Monthly Archives: February 2013

Arrived safely back in Orlando on Tuesday evening. A long day of travel, but it all went smoothly. Slept really good back that night.

Action packed Wednesday included a drive up to Jacksonville to check out our rental home, as the tenants had moved out. All was well there with a couple minor plumbing issues to resolve soon. Picked up our old patio furniture to bring back for Cindy’s parents to use on their new brick patio. Had a great vegetarian dinner with good friends before driving back around 11pm to cocoa beach. Got to bed around 2am…

Up early again today with more stuff to do in prep for the next trip. Took care of everything before we head down to Fort Lauderdale tonight to have dinner and stay with friends. Flight leaves mañana around noon! Looking forward to some great sailing, fishing, sightseeing and other indulgences in the islands!

Stay tuned the next 10 days for updates from the islands

5 hour drive went relatively smooth this morning.  Got to the airport around 11am, dropped cindy off with the bags and surfboards, then i took off to drop the rental car.  Took a bit to find a gas station, return the car and shuttle back to the airport.  Cindy was a bit concerned when i returned an hour later!  Made it back in time for check-in and payment of the outrageous $56 departure tax.  Flight is on time for our return to los estados unidos.

Came across this huge bull on our ride back to san jose

A last Trit for both of us

Gringo money maker at the airport, $25 bag of chocolates.. really??!

Hit the waves again this morning around 730 for our final surf session of the trip. Waves were not very big today, but caught some really clean lefts and rights over about 4 hours. Beautiful day with really clear water. You could see schools of fish scattering as your cruised down the beach on a wave. Surfed today on the south end of the beach, so we could hopefully make the Surfing Nosara web page photos. Cindy made their page and we both are on their Facebook page.

Walked back to the house, stopping for a couple coco frios on the way. Will be cleaning the boards and packing up this afternoon. In the meantime, I made a delicious lunch and following it up with a banana smoothie. It’s clean out the fridge day for us, but likely eating dinner at the Asian restaurant right next to our house. Will be dropping off our donation clothes this afternoon too, thanks Matt and Laura!

Early rise tomorrow for our 5 hour drive back to San Jose, before we board our JetBlue flight back to Orlando. We have had an amazing time here and our final day of surfing was a spectacular ending.

Out of bed early this morning to try a sunrise surf session. Waves were quite fun, but surprising number of people already In the water at 630am. Caught some nice rides over a few hours, before heading back to the house. Packed up the car around 10 and drove north to check out some other beaches. Didn’t bring the surfboards cause the tide wasn’t right during the afternoon.

Roads around here are all gravel, with some in decent shape and most in really bad shape. Many washouts, rocks, downed trees, etc. to be aware of. Makes for an exhausting ride as driver or passenger. Hard to believe anything on cars here can last very long between the dust, Horrible road conditions and salty air. Made it up to Marbella around 1130am and found a nice beachfront restaurant for a couple Imperials and lunch. I enjoyed delicious chicken nachos dish and Cindy had some extra plump fish tacos with beans and rice.

Afterwards we took a walk down the beach to find a shady spot for a siesta. Onshore breeze was keeping us cool for a nice hour of relaxation. Very few people at this beach compared to Guiones. The black sand is blazingly hot!

Walked back to the car and headed off back to our house to catch the sunset surf session. Stopped at the supermarket in nosara to grab some things for dinner and or remaining meals here. Got back to the house and did a quick change to get out in the surf. Enjoyed some sunset waves with a smaller crowd than usual, likely cause of the superbowl.

Cindy is a tired woman tonight, 3 surf sessions in the last 24 hours!
Last day of surfing tomorrow, so we are gonna keep at it!

View from the tiki hut bar at Marbella Beach

Beautiful black sand beach

Low tide exploration

Tide pool with a bunch of urchins

A shady spot for a beach siesta

Popular destination to see turtles come ashore to lay eggs in the fall

Up at our usual time today for breakfast and coffee on the patio. Cindy waxed up her board and headed down to the beach around 9. I stayed back at the house, as I am still nursing the rib. I got motivated a bit later and decided to head down to the beach with the go pro and capture some video of Cindy surfing while I swam. Hopefully got a few good shots, but found it sorta difficult to swim around, stay in the right place and get decent footage. Kudos to the in-water photographers that capture surfing shots..

Tried to grab some stuff at the farmers market around lunchtime, but most of the vendors had already left for the day. Walked back to our place and decided to see if the surf photographer was hanging at the bar with his laptop. He takes photos each morning of the surfers on this end of the beach, then usually hangs out at gilded iguana for anyone that wants purchase some of the shots. Cindy went thru about 500 photos per day going back to January 13th! Found around 120 photos of us and copied em over to our SD card. No way to share them out right now, but sit tight and behold another quality C+C video production in late February.

Made another couple walking trips to the car rental place. Reserved a car earlier in the week, so we could check out some other areas. Went to pick it up, but that model didn’t have a surf rack, so had to come back later and pickup an upgraded model which had one. Need a surf rack since we plan on driving back to San Jose on Tuesday morning to catch our flight. Finally got it squared away around 3pm. Feels weird to drive around after walking everywhere the last 3 weeks. Stick shift too, which will take a bit to get used to again. I’ll be the engine revving gringo…

Hadn’t planned on surfing again while we were here, but viewing those surf photos got me excited! 4 o’clock surf session came around and said let’s do this, so we both prepped and walked down to the beach for a beautiful sunset session. Caught some fun rides and the rib didn’t bother me much. Felt great to be back out in the water on my board, especially with a great view of the sunset. Likely wouldn’t be the recommended treatment for my rib, but I figure there will be time for healing after this trip.

Off to il basilico tonight for pizza, a place we really enjoyed on our last visit and now easily reachable in our coche.

Yesterday evening, Chris and I walked down playa Pelada and through the jungle to the Nosara river to try some snook fishing. We walked past a wedding taking place on the beach in front of la Luna restaurant, so we stopped off to the side to watch for a little while. What a beautiful place to get married! Along our walk back, we saw that they had rented out la Luna for the reception and it looked beautiful, with lit lanterns strung through the trees and luminaries lining the walkways. Anyway, after stopping to watch the wedding, we continued our walk to the Nosara river. The sun was just beginning to set when we got there and it was a gorgeous sunset with the waves of playa ostional and pelicans flying in the foreground. We saw some bait swirling in the river, and Chris made quite a few casts with the topwater lure, but no bites. Before it got too dark, we made our way back through the jungle (fortunately no bats this time), back down playa Pelada to our temporary home in Guiones. Chris woke extra early this morning to try again at some fishing. As he returned, I had awoken and decided to paddle out for a few waves before our yoga class at 10:30. Not an epic surf session, but I caught a few tasty treats! Walked back to the house, put my board up, got cleaned up, and we walked into town to the Nosara Yoga Institute for our yoga class. The schedule said this class was for “beginners, athletes, and surfers”. Well, that would be us, however, the class was definitely harder than we were expecting. It’s a good thing we tried some beginners yoga on YouTube earlier in the week or we wouldn’t have known what was going on! I do admit that my posture feels improved, which is something I definitely need to work on. I also enjoyed letting my mind focus on “enjoying the moment”, which is something that I have incorporated into my nutrition counseling. After our yoga class, we walked to lunch with a girl that we met in class, who turned out to be a guest at the wedding we watched yesterday. We ate at Rosie’s soda Tica again, and again the casado pescado and watermelon and banana smoothies were delicious! Walked back to the house for a siesta, and heading to the beach to watch another beautiful sunset!