Resort Living
It’s about as first world problems as they get, but sitting here in this beachfront resort I find that I really don’t like it much. I’m not sure it is any one thing, more likely it is several taken together that just don’t make it feel right. Everything about it is nice, and there are scores of people (mostly Americans and Canadians) that feel right at home by the pool with their umbrella drinks so it is probably me that is a little broken.
Breakfast is full on resort style and included with our room so we back up the truck like everyone else. Waffles, fruit, omelettes, fresh tortillas, pastries, and more all soon blend into one another as we do our best to make sure we won’t need to buy $22 hamburgers for lunch. I guess that is my biggest beef about the place – that we are completely isolated from anything other than the resort unless we want to fetch the car and weave around 15 minutes worth of potholes to get to the closest shops and restaurants. I don’t have that in me today so we flop down by the pool instead.
By evening people are starting to get a little stir crazy. I’m perfectly content firing up a tasty noodle soup (spicy chicken flavor) and turning in, but my fellow adventurer will have none of it. It takes a little convincing but I finally cave and agree to drive into Tamarindo where we find a nice place on the beach to sit and have dinner.
It is the low season of course, so the beach vendors are still the JV team. There are a group of hippies spinning fire sticks nearby – not the cool fire spinner kind thing you might see in Hawaii or Indonesia, more like the kind of fire spinning you might see if you signed up for a class with a Groupon. Nevertheless, they live in Costa Rica and work on the beach everyday so who’s the idiot here?
Tamarindo is everything our resort is not. There are restaurants everywhere, a much younger crowd of people wandering the streets, and a wide, white sand beach, full of options for activities. It’s possible that it is just as extreme in the opposite direction of where we are staying, but if the opportunity ever presents itself, I think I’d choose to establish base camp here.