Well I just arrived back to my little place in the city after a wonderful weekend at the beach. Another weekend of firsts. For the first trip away from the city on our own we decided to not go too far away. The pacific coast is only about 2 hours away from Heredia. Two hours makes quite the difference.

Being in the beach town was more of what I expected Costa Rica to be. Totally laid back and friendly. It did help however that most people there spoke English so it wasn't so challenging to figure things out. Also made us much more comfortable.

We arrived in Jaco (pronounced like hawk-o) at about 4 on Friday afternoon and after dumping our backpacks at the hotel went straight for the beach. Jaco beach is known to be one of the ugliest beaches in Costa Rica. If this is true then I'm in for some pretty amazing beaches. I really can't wait. After spending about 45 minutes at the beach it was starting to get dark so we decided to find a place for dinner. We found a little bar that served pretty traditional Tico food, it was really very good. We went out for a few drinks afterwards but overall went home early because we were so excited about the next day.

Yesterday we rented surf boards from a local place, super cheap, and decided we would teach ourselves to surf. It went a lot better than we thought. Within a few minutes of getting beat up by the ocean I got up on the surf board, at least to my knees. We were out in the ocean for about an hour and a half and I got up to a standing postion a couple of times. Being high tide the ocean was pretty rough and wore us out pretty good so we decided to take a break. We found an awesome fruit stand that made the most amazing smoothies and had coconut water straight out of the coconut. Coconut water is MUCH better than coconut milk. After our break we decided to go back out, the water had gotten even more roungh and we took a good beating so we decided that was about it for the day. It was about time for the storm to hit anyway.

And did it hit! That was the most insane storm I've seen here yet. Thunder that rocked the walls of our hotel and the most beautiful lightning, it turned the sky pink! So pretty and makes me feel just a little more at home. The rain however comes down 5x harder than my shower so we had to run for cover. It was a perfect time for a nap.

This morning we gave surfing an early morning try before we had to return the boards. We had a good time because the ocean was so much calmer. But it was much harder to catch a wave big enough to take. Also us being the wimps we are we couldn't really make it out deep enough to catch the waves when they had the most power.

Overall the weekend was amazing. The sun and the ocean are exactly what I wanted from Costa Rica and can't wait to travel to the other beaches to see what we can find. And I definitely got some good color!