Day 36 - Pura Vida Hostel, Tamarindo

Fully recovered after a good night’s sleep, we wanted to spend our day off catching up on admin and chilling. Tamarindo is a great spot and whilst it is a little expensive for our budget, there was no point avoiding some of the activities, just because we were nervous about spending too much money. We had a smoothie and grabbed some breakfast from a little place in the town and then headed down to the beach for a swim and to check out what the scene was like. The beach is great, beautiful, clear water, a great temperature for swimming, but the waves were a little naff (I think that is surfer talk but may be completely wrong). There were a few people out surfing, but it was no Sayulita so we decided that we would skip the surfing efforts and hold on until further down the road where we felt we might have a better chance of styling it. We spent much of the day hanging out at the beach and watching the world go by. There are horse rides, loads of massage options, and the usual folk selling bracelets and sunglasses that trawl up and down the beach all day. It was pretty chill, but we needed to get on and decided that we would be better off back at the hostel, where we could get some work done, pick up our laundry, and chill at the pool with cheap beers as we had a fridge in our room, result! Back at the pool, I was catching some rays and just chilling out listening to 3 lads from Boston play some silly game where they had to guess a person from their past through 20 questions, or something similar. It was quite entertaining, but I didn’t get involved. Whilst sitting there, someone clocked a giant iguana in a tree across from the pool. We immediately assumed that it was a statue or a carving as the thing was massive and really well camouflaged. We were all chatting about how we had missed it up until then and a couple of us walked over to take a closer look. As we got within just a few feet of this huge iguana, it moved and nearly scared the crap out of me. Sure enough, it was a massive iguana that was cruising through the trees and eating leaves and stuff whilst minding its own business. It was beautiful, green with yellow flashes and absolutely massive. I really didn’t think that they could get that big, hence we all thought it might be a carving. I encouraged 1 of the American lads to get closer so that I could get some context of scale, but he was just as scared of it as I was, so we both kept our distance. The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling out at the pool as it was brutally hot, and it was just easier to relax. As the afternoon drew to a close, we headed down to the beach to watch the sunset, and to take advantage of a happy hour we had spotted the evening before at a great bar on the beach. It was a very chilled out day, exactly what we needed, and it gave us the opportunity to catch our breath after a hectic few days crossing a number of different borders. As we were finishing our drinks, and happy hour had ended, we spotted that some fire dancers were setting up a little further down the beach at another bar. So, we moved position and found ourselves a table right in front of them. There were 2 girls and a fella doing their thing, which was super impressive. We thoroughly enjoyed it and even gave them a tip, not something that we do much as we are still on a budget. However, it was impressive enough to warrant a tip and well done to them. When they finished and did their little speech about how this is their only income, we needed food. Most of the prices in the restaurants were inflated due to the cost of things in Costa Rica, but we had enjoyed the food court the night before, so why not. We headed back there again and found ourselves a good spot for some burgers, which were lovely. It was pretty busy and just as we received our food, 2 ladies come wondering through the food court looking for a table. As we had a big table to ourselves, I waved them over to come and join us. They are 2 mates from Argentina that are travelling through Costa Rica on a shoestring budget for a jolly. We ended up having a great conversation with them and a really good evening. They explained that they were also going to head down to Santa Teresa, a stop a few days from where we were, and we made a very lose plan to hopefully catch up with them down the road. For info, we never did, but they did follow us on Instagram, and I saw a few days later that they had been in Santa Teresa at the same time as us, we just missed each other. Following our chance encounter with the Argentines, we headed back to the hostel, played a few games of pool and had a chat to some of the other, much younger guests. A really great experience, but the next day, we would be packing up and heading further south.