tamarindo, costa rica: the editorial

whoa.. it's already been a week since i returned from 10 days of beach, sun and hammock in Tamarindo... where has the time gone?? oh right... i've been working.. and... umm... exercising... or something... and all the while musing about how i might like to document my trip, in typed form, on this little piece of world wide web real estate.. i wrote a ton while i was down there, and have been taking ideas and themes from that, but in the end, here i am, typing away, with no real ideas... off the cuff we go...

so - tamarindo - hmm... well, they say a picture paints a thousand words, but i suppose you need the right picture. does the opposite hold true? can a bunch of words create a thousand pictures? sometimes, maybe. i'd ask you to close your eyes while i got it all out, but then, well, you wouldnt see anything on the screen... so, you're gonna have to do 2 things at once here.. like walking and chewing gum... i know some of you can do it - the rest, well, maybe time for a little evolution, hmm?

evolution is maybe where i should begin. the town has evolved, and continues to evolve more fully, into a haven, a paradise, for rich white people. from the way the land is being sold off and developed to the sizeable amount of tourists... someone told me it is the most touristy place in the country - not surprised. if you're one of those people who is looking to invest in a piece of land, tamarindo may be the place for you: you're hard pressed to go anywhere and not see a billboard for Century 21 or Re/Max. the boom is apparent as soon as you move 3 or 4 streets deep into the town - there is construction everywhere - future vacation palaces being built for a buck 50 an hour. i was taking some pictures one day of the moon through some trees, i happened to be in front of a construction site, and a local walking by asked me if i was "recording the destruction of tamarindo" - i got him. in talking to some locals, i realized how quickly this has happened. in talking to some others, i got the feeling that this has always been happening to them.

i am a white person. by no means would i say i am rich. but parts of me still felt guilty for feeding into something that i dont necessarily agree with. it was a little difficult for me to deal with for the first part of my trip while i got settled with where i was. i didnt stay at a resort. in fact the place i stayed was incredible and exactly what i would have hoped for - and i'd recommend it to anyone. in fact i will right now:

Casa Tamarindo, owned and operated by Kyle Zelley - a little property with a couple bungalows and a house and incredible rates for the area, with a great host, and a perfect location, given you're far enough away to avoid the noise and craziness of the nightlife, but also close enough that you can jump right into it, or onto the beach, with a short 3 minute walk down the street.

the town itself really panders to the tourist. cool - makes it real easy. but sometimes, its a little much: such as showing up for a brazilian music night at a restaurant, and yes, granted there was a brazilian on stage, however the songs he was singing were far from brazilian. not even the same hemisphere. the food was good, though.

actually, the best places i found to eat were the ones that weren't pandering to the tourist... the best food, feel, and prices came from the most authentic.

there is lots to do, if you have the cash and the right number of people to do it with. otherwise, the beach is beautiful and the hammock's are comfortable. and sometimes, for some people, thats all you need. i certainly got my fair share of relaxing in - so much so that i started to get bored. i guess it is possible to relax too much.

left the town one day, we rented some scooters and went on a little adventure, which was a lot of fun... took backroads to Avellanas on Easter Thursday. it was neat to see parts of their "countryside" - is that what you'd call it? i guess for lack of a better expression.. and for me, the most intriguing part about it was seeing some of the little villages and housing.. i wish i got more pictures than i did, but we took a different way back and missed a lot of that. basically, a lot of shacks, or poorly constructed dwellings, but hell if they didnt have their own little charm! thats probably when i felt most connected to where i was - exploring and seeing that side of it.

i mentioned Easter Thursday. i wasnt even thinking of this when i planned the trip, but it happened to fall right into their Easter Fiesta celebrations... and they take that shit SERIOUSLY! i guess everything around the country shuts down from Thursday on, but being in a resort town, we didnt feel that crunch at all. well, they did stop selling alcohol until saturday, but that was it, really. so, Easter is a big deal... thats when all the Tico's come to town and take over - and good on 'em! but good lord, do these people party! you know, i've partied once or twice in my life, but even i felt out of my element amongst them. when we ventured down to the circle on good friday night to check out the scene it was like out a movie with all the people bumpin' and grindin' on the streets, in the backs of pick-ups, drugs and alcohol everywhere you turned - mayhem is about the only way to describe it. mucho mayhem. after a few trips through the crowds and deciding it was all too much for me, i decided to regroup on a log on the beach, where i ended up hanging out with a gay costa rican who wanted to fuck my brains out. it wasnt all that bad, he was actually cool to hang out and talk with, and given my state of mind at the time, i thought it was rather funny that this was happening to me - of course it couldnt have been a sexy beach bunny - c'mon! he likened my name to Scott Paper Towels with a remark about kimberley-clarke (talk about attention to detail!), and i told him he'd always think of me when he wiped his ass. i later found out they dont do that down there (it's a luxury for the tourists, apparently), which made me even more glad that i didnt get raped. they're forward as hell, though: i had to tell him "no" more times than i was comfortable with before i bolted. i might not have stuck around as long as i did, but like i said, alcohol sales stopped on thursday, and well, he had some beers for me... the aftermath the next day is something to see, as well... drunks sleeping in beach offices, crackheads down the way sprawled out, chewing their faces out, lotsa litter, the whole deal. interesting to see and experience, though.

the rest of my experience there basically consisted of lounging on the beach, or lounging in the hammock, and eating... like i said, a ton of relaxing. i got about 200 pages into Another Roadside Attraction and wrote a shitload. day 3 i got burned so bad on the tops of my feet that i could barely walk for 2 days. my head, too - it bubbled up and eventually started leaking and peeling in a most sexy manner. settle down, ladies....

i'd say, though, on the whole, i learned more than a few lessons on that trip. i think i learned some things about myself, and the way i feel. i learned a bit about the culture, though i really do with they showed their identities more. and i learned a little spanish along the way, too, but dont ask me to speak any... most of it is likely forgotten by now....

one of my best memories of the trip will be the spanish lesson i received from a 47 year old woman whom i met at dinner my first night in town - somehow in her broken english and my non-existent spanish i agreed to meet her for a morning swim, that surely would have killed me had i gone through with it, and turned into a vocabularly lesson in the pacific ocean. not a bad welcome to the mighty pacific.

my other favourite memories spawn from the thoughts and feelings i had within myself during my times hanging out at on the rocks at langosta point, watching the sunrise, sunset, and moonset... my walks on the beach puffin' cubans, and the little interactions i had with the locals, getting a feel for the way they live, and the way they feel... and also from the people i met while travelling, whether by shuttle bus or plane, or hangin' in the airport.

overall, i cant say this was a bad trip at all. certainly it had its ups and downs, but on the whole, it was really good for me. i think i got most of what i needed out of it, and the rest, well, its a good excuse to go back, right?

stay tuned for the pictorial, coming soon.....