Down the Rabbit Hole: Saturday 19th, 2011

Today was the much buzzed about surf competition at C&C Surf School. We got up and got ready, somehow managing to waste an immense amount of time before actually heading down to the beach. Keep in mind that we are both consistently late, always doing things on our own time, and the last one to walk out the door. The 2 of us together is not exactly a prompt or speedy combination. We tend to base the time of day on temperature, where the sun is, and how well we are tanning. Hmm, don’t think that will work once we get to NYC. But anyway, we scored some beach spots at the surf competition when we found Jessica, Amanda and Kristen. The full moon has had the tide super high all weekend, so the beach was really small all day- which left all of the audience/vendors/surfers packed in pretty tight. Aryan was helping out with the food (the whole event was for a children’s charity so we didn’t feel guilty spending a few bucks on lunch) so we bought a delicious plate of papadillas (“por los ninos” being yelled over the microphone was a nice reminder too). Glen had also made some amazing sangria for sale! After eating, the worlds quickest tide washed us away pretty quickly. So we hung up our towels on a tree by our friends and took a quick stroll into town to pick up a bus schedule. We hung out and watched a few more surfers afterwards, but decided the beach scene today was a little too much for our tired selves.
We decided to head home and rinse off before meeting everyone at Mixology at Gusto around 5.

Jen rinsed and strolled over to Olas for some skyping. On Kelly’s way to meet her, the screaming sounds of “hola gringa! I looove you!” came roaring down the street from the neighborhood kids who are now out tiniest Tico friends. Naturally Kel stopped for a little playtime with the kids and then we had a little sunset beach walk. Mixology turned out to be a no-go, so we decided to stroll through town and see if we ran across some fun (this is how it works in a world without texts or bbm apparently). Luckily, we ran right into Arian and Max and decided to go grab some dinner and drinks. We ended up at La Vella—yummy! From there Arian went home for a shower and the 3 of us went to Iguana to get a few things for our evening (the ingredients for a fruity rum concoction and some much needed cereal and milk). We stopped at Arian’s (he lives with Jessica and Amanda, both of whom were in for the night) and got him back up and out of bed. Hair was gelled, watch was on, he still wanted to go out so we went down to Olas. The four of us camped out at a beach table and played cards for way too long! Everyone hated the fruity rum concoction, except Jenny who thought it was a delicious choice. Olas was getting really busy and the crowd is pretty…hmm, how should we say….”righteous.” Lots of the Ticos there are smoking “righteous cigarettes” if you will and one guy was even selling pipes out of the knit bag hung around his neck. We finished up our game and took a little beach stroll to scope out the Saturday night scene.

Next door to Tabanuco is a bar called Tutti Frutti, which was obviously the most happening beach club about 10 years ago. Now there are just some mellow ticos sitting around the couches that line the big room. But the crazy awesome jams were calling our names so we decided to have our own Tutti Frutti dance session, which left Aryan and Max rolling their eyes in boredom, and on we went. There was a big bonfire on the beach in front of Olas so we gravitated that way. There is a strange man that has been in town for a few days now - we’ve seen him performing with batons on the beach, attempting magic tricks at Ariba (we say attempting because the answer to “is this your card?” always seemed to be “no”) juggling glowing balls at Reggae night, and now ferociously swinging glow balls on strings at the bonfire. He’s French Canadian… the best way to describe him, well… have you ever seen the South Park episode about Canadians? Yeah, that’s this guy. Anyway, Jenny was drawn too his shiny talent and after much persuading, he let her try it. Now, we know what you’re thinking, Jenny’s plan for the quesadilla stand is way to awesome to just throw away! But if you saw her skills with circus creep you would understand why this is also a very serious option. Stay tuned I suppose…

Our friends Max and Arian walked us home, being the brotherly types they are, and we went to bed, deep in thought about all the possible career paths at our feet. The circus is a great way to travel…