Tag: ice cream

Surfboard Run: Day Four

Leigh, surf, Surfing, Travel, Yoga

This is a recap of day four of our surfboard run from Houston, Texas to Sayulita, Mexico. If you missed day three, you can catch up here.

On day four we decided to soak in the view a little longer, and have breakfast by the water. We ordered lattes and shared this plate of pancakes with fruit. It was as delicious as it looks.

We could have spent the day there just enjoying the view, but we also wanted to get to Sayulita and maybe find a wave. Sayulita has grown as well, in the 3-4 years we’ve been visiting. The official population is about 5,000, but there were tons of people in the streets and walking around the town square. We stopped off at Casa Aves to drop off the boards, but we were unable to stay as a nice family from Canada was renting the place for the week. Instead, we booked another place in town and then hit “Wild Mex” a coffee/surf shop across from a local break. They’ve expanded too, going from just a coffee stand, to a restaurant with lots of tables and open air seating.

The break, called “Burrows”, was pretty busy but we found our spots… Edgar hit the lineup and I headed down the beach where it was smaller and less crowded. I was comfortable in my shorty (wetsuit that comes to the knee) – the water temperature was on the way up but not bath water yet. We caught some rays and nice waves and enjoyed the beach.
We always seem to be starving after a surf session so we hit the showers then hit one of our favorite beach-side restaurants for Mexican pizza. People were still surfing the beach break, wringing every bit of swell out of the day.

Sayulita has a square where people are usually lounging or snacking, or just watching others go by. This visit we noticed a new selfie opportunity. New letters have been added to the square for pictures and there are no shortage of models.

There are a couple of places in Sayulita that serve ice cream and we’re quite familiar. We got our treat and then enjoyed an evening stroll. We spotted the guy who offers folks a seat on his burros for a small fee. He only had one long-eared friend when we first saw him; now he has three. Business is booming, and more and more visitors are enjoying Sayulita’s charm.

Iguanas and Ice Cream in Costa Rica

Leigh, Surfing, Travel

The following is part one of a recap of our trip to Costa Rica.  Stay tuned for part two next week!

The hardest part of our adventures isn’t the planning of the trip, or finding a place we know we’ll love, it’s deciding where to go!  There are so many places to see and experiences to enjoy, but since Edgar and I had both been to Costa Rica before we met, we decided to go back together, along with his daughters.

Since we were coming from different places, we all met in Dallas and left for CR from there.  The flight left bright and early at 6am.  We had a layover in Florida, and arrived in San Jose around noon.  We grabbed our rental car and hit the road, planning to check out a waterfall or two, and then a volcano, before turning in for the night.

The roads were decent and we didn’t have too much trouble finding the first stop.  It was actually a little chilly because we were up in the mountains, and we were glad to have packed an extra layer.  We dumped our things at the hotel and went out to explore.

The weather was… moist.  It wasn’t exactly raining, but it wasn’t dry either.  There was a sort of mist that hung around the place, which made it seem a little mysterious.  We took a little hike around before dinner.

We asked the manager about a nearby waterfall and discovered it wasn’t far at all.  It is a little tough to see here because of the mist and the fact that the sun was going down.  We stuck our feet in (cold!) and Edgar even drank a little of it, in case it was the fountain of youth.  (I assured him that’s in Florida, and I had a couple gulps when I was a kid.)

For dinner, we stopped at a French restaurant we’d spotted on our drive through “town”.  It was strange to sit and have a (delicious) French meal, prepared by an eccentric French chef, in the middle of nowhere, Costa Rica.  As we finished our dessert, we were greeted by a little cat who pawed at my leg and then jumped right in my lap!  Word of my feline generosity has clearly spread far and wide.

The next morning we spotted a cow hanging out by herself, and the girls wanted to go say hello.  They pet the cow for a while and then Edgar walked over and gave her the head scratching of her life.  I didn’t know cows liked that but this one was really leaning into it. You’re welcome, cow.  There were some others on the other side of the fence – you can kinda seem them to the upper left of the photo – and they came to the fence and made some noise.  I think they were trying to say they had itchy chins too.

After breakfast and the petting of the livestock, it was time to hit the road.  We wanted to check out the Arenal volcano, since we’d seen some pictures online and it looked like a good place to explore.   We were also told there was an ice cream shop along the way that was well-populated by iguanas. How could anyone pass that up?   We consulted the map and off we went.

Road signs in CR can be few and far between, and our map was not great with the finer details of the small cities.  We weren’t sure of one of our turns so we stopped to ask where the ice cream/iguanas were.  The store clerk didn’t speak English, and our Spanish needs some work, so Edgar helpfully drew this on our map.

Suddenly she knew exactly what we were talking about!  A few hand signals and “directo!  directo!” instructions later, we were on the road again.   The iguanas did not disappoint.  We didn’t know whether the people at the shop fed them, or they were already there and the shop came along after… but there were definitely iguanas everywhere!  Edgar asked the server if they were friendly, and he said, “Well, they have very sharp teeth, but they are nice.”  Okay.

We were all feeling a little unsure about petting the nice animals with the razor-sharp teeth, but we were okay with tossing them some leftovers, and then as we saw more people touching them and walking away unscathed, we felt safe enough to pet them too.

No hands were damaged in the shooting of these pictures.   That’s the remnants of a mango someone fed them.

With more of the wildlife fed and scratched, we headed off to La Fortuna and the volcano… and met a group of German bodybuilders I was certain was pulling our collective legs.  That’s in part two, coming up next weekend!