There's an obvious but unavoidable downside to visiting a country during the rainy season: it rains. A lot. As all us English types know this isn't the worst thing in the world because it generally goes down the drains and off into the sea or something, and we like to have a bit of a moan about the weather anyway. Unfortunately this doesn't happen in Central America. In Central America it hangs about in the street turning into a big muddy mess and causing no end of trouble. This is how we found Tamarindo when we rocked up to visit Costa Rica's sunshine coast. Fortunately for us Tamarindo is the perfect beach for our modest (read: awful) level of surfing ability and so the rain doesn't matter. The crocodiles at the far end of the beach also make it quite exciting! Of course walking anywhere around town is a mission but I guess that's all part of the charm. Still if it carries on like this we won't have tans left to make everyone jealous when we get home, sigh...