Jaco

Jaco started to grow on me this morning - my first impressions weren't that hot (may have been something to do with the urgent hours long Saturday night search to find accomodation when the town was overflowing with weekenders)!  After desperately paying mega bucks for a crummy room the first night just to be off the street, our accomodation expectations had dropped significantly.  Luckily I'd made a verbal deal with 'Manue'l the night before (on one of my hundred enquiries) for this - as seen in the photos.  Our beautiful new accomodation complete with pristine pool and friendly owners/managers.  Just one and a half blocks from the surf beach.

Playa Jaco (beach) breaks on high tide only (I'd only seen tiny waves on low tide so I was having trouble understanding why it was a surf town?!).  Anyway high tide was at 4am this morning - I didn't have the hunger to get up that early for it (I got spoilt for waves at the wonderful paradise of Playa Carmen).  But I made it in time to catch the last little bit of the high tide...

The waves weren't the attraction this morning though:

First on my arrival to the beach I got a lovely friendly (no not 'friendly', I mean friendly - everyone is friendly here!) greeting by a local guy and we exchanged small talk about how I'd missed the high tide and the good waves (any chance to regain my spanish and meet some Ticos (locals) I'm taking).

Then I spotted similar sleeping bodies that we'd spotted the day before (in such a deep sleep they looked dead), by a similar burning log (out partying all night/enjoy sleeping outside/so high they sleep where they fall/homeless? Hard to say..).  

I stashed/buried my jandals under the sand, and padded out to some little waves (caught a few littlies, as usual so great to be in the water).  Awhile after enjoying the beautiful warm water, the picturesque surroundings, the joyous sounds of the group of guys playing in the water nearby and the bunch of birds surfing the air currents above the waves:

I spotted a stingray jump clean out of the water with it's tail flowing behind it!! I didn't know stingrays could jump?!  I wondered what was behind it to make it jump that high, but choose to not dwell on that.  Anyway it was a shared moment ....., how nice - Marcela had seen it too!  So I made a friend.  Marcela - a lovely lady is from San Juan de Antonio (acutally I tried really hard to remember but I can't it was something like that..)  Shortly after when duck diving under a wave a saw a huge school of fish right in front of my face - I must have dived right through them.  After seeing more and more stingrays leap out of the air, we ended up with her family standing in the shallows and spotting the stingrays leap out of the air all over the place and then surfing inside the waves - 5 or 6 at a time - so clearly that we could see the top dark part of them and the lower white part shining when their wings flashed up to curve around and surf the wave - WHAT A SIGHT.  I said goodbye to Marcela and even used a new saying - Mucho gusto (great to meet you), and it was!

On my return I passed the friendly guy that I'd spoken briefly with on the way in.  He confirmed that they were Mantarays (Mantaraya) and that there's heaps more in the summer - the water is full of them then - feels like summer to me, it's so nice and warm! He said his name was Carlexo, but that everyone calls him Tigre (Tiger).  I asked why and he gave the action of a golfer, it wasn't till then that I noticed how much like Tiger Woods he looked... Bummer for him - his nickname is now tarnished!  Anyway he knows a guy looking for an English teacher so he's going to scope it out today.  We may have another lead!

Two new friends this morning!  Now some Costa Rican coffee from our coffee machine.. Life is good.

Chau!