All this heat has me thinking…

Most notably about the vacation I won’t be having this summer. Admittedly we knew when we planned our Costa Rica trip last summer that we, in all likelihood, would not be having a vacation this summer…you know how it is with babies and their budgets.

So with thoughts of the vacation I won’t have come thoughts of the beach I won’t visit. Costa Rica has a marvelous array of beaches, at least the region we visited did. Each day we went to a different one and each day it was a vastly different beach. This particularly deserted one was notable for its wide expanse. We discovered it just north of Malpais on the Nicoya peninsula. With the jungle moving in on it’s turf, the sand just seemed to stretch further out to sea in defiance. It came complete with no one visible for most of the day, a small family-run snack shack and convenience store just off the road behind the beach with plenty of cold beer and a reasonably sunny few hours. It was pure beach bliss.

And while I’m speaking of Costa Rica, understand I’m terribly ashamed of the fact that its been almost a whole year and I have yet to share a damn photo with you of our journey. It was one of those experiences that I am certain I could have done better. I have yet to conclude how, but I’m sure of it. Costa Rica has a lot of strange beauty to it. The trip was filled with a variety of ups and downs, from the precarious hike up a creek to a muddy and disappointing waterfall, the surprising cost of booze, some amazingly authentic Italian food on our last night and the sheer fun and agony of driving in a mostly 3rd world country where pavement is considered a luxury.

I saw these folks several times in the span of a week in Montezuma, the beach town popular with the back-packer set. I speculated much about them and their story as they didn’t appear to be native, at least not Tico. Perhaps they are American expats who have been in Costa Rica so long yet have come to loathe tourists so much as to take to scowling at them high atop their horses. They were one of many of the curiosities that for one reason or another I didn’t resolve in Costa Rica.

More to come in the next few days.