner in the U.S. It had 4-wheel drive, which is a must in Costa Rica. It’s a pretty spacious vehicle, and Jason was able to fit all of our luggage inside it.

Spracky and I headed down the bumpy road to our destination of Tamarindo Diria. The rain was still in full force, any the pavement wasn’t as bad as it was going to get. We followed a sign that pointed to Tamarindo, and found ourselves driving down a half-rock/half-mud road. There were cars driving straight at us and then getting out of the way at the last minute. Apparently this is the way you are suppose to drive in Costa Rica, you try to find the least bumpy route down the road, and if you encounter oncoming traffic, you just simply move out of the way at the last second.

As we travelled down the road it was difficult not to notice how beautiful the mountains and lush green fields were. There were a number of dogs running along the road and then we found ourselves in a Costa Rican traffic jam, some bulls decided to cross the road. Once the bulls crossed we found our next turn at a very small town called Villa Real, and Tamarindo was only 4 km away.

As we pulled into the greater Tamarindo area it did not appear to be much unlike the past 60 km we had just driven. Don’t get me wrong, it was a little more tourist friendly, but you still definitely knew that you were in Costa Rica. There were a lot of “Surf Shops” strewn down the road with attached surf schools for all of the tourists that had always wanted to say that they surfed in Costa Rica.

We found our hotel, Tamarindo Diria, and as we pulled into their entrance they immediately began to help us. They spoke very good english and unloaded our bags, showed us to the check-in counter, they were really helpful. We checked in and the bell-hop saw my surfbag and started to tell me about some of the good surf spots close by.

Our room was probably one of the nicest in the Tamarindo area, and looked right onto Pico Pequeno, which is a lava rock formed surfspot in Tamarindo Bay. Spracky took several pictures which can be found here.

We settled in and stood in the rain for a while to watch the waves come in. It started to sink in that we were in Costa Rica, a lush country filled with some of the friendlyist people we have ever met.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant and planned our attack for the next day, which was to find Playa Avellana. Playa Avellana was a spot that I read about and a girl at Sunrise surf shop told us that we had to go surf there. We were able to pay the hotel $30 U.S. to get some wireless internet and began trying to find local weather radar and road maps to see what the best time and route would be for Playa Avellana.

The sun rises around 5:30 AM and sets almost exactly 12 hours later here, so we started decided to call it a day.

Until tomorrow.

Dax out-

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