Saturday March 15, 2014
We slept in til 8 or so and woke up to a beautiful sunny morning. We went back down to the beach first thing. We boogie boarded and played on the beach til 11, and Chad took a kayak out. Back up to our room to get changed, and we went across the street to Cafe Milagro for an early lunch. Chad stopped at the bank to try to get some cash and our bank problems continued – he was only able to withdraw $60 at a time from either his bank card or credit card, or either one of mine. Then they all said we had hit our daily limit, which was nonsense – our daily limits are in the thousands! This was getting frustrating.
The kids and I ordered and ate and Chad ran in at the last minute after having spent most of our allotted lunch time waiting in line at the bank to speak to a teller, to no avail. We went back to Tulemar and got ready for our surfing lesson. I knew very little about what to expect from our lesson since Chad arranged it through the hotel and did not have many details. All I knew was that it was at the public beach, and I questioned whether to bring my camera gear as I’d heard the public beach is subject to a lot of petty theft.
Dante from Dante’s Water Sports picked us up at 1:30 and drove us to the beach. I asked him if it was OK to bring my gear along and he said yes, so I did bring it. We were set up with lounge chairs and umbrellas, and given rash guards to wear, and the instructors (3 of them to the 8 of us students) gave us a lesson on land. Then they took turns taking us out in the water one-on-one to give it a go. Dante hung back around our chairs, watching everyone’s stuff and taking pictures, which he later emailed to us. (Had I known he would be taking such great pictures, I might have decided not to bring my camera gear after all, but I also had nothing to worry about with him watching our things, so it all worked out.)
Mallory participated in the land lesson, but said she did not want to go in the water, and she entertained herself quite happily splashing in the small waves on the shore. In her defense, the water on the public beach was a lot rougher than the water on the Tulemar beach or the Manuel Antonio park beach. Liam however was excited to take his lesson and although he wiped out several times along the way – he did AMAZING and caught on better than anyone else. He rode several waves right in to shore and the instructor took him out further and further. Liam went for three ‘sets’ of maybe 8-10 waves each. He couldn’t get enough.
Chad went out and on his first run he wiped out and hit his head pretty hard on the bottom – his neck is still quite sore, but we are thankful he is still walking! He finished his set and the guys gave him some ice, but that was the end of his time in the water. I went out for a set also and just barely managed to stand up on the board – I don’t know how Liam made it look so easy. The guys cut up some fresh fruit for us and had water on hand also. We also bought the kids the snow cones with condensed milk from a beach vendor. Whether we were surfing or not, being on the public beach was a really fun way to spend the afternoon – lots of people watching to be done.
At one point there was an argument between Dante and a Tico couple sitting on lounges beside us, and a volleyball game that started up next to that. We think it had something to do with space on the beach, because it all started when the volleyball guys strung out the ropes to mark out their court. Two police officers were called in to help settle it. In the end, the Ticos wound up moving their chairs to make room for the volleyball – I think Dante was successful in establishing his turf! And of course, this being a Costa Rican beach, there were white faced monkeys running around, too.
When we were done surfing, Dante drove us back to our hotel. Originally we were supposed to pay him cash, but when we had our banking troubles, the concierge at Tulemar put a call into him to arrange for us to pay by credit card. However, Dante asked us again if we could pay cash. We explained that we did not have it on hand, but he was not concerned, saying we could leave it with the Tulemar office staff and he would pick it up later. He also waived the fee for Mallory, which I thought was pretty awesome of him because she did take up a spot, take the lesson on land, take up one of his chairs, etc. Back in the room, the kids and I cleaned up (Mallory fell asleep) and Chad went back to the bank again, cobbling together some $ through multiple transactions. I should say here that luckily there are two banks within close walking distance of Tulemar, which made a bad situation somewhat better, but both bank machines did give us the same problem. I can’t remember if it was this day or the next, but in addition to our bank cards not wanting to give us more than $60 apiece, we also then had the issue of both of our credit cards then being stopped by our home bank because they were flagged for fraud – even though we had both contacted the bank before leaving on our trip to inform them of our travel plans! Good grief. (Originally we’d thought if we were having trouble with straightforward withdrawals, we could take a cash advance on a credit card, then get online to make a payment to the card to ensure we weren’t being hit with high interest charges.) At least we were able to call the 24 hour number on the back of the credit card and get that straightened out fairly quickly. The debit cards did not have a number on the back – something we’d failed to check on before we left, and because it’s a rather small credit union that we bank through, they may not have had 24 hour service anyway. (The credit cards are through a different, much larger bank.)
Anyway, we left for dinner after the sun set, walking down to El Wagon. After dinner we came straight back to the room and the kids wrote in their journals until bed. After all the sun and fresh air, it was another relatively early night.
Cook Family Travels 