a weblog by Dax

Day 5 – Paradise Found, Now What?

Posted on October 24th, 2006 by Dax.
Categories: blog post.

Last night a huge thunderstorm came rolling over the mountains and the thunder was crazy loud. At one point it sounded like the hotel got hit by lightning. It woke us up out of a dead sleep. We honestly thought someone had shot a rocket launcher or something.

Now that we had found Avellana, we weren’t quite sure where to head next.

Since it had rained so hard last night we really didn’t feel like going for a drive to Grande or Avellana.

Earlier in the week we saw some people taking a boat ride across El Estero to Playa Grande, and we thought that maybe we could do that after the tide had come in a bit.

So we relaxed around the hotel and checked out the shops in Tamarindo. We had lunch at a little cafe right on the main stretch of road that goes through Tamarindo.

We packed up our backpack and started walking north up the beach to Playa Grande. We got to El Estero, which has been known to have plenty of crocodiles, and paid the boat driver 300 Colones each for a ride across.

I was starting to feel pretty stoked due to the adventure we were taking; first walking up the beach, then a boat ride across crocodile infested waters and then another healthy walk to find a spot to head out and try to catch some waves that I had never riden before.

Spracky was starting to feel a little ill in the stomach, so we didn’t walk all the way up to Playa Grande, but we stopped at a huge tree stump that was in the surf, and I paddled out to catch some waves.

There were some beginners on the beach getting instruction, and they paddled out, but only to the reform area. I could see that Spracky was looking uncomfortable on the beach, and we headed back down the beach, caught the water taxi back to Tamarindo, and walked back to the hotel.

Spracky started to feel a little better once we got back to the hotel. The surf started to pick up at Pico Pequeno, so I headed out to get some surfing in.

It was still an hour or so until sunset, and I could hear some thunder from the otherside of the mountain. As the rain started to come in the waves started to lose what little bit of chop that they had. I got some really fun rides in, and they were from the outside all the way in.

The rain started falling so hard that it started to sting, I began to really wish that I had worn my surfskin.

The crowd started to get really thick. I was sitting on the outside, when I went to turn around to catch a wave that was coming and I had at least 5 to 10 people that were in my way. I kept surfing, but most of the rides were just trying to manuever around people.

As I was paddling back out to the outside after a decent ride, I saw a huge lightning bolt up the beach right in front of the parking lot in town. It was freaky bright, and a lot of surfers started to head in. This helped the situation a little, but it was definitely getting darker out due to the storm and the approaching sunset.

I caught a couple more waves and headed in. As I was running up to the hotel Spracky was standing at the door cursing at me…Spracky hates lightning, I grew up in central Florida which is the lightning capitol of the world, so I am used to it. I just smiled and got ready for dinner.

The storm broke just long enough for us to see our first sunset since we had been in Costa Rica. Here are a few pictures that can be found on our Flickr account 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 .

Dax out-

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