Day 37 - Pura Vida Hostel, Tamarindo

We had booked a hotel in Samara, our next stop along the coast of Costa Rica and I was hoping that it would offer as much as Tamarindo had to offer. I had absolutely loved Tamarindo, and whilst it was expensive, by our standards, it was a very cool town. It turned out that the ride was only about 63 miles, but it took us the better part of 3 and half hours to cover the short distance. Some of the roads were incredible for riding, but the surfaces kept changing from really good tarmac to gravel with serious ditches and dongas (a South African term for extreme ditches), so we had to go slow and keep our wits about us. The lush countryside is amazing. Beautiful trees and landscapes, and so much life, you can see it everywhere. Costa Rica was turning out to be a really wicked spot and we had only been to 1 town so far, but I was already taken by the place. We stopped in a town called Nosara as Jorik has a connection from a friend in Tahoe that he touched base with before leaving and she lives in Nosara. She had previously done the road between Nosara and Santa Teresa on a Honda NAVI, and she offered to give us some tips about that stretch, which we would tackle in the coming days. Hell, if a Honda NAVI can do the road, we could do the road on the Himalayans. Anyway, we stopped in Nosara, even though we knew she wasn’t in town at the time, but if she had chosen this spot to live, there must be something to it. Sure enough, Nosara is a great town. A very chic/boutique kind of town with lots of designer clothes shops, real estate agents and smart restaurants, mixed in with the usual palm frond roofed houses and basic properties. Very much a town of 2 halves, the rich and the poor. We had a coke and a quick stop, and whilst chilling out, I noticed that the adjacent shop called the Hot Tamale had a load of stickers on the door. I popped my head in and asked if I could stick one of our stickers on their door. An American lady came out to say that she was very selective about the stickers that are placed on her door and wanted to know what we were all about. I gave her the standard speech and she agreed that we could place the sticker on the door, well actually she agreed that she would place it. So, with another Enfields Overland sticker in place, we finished our cokes and got geared up to head the rest of the way to Samara, our stop for the night. It had rained the night before, not during the day, we still had the fantastic fortune to have not ridden in the rain at all, even though there had been some absolutely massive downpours overnight, particularly in Leon, Nicaragua. The rain had left the unmetalled surfaces very slippery and difficult to negotiate. We had to be weary of the gravel and sand surfaces in particular as the bikes would slip and slide if we got the balance even slightly wrong. At one point, I was riding behind Jorik, and he hit a particularly slippery patch and he went sideways, before coming off on a grass verge where he got his foot caught under the bike. It wasn’t serious and he wasn’t travelling fast, but the weight of the bike was too much for him to lift, so I jumped off and helped him get free. This was much to the enjoyment of a few passersby that offered to help but could see that we had it in hand. By the time we got to Samara, we were very hot and sweaty and were ready to get into the hotel to take a load off and chill out. The hotel was very nice, with 2 great swimming pools, one of which was right outside our room, which had a little outside seating area with a table and 2 chairs for us to chill out. We jumped in the pool and sure enough, we hadn’t been in for long, when it started to rain. It was kind of cool to know that we were still on a clean streak with regards to riding in the rain, and it wasn’t cold, just nice to have the humidity dampened, even if it was only short lived. We walked down to the beach to have a look and a swim and passed a place called Limeys on the way down, which we decided could be a good location for our dinner that evening. The beach was great, not as crowded as Tamarindo and the water was crystal clear and clean. We had a beer down on the beach and whilst checking out a couple of other options for dinner, a massive green and red iguana came crashing down as it fell out of a tree right next to us. it didn’t seem bothered about falling down, but he was a beast, probably bigger than the green and yellow iguana that we had seen at the hostel in Tamarindo. Great to be so close to cool wildlife as we haven’t seen much on this trip so far. We headed back to the hotel for another swim to wash of the salt water and chill out until we went to Limey’s for dinner. The food wasn’t anything special, but what did stick out was a guy with 2 massive plates of food in front of him and the biggest belly I think if have seen on a human. He sat and scoffed his food down like Mr Creosote from the Monty Python movie – The Meaning of Life. It was pretty disgusting to watch this fat dude wolf down his food, blow his nose with a tissue and then proceed to wipe the sweat off his face with the same tissue. It properly turned my stomach and was possibly the most disgusting thing I have seen on this trip. Apologies for that mental image, but I had to endure it in real life so you can endure it through this blog. After that rather unpleasant experience, we headed back to the hotel for some kip as we would be heading on to Santa Teresa in the morning.