Surf City, Here We Come!

Greetings all from Tamarindo!

We arrived here on Sunday and moved in with our new family in the neighboring town of Villareal. We immediately met our host parents, Lucia and Roni, and their son, Micha. They live right on the square in the small town of Villareal, so we got to enjoy watching an afternoon soccer game with what seemed to be everyone in town.

Our family is very nice, and certainly interesting! They don't speak any English, which is good for practice. Lucia cooks us two meals a day, cleans our room, does our laundry, and basically spoils us rotten. Roni is a construction worker, or so we think. A lot of things seem to be getting lost in translation during our conversations (we think that Lucia said that Roni doesn't ever get to eat dinner because his belly is too big, but we might have misunderstood) . One funny thing about Roni is that he never, ever has a shirt on. Ever. When we asked them to take a picture with us, Lucia told him forcefully to go put a shirt on. He went to the bedroom and returned shirtless, like he didn't own any! We have also had a few sightings of Roni in "whitey-tighties," seemingly with no shame whatsoever. Anyway, here we are with our Costa Rican parents:




On Monday morning we took the shuttle to the Wayra school and started our Spanish classes. The school is located about 100 yards from the Tamarindo beach, and has students from lots of different countries (mostly Europeans who smoke unfiltered cigarettes while they badmouth the French). Hanging around them, we feel a bit inadequate because we are only working on our second language. Most of them are on their fourth, fifth or sixth!

Wayra actually looks more like a tropical paradise than it does a school. The inner courtyard is filled with palm trees, ivy, hanging vines, flowers, and colorful birds. Many of the classes are held in open air shelters so that we can enjoy the perfect climate while we talk. The weather is warming up every day here, while I can only assume it's getting colder and colder in the states (we're going to start losing readership if I keep that stuff up!)

Upon arrival at the school, we took a diagnostic test and immediately jumped into our classes. I am in a higher level than Nina, but only slightly higher. This is actually a bit sad on my part since I took many years of Spanish in school, and Nina took zero. Anyway, we both really like our classes and our teachers. There is some formal instruction over vocabulary and grammar, but the bulk of class is spent practicing the language through guided conversations. We both find this extremely helpful, and we both feel that we were placed in the perfect level for us. Here are a few pictures from around school:


Our walk to the bus stop:

Our bus ride to school:

The sign in front:
The inner courtyard:
A classroom visitor:
Paul's class:
Nina's class (without Nina):
The cafeteria:


This is school like we have never experienced it before. We have homework, but there are no grades, no tests, no pressure of any kind! The best part of all is that when classes end at around noon, we all eat a quick lunch and then head to the beach! Nina and I have taken up surfing in the afternoons, which I must say is a bit harder than Brian Wilson might have you believe. Not only is it extremely tiring, but you also end the day with horrible chafing over all exposed skin. Much like Spanish, surfing seems to be something that comes naturally to Nina and not to me. Of course, I was super pumped about it the first day, singing the beach boys greatest hits in my head, absolutely sure that I would be riding giants within a few short minutes. The reality was very different, and I lost function in my biceps pretty fast. Nina, on the other hand, was standing up on one of the first waves that came by. She makes it look way, way easier than it is. Over the three days of surfing I improved very slightly, but I'm a long way off from making it onto a Tamarindo postcard.

That's all the news that's fit to print now! Awesome classes in the morning, catchin' waves in the afternoon, sleeping like rocks at night. Not a bad life, I must say.

We will update in a few days with more pictures, more adventures, etc. Thanks for following our awesome travels!

Sincerely,

Paul and Nina

Adios luna de miel

Well, the honeymoon is sadly over but we have much more to look forward to. This post is short and sweet because we are being picked up very shortly.

Let me catch you up to what we have been doing since the last post. Our last day on the beach was spent kayaking and snorkeling. Like the horseback riding, there was very little instruction. Our guide basically said "here's your boat, now go" which could possibly be due to the language barrier. We paddled for about 20 minutes until we got to the reef, which was beautiful. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures!

We left the following day for the Arenal volcano. This spot was the grand finale of the honeymoon. We have been living in luxury the past 4 days with our balcony overlooking the volcano. On our first day, we went zip lining. When booking all these adventures, we had asked for the most challenging and thrilling zip line in Costa Rica since you can find them pretty much anywhere. Our bravery and toughness was quickly diminished when we hopped on the sky tram and noticed 3 elderly couples in our group. When I say old, I mean old. Almost all of them had gray hair and one was recovering from a hip replacement! They were all from Chicago and were hilarious to be around. We weren't quite bickering or correcting each other's forms on the zip quite like they were after only a week of marriage. Needless to say, the zip lining was still thrilling. We were 600 feet up and completed 8 zip lines down the mountain with longest zip being 2000 feet long!


Okay our ride will be here any second so I'll wrap this up. We also went to the Tabacon natural hot springs. We ended our honeymoon right last night by having a hot stone couples massage which left us both looking pathetically relaxed.

This has truly been a honeymoon from our dreams. We are going to Tamarindo today where we will meet our host family. All we know is that the father works in construction, the mother is a housewife, they have a 16 year-old son and a dog, and they like to play poker on the weekends. We're a little anxious!

We'll be attending Spanish school for 4 hours Monday-Friday for the next 3 weeks. I'm sure we will have internet at the school so we will keep in touch.





Love to all,

Nina and Paul

PICTURES!! (finally free internet...)

Pictures from Left to Right (sorry it won't let us write below each one!)

Row 1: Breakfast on our first day/In front of the Pacuare River
Row 2: Our bungalow along the river/A lizard under our bed!
Row 3: Enjoying coffee on our porch/ Our candlelight - no electricity in the bungalow
Row 4: Our outdoor shower
Row 5: Nina outside of Mr. Big J's shop/Mr. Big J - our lives were in his hands
Row 6: Paul riding his horse/ Nina riding her horse
Row 7: Paul on his horse
Row 8: Paul in the ocean on our private beach/ Nina reading in the hammock
Row 9: Our jacuzzi overlooking the volcano / In front of Arenal volcano on our porch
Row 10: The maids' towel designs - they are new everyday!

Enjoy! We will post again soon.

Love, Nina and Paul

Our Adventure Begins!

Hola Familia y Amigos!

A week ago yesterday, we celebrated our wedding with all of you and had an unbelievable time. Now, we´re well into our Costa Rican adventure and doing great! This is truly a dream honeymoon. For the sake of your reading time and our internet charges, I´ll try to summarize some of the high points.

We got into Costa Rica Wednesday night, and nearly slept through our hotel pick up at 6:20 (we woke up at 6:12). We were then taken to the Pacuare River where we rafted down and spent two nights in what can only be described as paradise. In order to picture the Pacuare lodge, simply imagine that the Ritz Carleton opened a hotel in the middle of the jungle, and to top it all off, hired the best chef in New York City to cook guests three meals a day. It was wonderful. We relaxed, went on hikes and swims, and napped to the sound of the river running in front of our bungalow. I could go on and on, but don´t want to make those of you in the working world too jealous.

The only way to get out was also by raft, and we enjoyed a much longer trip out. Our 15 miles on the Pacuare River was filled with class four rapìds (class five in the US) and was by far the most intense whitewater experience of our lives. To top it off, we had a great guide who, among other feats of daring, made us stand up and for a "circle of trust" where we did an entire rapid standing up and holding each other. Somehow, we survived the river.

We are now just south of the town of Puerto Viejo, on the Carribean coast. Today we have basically been relaxing on the hotel´s beach. It has almost no other people around, and looks exactly like the beach in Corona Beer ads. Our hotel is located where the rainforest meets the beach, so we have the best of both worlds.

Yesterday, however, was quite eventful. It started at 5:30 when we were abruptly awakened (this is no small feat, as we are not an easily awakened couple). Monkeys were suddenly screaming and roaring outside our bungalow, and Nina was able to spot one in a tree. In fact, we have seen a lot of interesting wildlife in addition to monkeys. There have been lots of lizards. iguanas, gigantic toads, crabs, toucans, hummingbirds, and a sloth!

We then spent most of the day on a horseback riding tour of the area with our new friend, Joseph. Joseph, or "Mister Big J" as he is called by everyone, owns and operates a tour business. We went on a three hour tour with him, and because it is the low season, it was just the three of us. It was one of the best tours of our lives, and something that could only occur without the burden of law suits. Mr. Big J gave us no training, no safety talk. and no helmets. We basically just hopped on horses and started trotting through town. Riding through town was great because Joseph was a genuine celebrity. Literally everyone that we passed knew him and greeted him with a hearty "hola, Mister Big J!" Once we got out of town, we did miles and miles through the beach and jungle, mostly at a steady trot. If you have ever hear the song lyric "where have all the cowboys gone," I think I have an answer. Riding all day everyday, they were simply unable to reproduce! Now remember, Nina and I have basically no experience at all with horses. Mister Big J simply didn´t care, and most of our tour was done at a trot. A few times on the beach, we rode at a full gallop! Nina´s horse would occasionally take off at full speed, and my horse was a complete follower.

Tomorrow, we will go kayaking and snorkeling at a nearby reef, and then the next day we are off to Arenal Volcano, which will be the last stop of our dream honeymoon. We really miss everyone, and hope that we will have frequent internet so that we can update often!

Love,

Paul and Nina

P.S. Our one picture in this post took a really long time to load, so when we get a faster connection we´ll post pictures of all of this...and more!