Author: Sarah Northway

Monty
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Today was a very doggy day. As soon as I opened ‘the wall’: our front doors which make up a full 1/6th of our hexagon shaped house, our neighbor Larry’s dogs came over to greet us. Nearly as soon as they left, a trio of dogs I’d never seen before took over the deck. One of the females looked suspiciously similar to the puppies we’ve seen hanging out at the bar. They were probably strays although it’s hard to know here, and they were friendly and healthy and content to lie at our feet in the morning sun. Larry and I hatched a plan to adopt one of them while we’re here and get her spayed before we go.

Later in the afternoon the half owned, half stray pack from the next cove over crossed the river and caused a ruckus with the local dogs. We only worry if they go after the iguanas, who are cat sized dinosaurs with a tendency to fall off the roof and surprise us. The biggest, which Colin nicknamed ‘Monty’ (pictured here), comes out to bathe himself in the sprinklers at midday while all the dogs are sleeping.

We haven’t seen a howler monkey yet but today we found tracks by a stream, and of course we can hear them in the hills every morning and evening – I can hear them now like the roar of distant lions. One morning we had scarlet macaws in our yard pulling huge bean pods out of the trees. They used to be common here but disappeared in the 80’s during a time of local development. They’re coming back now with the help of a raise and release program in Tambor.

This place is a birder’s paradise, but so far I’ve only identified the macaws and the long tailed grackle which is basically a crow with an expanded vocabulary. There are lots of green parrots and yellow birds with squawky voices, hummingbirds and seabirds. The pelicans are fascinating, how they so clumsily dive into the water and bob up, then float about for a minute trying to swallow their fish.

Yesterday we watched people come to take the coconuts from our neighbor’s yard. One guy climbed up barefoot then a machete was passed up to him on a rope. He tied ropes to big bunches and they lowered them down slowly so they wouldn’t crack. Huge fronds were sent crashing down with a well aimed chop from the machete and a shout of either warning or joy, I wasn’t sure. In the end they had too many coconuts to take away so Colin grabbed some, borrowed a machete and started practicing his coconut opening techniques.

Sometimes, in the middle of the day or night, a coconut will fall off one of our trees and land with a loud and recognizable thud. We hurry out to see if it is a tasty liquid filled brown one, or one of the sad aborted green ones which usually split on impact. I know they’re not great for you but the allure of eating something from our own yard is pretty strong.

Sunny and Happy
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

My game Rebuild went up on Kongregate, Newgrounds and the general public last weekend, and rocketed to the top of the charts. I expected a decent turnout since there aren’t a lot of Flash games like it, but I’m genuinely surprised at the number of people who have stayed up all night playing it, trying to get all four endings in one day. They aren’t turned off by all the reading either, which was my biggest fear. So many players are posting their suggestions for a sequel that I guess I’ll have to make one after I finish my next game. I have a suspicion Word Up Dog is going to disappoint my fans, having no zombies or visceral stories of life after the apocalypse. I suppose it could be post-apocalyptic, in some future where mutated animals find a collection of early 90’s hiphop albums and base their culture on them.

It’s going to be great.

Pochote’s been treating us very well this last week. We’ve made friends with our neighbours Larry and Angie and their three dogs. We took a trip with them to the next cove over and spent a beautiful day on the secluded little beach, swimming and exploring and getting rather too much sun as usual. Larry’s been in the area for several years and has lots of advice for other fun things to do nearby.

Our neighbour on the other side is actually a sleepy little bar/restaurant run by expat Canadians. We head over there every second night to watch the sunset and have some fabulous roasted chicken from their big clay ovens. They just opened it a few months ago and so far it has a very quiet and chill atmosphere, lots of families and some nights with nobody there but us.

On the same property the owners also run the free Harmony Music School for local kids, which they started out of their own pockets but the government has finally recognized and begun to fund. They are part of a volunteer program where people come to teach in exchange for accomodation. Pochote is a very small fishing village with few extracurricular activities for kids besides “futball”, so this school is a big deal for the area and is making a real impact. A number of their students have gone on to play for the national symphony orchestra.

A couple days ago we walked with Don (a founder of the music school) all the way down the beach, past Tambor and another fishing village out to a place called the Jesus Tree. This was a spectacular little beach with one lone tree inexplicably growing out of the rocks in the ocean where no tree should be. High tide stopped us from going farther, but Don regularly walks all the way to Montezuma along this coastal path, about a 5 hour walk. And he does it without bringing water; just shorts and flipflops and an early morning start.

I’m getting opportunities to practice my clumsy Spanish and to cook with unusual ingredients, and we are both working hard. During our daily beach walks and dips in the ocean we talk about game design. At 5:30 we take in the sunset on a beach log or at the (still nameless) bar next door. We rise and sleep with the sun here, it just seems to make sense that way.

To houses on the beach!
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

I forgot to mention, I’ve been cooking again! I look forward to making dinner every day and spend my idle time looking up recipes and finding uses for local ingredients. I finally bought some achiote paste, which is a popular spice slash food colouring, so I’m going to see what I can do with it. Last week I made a seafood pasta salad for a small potluck dinner, a recipe of my own creation and one of my first times cooking for other people. It turned out really well! I did a trial run a few days before then made adjustments (green plantains need to boil for MUCH longer than yellow ones!). This week I cooked us a rather delicious Brazilian fish stew which was exciting because you don’t put any liquid into it, just tomatoes and other veggies which provide the juice, then you layer the seafood and herbs on top and those get steam cooked.

As in Honduras, the seafood came right to our door at Casa Coba. A friendly guy in a pickup truck came by a couple times a week with camarones (shrimp) and a few fillets of whatever was caught that day. On his last visit he brought beautiful yellow-finned tuna which we ate as sashimi the first night (tasty!), then lightly seared with wasabi lime-mayo (mmmmm), then cooked in a honey-chili sauce (kind of weird, but good on a salad).

We also picked bananas, basil, chilies and unripe mangoes from the garden at Casa Coba. Colin made excellent banana milkshakes every morning which were a wonderful start to our days. I shredded the mangoes and mixed them with lettuce and red peppers for my daily lunch. They were sweet and citrusy so I topped it with a little olive oil and soy sauce, which sounds weird but it worked.

We mainly shopped at the Pali grocery, the first chain grocery which just opened in Samara: it’s big, it’s cheap, it doesn’t have a lot of things but has many brands of those few things. They have 5 types of canned tuna with peas, 5 types of lime-flavoured mayonnaise, 5 types of powdered chicken stock, 5 types of bologna sausage, and 5 types of dried black beans. But if you want, say, beef stock or plain mayo or pinto beans, you are out of luck. We had some laughs about it, and cooked using what they did have. Happily Samara also has a smaller grocery which takes the opposite approach and has one of everything. Fancy things like oregano, brown rice and chocolate, mostly imported from Spain at inflated prices, but sooo worth it (I am thinking of the chocolate).

Hmm, I am obviously hungry as I write this. Must be time to try out the popular local restaurant in Pochote: Momo’s. brb.

…

Momo’s food was very good! The shrimp was fresh and tasty and reminded me of Thailand, and they have a peaceful atmosphere on the edge of the river where we listened to howler monkeys and watched birds diving for insects. Unfortunately the menus are priceless and I think they gave us the gringo prices, which is not a system I’m fond of but whatever. On the way back we noticed a two table restaurant out of someone’s home which we are definitely going to visit. Also a home selling fish and lobster from a collapsing shack around back, which we will work up the courage to approach. Pochote is a fishing village after all, and the mangroves and riverbanks here are filled with fishing boats.

I should talk more about our new casa for the next two months! It’s totally beautiful and built entirely of wood. We think the hexagonal shape makes it feel like a ship on the inside; it even has kind of a mast in the centre. We’re sleeping and living in the big room downstairs, then there’s a steep kind of ladder/staircase up to the big loft with two more beds and an extra bathroom. And a/c and hot water to boot – such luxury! Enormous doors open away onto a superb deck; hammock-lined and breezy, it’s definitely where we’ll be spending our time. The house is set back on a big treed lot right on the ocean, at the very very tip of the 8km long beach with Tambor at the other end. We went for a swim earlier and declared the beach wonderful, with even the ocassional body-surfable wave.

We’re sitting out on the deck now listening to the gentle waves and the crickets and the other wildlife. The yard is filled with crab grass and crab holes but so far we’ve only seen an iguana and some big toads, which Colin is chasing around right now trying to get pictures of. We’re going to meet the house manager tomorrow and get the low down on the area. Then for a long walk on our nearly deserted, beautiful soft sanded beach. What a life!

Hard at hammock-work
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Our last week in Playa Samara has gone by too quickly, spent in the hammock and in the ocean, and working on our games. Colin cracked one of his ribs the day after my last post, so unfortunately (for Colin anyway, who is very upset about this) surfing has been cancelled until further notice. We’ve still been out in the water several times a day and Colin’s discovered he now has incredible skill at body surfing despite the very painful rib.

Colin has totally fallen in love with Samara and almost convinced me to stay at Casa Coba for another month instead of moving on to the house we’ve already rented in Playa Tambor. I guess it was the rib that changed his mind; that’s going to take awhile to heal and Samara’s main appeal for him is the surfing. But don’t get me wrong, I love the place too for different reasons. The beach is 5km of nice soft sand and gentle slope, fabulous just for walking or swimming. There’s a reef you can snorkel around, lots of trees and nature nearby. The town is the perfect size, small but big enough to have a pharmacy, hardware store, bank and chain grocery. It’s a tourist town, but pretty quiet except on the weekends, and this is the busiest time of year. There are a couple bars that have live music but it is a chill scene and most nights the town seems to fall asleep by 9:00 (we do, anyway). Mostly foreign tourists come to surf and attend the language school, and on weekends Ticos bring their families to camp or stay in their summer houses.

We took a long walk today and looked at those summer houses, which line the beach and for the most part look abandoned, and with luck available to rent. We’re already doing research for our next visit back. Colin really, really enjoys surfing, and from what I can guess he’d happily surf every day for the rest of his life, so this is our new travel priority. I… well… you can stop saying “you’ll never know until you try it” now.

When we return, I’m looking forward to taking one of the gruelling courses at the local Spanish school, because I haven’t been too successful learning on my own. I can read Spanish pretty reliably which seems like magic since I’ve never tried to do it before. It’s because a lot of the vocabulary resembles French so it’s easy to recognize and piece things together from context. Linguistics is fun! But speaking is a different matter – I’m so shy!

An example: We shop at a bakery with a seating area, and every time they ask us if we want our empanadas to go, which is “para llevar”. Kind of like “par lever” in French, right? Well I know that’s what they’re saying and it should sound something like “yeh-var”, but that’s not what I hear, and I can’t repeat it the way they pronounce it. So I kind of mumble and give the thumb-out-the-door gesture, which unfortunately doesn’t work because the seating area is that way too. Every time! Anyway, I think proper motivation is in order: eight hours a day in a classroom where they refuse to talk to you in anything but Spanish.

Tomorrow is our last day here and it will be a snorkelling day, albeit a lightweight one for the sake of sore ribs. Then it’s off to the great unknown of Playa Tambor, which I hope we enjoy too although I know for Colin it will be hard to compare to Samara.

Night surfing
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Today I (Sarah) hit surfing rock bottom. Or at least, I had the worst surfing day so far, and oh how I hope this is as bad as it gets. The high tide has been getting deeper and deeper and the waves have been getting bigger, faster and more powerful since we arrived. Four days ago I swapped down from a 10′ to a 7’10 board which is much easier to navigate through oncoming waves but also much harder to surf on. An interesting tradeoff in these high tides which hit me like a punch in the chest on the way out, and a tumble in a giant washing machine on the way in. I’m covered in bruises and cuts from my encounters inside said washing machine with one large plastic plank and its three sharp fins, so the smaller the plank the better.

On the same day I changed boards we started catching real waves, which for me provides an unpleasant mix of boredom and terror. These waves are not big in terms of real surfing; five or six feet at most, but I am easily frightened by this kind of stuff. Seriously. I am petrified by heights. I stopped driving because I get panic attacks behind the wheel. Riding a bike in traffic or even down a fucking hill scares the shit out of me. I am a terrified, pathetic little piece of shit who quivers at the thought of cruising along a six foot wave on a surboard. So why the fuck am I learning to surf? Beats me.

Oh right, Colin.

Colin of course is incapable of fear when it comes to such mundane things as speed or height, and he can’t imagine (or believe) that it frightens me. True, he gets annoyed and exhausted when he gets thrashed by a wave, but never scared. Today he caught a rogue wave, one of the biggest we’ve ever seen and well over his head, and he cruised right down it like it was nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, since he was too busy thinking “holy shit I’m actually riding this thing” to turn and surf along it. But it was spectacular nonetheless!

As for me, I went out with the usual butterflies in my stomach, fought my way through a nasty incoming set to get out in position, tried to catch a couple waves and missed them (too slow), then tried a third (too fast) and got tumbled. Heels over head over heels over head, surfboard behind me then above me then in front of me, bonking me on the head on the way through then pulling me underwater by my ankle. Water up my nose, down my throat, in my sinuses, then I’m plugging my nose with one hand and trying to cover my head with the other while curling into a ball. This is the usual drill, it happens several times a day to both of us because we still suck at timing waves. But for whatever reason that first tumble today just did me in. I headed back out but I couldn’t stop shaking, I couldn’t calm down and stop being scared. I paddled way out and tried to focus on just sitting on my board (I still lose balance and fall off occasionally) and watching the pelicans. But I couldn’t stop shaking and the thought of turning around and giving it another go made me cringe and moan. Since we switched to smaller boards and bigger waves I haven’t stood up on mine for more than a second, and I was starting to suspect it was fear that made me bail as soon as the going got tough on steep waves. So this was my surfing fail. I spent the next hour trying to steel myself to surf again then collapsing and crying, while Colin bravely got his ass kicked (with occasional triumphs) by wave after mean fucking wave.

Let me tell you I needed a drink after that experience, so we showered off and had dinner at El Ancla on the beach. We watched the better surfers with their shortboards surfing in the last few rays of the sun. The big afternoon waves made today particularly good surfing for locals. We’re planning to go out again tomorrow morning in the waning tide, so the waves will be getting smaller rather than larger. We’ve passed the highest tide for the month so it will gradually go back to the wimpy baby waves I feel more comfortable with. Until then, Sarah mo ganbatte ne!

Oh yeah, we’re watching anime at nights; Macross of all things.