Turkish Delight

The name of the beach we went on holiday to was "Mal Pais" or "Bad Country"...however, it was quite the contrary. It was quite breathtaking, so I've entitled this post as Turkish Delight simply because it seems more palatable, though we didn't find anything Turkish there. Israeli food was abundant for some unknown reason other than perhaps they particularly like to live in dusty, expensive surf towns...who knows?

This beach was absolutely lovely with white sands, sunsets that could kill a man and surfers that didn't care if they punctured your esophagus (well, I'm sure they'd feel a little bad...there were so many of them--one of them must have a conscience!) The tides were so strong, you had to be on your guard even in a few feet of water, but running on the shore was a daily treat. There was certainly a "LOST"...that series on TV for those of you who don't recognize the media reference :)...because on one side you have a huge jungle and then beach; no shops, no houses, nothing. You have to hike to get back inland to "civilization."

As for the brave act of surfing...that was fun and hard work to learn. We traded those in for boogie boards the day a local surfer died due to all of the rocks and intense waves. We took this picture inside our hotel because we didn't dare take our camera to the beach! Even locals hide their flip flops under leaves...anything left even hidden at the beach--consider it stolen.

So, to sum it up: it was a great get-away for a couple of locals like us. The only down side was how dusty it was...a very rustic beach town, you had to wear either a scarf or some locals actually wore those little white masks you use when working with dry wall. Don't worry, the jungle clears up your lungs afterwards. A great way to spend a week in "Rich Coast." (If we were rich, we'd probably opt to stay at one of those lavish resorts, rather than in ant infested one we got a "bargain" for, but puhleez, who does that anyway?) And yes, we did move to 2 other rooms during our stay of 4 nights in that hotel. Hurray for rock-hard bodied, brain-less surfers.

To the left is Kyle posing in front of what we named the "Iguana Tree" It was covered in huge iguanas, probably because they camouflaged well with the 1 1/2 long thorns the protruded from the tree's surface--definitely not a good tree for forts or climbing.

One side note for those of you that may feel so inclined to go here...everything closes at dinner time for a few hours so that all the surfers can go watch the sunset, then jobs resume as usual (this is why most of our pictures are being taken at sunset).

"Tuanis" is Costa Rican for "cool"...and it was rather "cool" to say the least!


Stay tuned for The Nel Casbah's following adventure: the Keali & Andrew Matrimony