Cafe Tico is one of the places that I totally associate with Costa Rica and Tamarindo. It's run by Eluisa, the nice of Claudio (the diving teacher), and part of "little Italy" here in Tamarindo. After I've found it, I went there every morning for breakfast between 7 and 8, because they (1) serve seriously the best coffee in the world (really fresh Costa Rican coffee brewed with a top italian machine), (2) I can practice a little bit of spanish here every morning,...

Managed to get a private 4-hour course with Alba (the best! see pic), and that turned out to be really efficient. I get kind of used to speaking spanish. I'm still missing many words, but one can explain almost everything using the 10 most common verbs and guessing nouns by taking the word in your favorite language (english or german), and adding an "o". So during the week, I have explained to Alba how the german federal system works, the basics of diving, the co...

Today's surfing was suboptimal. The first wave that I took was really nice, but shortly after, I underestimated a wave while going out, it caught the board and hit it over my head. Since I was bleeding, I went out and asked the surfer dudes if it's bad, and they told me no, I don't need to do anything. So anyway, I went to the pharmacy to get something stopping the bleeding and they actually told me I need to get it stitched by the doctor. The nearest doctor is ...

I decided to go for an exploration scuba dive with Claudio, who owns the Agua Rica, a diving shop near Wayra. We start on Friday 18/01, when I first watch a introductory video and then go to a hotel pool with Claudio where we practice the most important techniques - clearing a water-filled mask and recovering a lost regulator (the regulator is the thing you breath with). Next we practice "neutral buoyance" (that means swimming weighless, i.e. neither sinking nor ...

This week I took two surf classes. The first one wasn't too bad, at least we learned the basics of getting up (at least one version of it, apparently everyone is doing it differently), and managed to surf a few seconds on a white wave. The second surf lesson was useless, because the teacher just told me the same stuff again, and spend the rest of the time with chatting up random chicks. So I rented a board for one week. The first time on my own I though this is ...