Tasty Waves

We had a bit of a lie in today after the exertions of the day before and ended up rising at about 10ish. We took a gentle stroll into town to buy our bus tickets for the next day back to San Jose and to find something for dinner that night. We came across a little fruit & veg shop tucked away in a corner and managed to buy an onion, a pepper, a large mango, a huge tomato as big as my 2 fists and some cheese croissant type things to eat on the bus tomorrow, all for just under £3!! Shame we hadnt found this place sooner as the supermarket type shops are much more expensive! From here we wandered back to the hostel where we ate the mango for lunch...it wasnt until after I had massacred it that a guy showed me the proper way to prepare a mango...oh well, it still tasted good!

We decided to chill out on the beach for the est of the afternoon and stayed in the warm water watching the fish for ages, as we headed back we took one last look at a kind of hole in the reef about 3x2m in size and maybe 2-3m deep, I'd have loved to jump in but was unsure if there was an outlet we couldnt see that may have sucked us through as the rip tides around here can be quite dangerous, plus there were lots of spiny black urchins all around and I didnt fancy sitting on one of those when I tried to get back out!! So we contented ourselves watching the vivid blue fish darting about before heading in to the hostel for a final cold shower. As I was packing my bag ready for the next day the guy in the hammock next to me came in and as we had only seen each other asleep (we keep different hours!) we had a chat and he gave us some advice about Cuba as he'd been there before. He also invited us to join in a game of beer pong later that evening with some other people staying at the hostel. We lazed around for a while before getting dinner ready, after which we went over to see how the beer pong was progressing. For a drinking game there seemed to be quite a few rules and we found it amusing how seriously some of the guys took it giving different names to configurations of cups and techniques they preffered. I joined in one game with Paul ( the guy we spoke to earlier) and certainly held up my side of the team even though we lost to 2 german girls in the end. The game caried on until about 11 when the beer ran out and we all thought it would be a good idea to go to a party that was advertised down the road at another hostel, before this however, J, the owner of the hostel took us on a tour of his amazing house which is kind of Robinson Crusoe like as its among the trees, looks out over the beach and has a retractable roof so you can see the stars at night or more importantly have a BBQ inside! He then took us to his latest project (he's been building and expanding the hostel for 10 years!) The Ark!! It is basically several large lorry containers stacked up and joined together which you climb into, at the end is his recording studio complete with instruments, microphones etc etc and fully soundproofed. Quite impressive and after a half hour or so of jamming and trying to remember what I used to be able to play on the guitar and one of the german girls singing (really good) we called it a night...the place was becoming a little too pungent as J and his mate sat smoking weed in the room next to us! From here we went to the party at a little bar called Tasty Waves that apparently serves the best fish tacos in the carribean...we didnt get to find out as we'd spent our budget for the day and couldnt even get a beer! On the way we saw a sloth up in a very tall tree and stood looking at it in the middle of the road until a car came and beeped us all to move. When we got there there was no salsa but we did however get to dance with the group of friends we'd made at Rocking J's and watch some very impressive limbo by some of the locals! When eventually a shakira song was played we got to show off our salsa skills that they had all been nagging us to dance and were rewarded by applause and handshakes all round! The rest of the night was the usual mix of old club music and a bit of merengue and we left at about 1.30 as we had to get up for the bus the next day.