Southern Exposure

Saturday, January 3

We woke up around 7 am and went to a community yoga class at the Nosara Yoga Institute.

There are four different outdoor practice spaces at the Institute all located in the jungle setting. We were in a Tree Top room, overlooking the jungle, listening to the sounds of birds and smelling the fragrant flower scents in the air during the practice. After 90 minutes of deep stretching and breathing we had a healthy and tasty breakfast at Cafe De Paris and hurried down to the beach.

A few hours on the beach was enough time in the excruciating sun and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the hotel’s pool. When we arrived to the hotel, the keeper girl told us the owner was coming and we needed to clear the room as soon as possible. When I asked her if she had another room ready for us, she said she was all booked. What a bummer! I went to check on the two other hotels we tried last night and they were also booked for that night. We had a few other hotels in the area recommended to us so decided to try them out and if they were unavailable we would ride to Arenal.

On the way out the keeper girl told me they bought a new faucet to fix the pipe and I owed $20 for it. Can’t get out of paying for that one, clumsy bee.

We tried the one recommended hotel, but it seemed empty and too far from the beach.

The other place was a lot more livelier, catering to the surfing community, so despite an awfully high price (the highest we have payed yet for a hotel), we decided to stay there for one more night, do bike maintenance, and have a nice dinner at a restaurant on the beach.

We were definitely glad we stayed, as the bike maintenance revealed a few problems that we had to deal with immediately. (See Matt’s earlier post)

After spending a few hours working on the bikes, we cooled off in the pool and it was time to take our sunset walk along the beach to La Luna restaurant that was about 30 minute beach walk away.

The sunset was not too impressive because of the cloudy sky, but it was amusing to see tens of the surfers floating in the water waiting to catch the wave.

We very much enjoyed our special dinner on the veranda overlooking the ocean. We made our way back to the hotel walking in the dark on the beach, gazing at occasional stars slipping through the invisible clouds in the night sky. After a bit of stress in the afternoon the day turned out to work out perfectly.