So here I am on the beautiful patio of the little hotel that I am staying at. I get to overlook the ocean (Playa Pelada) while sipping my coffee in the cool morning air. I'm a hater of the dead heat, so lucky for me this place only gets uncomfortably hot for a few hours in the middle of the day. From 6 am when the birds wake you up until around 11:30 in the morning moves from cool to warm. Noon to 2:30 or so is dead hot, time for a meal and siesta, then after 3 it becomes downright pleasant again. The secret is not to overheat in the hot hot times, time the walking around correctly so as to not get gross.
The bugs in this area are incredible, grasshoppers that are 5 inches long, huge lumbering beetles, and this morning I saw a praying mantis eating the head off of a bug that looks like a leaf.
I am staying at a lovely little hotel here whose hotelress is an expat american. She has been absolutely lovely. On my first day here she dragged me along with her to find groceries (we have access to use the kitchen), and check out the town. That evening she drove myself and another guest out to Playa (means beach) Ostional to see the turtles. Olive riddley turtles come into the beach by the hundreds, sometimes by the thousands, to lay their eggs in the evenings. Alexa (the lovely hotel lady) said that they come in according to the moon, and she has seen them in the thousands, just hanging out in the surf for a few days, waiting for the moon to pull them in the right way and tell them it's time to lay their eggs. It was so incredibly amazing.
To prevent total egg poaching, the government allows each local family to gather 200 eggs for sale. Their theory is that the waves of turtles coming in means that some of the later animals dig up some of the earlier animals nests wrecking the eggs anyways. Keeping some eggs on the market legally keeps the black market trade down as well. I don't know if these efforts work at all or not, but it was so sad to see these turtles labouring to get up to the beach, working so hard to dig deep nests with their back flippers, laying their hundreds of eggs, covering up the nests, and making their way back to the ocean, only to have their nests raided a few moments afterwards.
The town that I am in Nosara, has 2 beaches that run for a total of about 5 kilometers. In the mornings I've been heading down the hill that the hotel is on, walking up the 2 beaches to get to the main little town. The town has small grocery stores, restaurants, realestate places a furniture shop etc etc. The roads are dusty but as soon as you step behind some greenery, the dust isn't so bad. All stores, restaurants etc have a thick bit of greenery surrounding them to keep the dust out.
One of the beaches here names Guiones is a main surfing spot. Yesterday the surf was incredibly high so was lots of fun to watch those adept as catching the waves. So far I haven't gone out for a lesson. I have too many days booked up with meetings and such so think that I will wait until I head down further south to get into the water for some surfboard embarassment.
I hope that everyone is doing well and staying warm!
Erin
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