Guanacaste

I turned 24 last week (a fact I have chosen to avoid thinking about to the best of my abilities) so my friend and I decided to take a trip up to Tamarindo, the country’s officially-unofficial party beach. Our drive was long, but we arrived just in time to down a bottle of gin, cushioned by a few thin quesadillas.

We stayed at Selina’s, which is a hostel chain that until this trip I had high hopes for. Their marketing team must be their most funded department though because, to put it mildly, the place was a dump. Tiny, old cabinas that had been converted in to rooms big enough to fit a bunk bed, with an extra meter of standing room, and no windows. Did I mention that the entire place smelled like sewage and the company as a whole allegedly dumps their waste into the ocean? The only saving grace was that we didn’t have to pay for the room, because my friend knew someone staying there, so the 4 of us crowded into a room the size of a prison cell.

The night that followed included lots of shots, dancing, exchanging phone digits with a large Danish man, our friend pulling a feme fatale to distract the guard while we snuck back in to the Horrid Hostel, and back in bed with a packed bowl before 3 am, a fun but somewhat predictable ending to a twenty-fourth birthday. Wasn’t even drunk enough to warrant a hangover. Ah, the joys of getting older. The next night another friend gave us sanctuary at her home, saving us from a repeat performance of waking up in a jail cell.

Monday morning, we drove a half hour to Potrero, a smaller and more mellow beach where my parents house is. We beached [verb: the act of laying, tanning, eating, reading, smoking and swimming for long periods of time] for the next 4 days, and it was glorious. Our days consisted of early morning kayaking and breakfast, followed by tanning and reading. The frequent smoke breaks always made lunch come early, and enabled lots of snacking. In fact we set a counter to see how many beaches we could smoke on in the following months. We accomplished absolutely nothing, neither of us even finished our books. Actually, I won’t say nothing, seeing as I finally got tan for the first time in probably 8 years.

In the afternoons we drove to different beaches in the area, watching sunsets foreground by different islands and coves. Our final tally came to 6 different beaches that we managed to light up on, Playa Tamarindo, Playa Grande, Playa Flamingo, Potrero, Las Catalinas, and La Penca though we would have managed two more had it not been for a closed hotel that restricted access to Sugar Beach (how beautiful is that) and too steep a road that prevented us from getting to Prieta.

Our 6 days at sea-adjacent were a fantastic success of laziness and luxury, spoiled by incredible views and salty air. We are planning another trip for mid-January, and I am excited to see how many more books we can’t finish and how many beaches we can blaze on.