Guanacaste!

Yesterday Hillary’s brother Juan Manuel, and his friend drove Hillary, Ashli and myself to Guanacaste, about 3 hours from San Ramon, to go to a beach called Pirate Beach. It was soo beautiful! We’ve seen a lot of beaches here that look and feel like the Oregon Coast (only a little warmer usually) but this beach was exactly the kind of beach you would expect to see in Costa Rica. The water was light blue and there were little islands in the water that you could swim or walk to depending on the tide. I sat out for a little while but eventually went in the water (go me!) and floated around with Hillary and Ashli, the tide kept sucking us in and then pushing us back to shore. We were about to leave the beach when it started down pouring so we decided to put everything in the car and we all got in the ocean until the rain passed. Hillary, Juan Manuel and I decided to swim to the closest island since the waves were calm. It was really cool because there was a bat cave that you could look at and all sorts of little animals swimming around. There were rocks surrounding the island that made it kind of hard to climb on and off of and once I was on I really didn’t want to jump back off! Juan Manuel showed us when the perfect time was to jump so a small wave would pull you out without having to kick very hard so you wouldn’t hit the rocks. I swam back pretty fast because I was starting to have paranoia about the fish!

We went to the town near the beach called Tamarindo and did a little bit of shopping. Hillary’s brother took us to a yummy smoothie place and afterwards Hillary, Ashli and I shared a Nutella and Banana crepe from the store next door. It was so yummy!!!! I really appreciate it when people are friendly with us, because sometimes people notice we’re tourists and can be kind of rude. The old man working at the crepe place was super nice and it helped make our experience that much better! It also helped that we were with Juan and his friend because people don’t mess with us as much if we’re with other Tico’s.

After such a great day and only a minor sunburn I didn’t think the day could get any better but we ended up meeting up with Juan Manuel’s uncle/cousin person thingy who took us to the beach when it got dark to see turtles! We only ended up seeing one but it was so amazing! It was a mama turtle who wanted to lay her eggs, but there was another group of rude tourists who kept shining their light on the turtle and touching it so she left her hole that she dug and started waddling (or whatever the verb is) towards the water. I took lots of pictures of her from behind so I wouldn’t hurt her eyes. The tracks she left behind were so deep- I couldn’t believe how strong she was. We waited on the beach for a while, while the uncle/cousin dude looked for more turtles and we watched the lightning from far away, which looked beautiful, and I got to see two shooting stars! Oh. Also, the waves kept crashing and lighting up like they were glow in the dark, and we asked the guide who said the plankton in the ocean light up the waves and he showed us that when we walk the sand lights up behind us. It felt like magic! Hillary and I kept joking that we were lighting up the sand since we still had some electricity in us from getting shocked by lightning J