Alright, so this weekend was definitely one filled more with tourist stuff than posing as a local. It was great though. It started with the bus system, which I am now slowly getting a solid grasp on. The system is very reliable and efficient, but there is a lot of jumping around and being prepared with scheludes, routes, and open seating (verses standing). And to give you an idea, we rode in a school bus for part of the ride, an old shuttle bus with brown, leather seats, and then a bus with an inside that resembled an airplane in first class. So accross the board. And actually, on the bus ride over, we met two guys from Chicago that were going to Samara for a 10 day Vacation. They were cool guys and ended up hanging out with them a lot during the weekend (They´re actually gonna come back through Atenas and visit this weekend for another festival taking place.) Samara Beach (Playa Samara) is about a 6 hr bus ride from Atenas. We were told the town is one that contains everything you would like in a beach, but without the crowds. And when we got there, that seemed pretty accurate. Our hotel was about a mile off the shoreline, but we could still see the water from our room (on the 2nd floor). There weren´t the high rise hotels on the beachside or resort-like landscapings next to the hotels. Our hotel room consisted of four beds and a kitchen, all in this main room, basically a studio, and than a bathroom. Fortunately, none of us cared that all four of us (Kelly, Susan, Leslie, and I) were sleeping in the same room. (kudos to me by the way! :) ) Kelly was awesome and actually cooked us breakfast every morning in our room, which was awesome being that the mornings were a little rough anyway after a full day of sun and beer. And yes, I got sunburnt again. You´d think I´d have figured it out by now. The days for me were spent mostly surfing. The water temperature, according to my book, was between 77-87 degrees. Awesome! The waves were perfect in size too...small enough to be able to ride it, but big enough to make me THINK I was doing something spectacular! Think being the key word there. The second day was surfing mixed in with a little kayaking tour to an island which offered decent snorkeling (nothing spectacular). For four hours, food, water, snorkeling equipment, and kayaking. I found a fish that looks a lot like Sharkbait from Finding Nemo by the way. (I´m so cool sometimes) The first night we hit a little bar/restaurant on the beach. We met our two friends from the bus, Jason and Brentan. Turns out Jason transplants eyeballs for a living, which turned out to be a VERY interesting conversation. Brentan I belive is a financial consultant for a company. The second night turned out to a spectacle!! The snorkeling guide earlier in the day had mentioned that there was a bar where the Ticos (what the Costa Ricans´ call themselves) go late at night. He said "Tootie-Frootie" and I instantly thought gay strip-joint. Being a guide, he´s probably got a routine of pranking tall, goofy lookin foreigners into visiting the gay bar, and then laughing about it all week. But it actually turned out to be a really fun bar. When we walked in, it was definitely a local spot, with people dancing to Salsa or Marenga (sp?). I´ll just say that for the first part of the night, we just were there to make everybody else´s dancing look really good. But part way through the night, a group of friends pulled all of us over to where they were dancing. So the 6 of us and this group get into a circle and do ridiculous dancing. Or that´s what I´ll call it anyway. We broke out the Fish-hook, the Matador-laso, the Sprinkler of course, the Riverdance, and the C-walk (or a bad white-guy impression of it anyway). I just keep imagining what it must have looked like with everyone in the bar doing some coordinated dance, and then us, doing that!The last night was superbowl night..WHAT THE!!! That was insane!! Go Giants I guess. Anyway, we were at an outside bar watching the second half of that game with pretty much anyone and everyone in Samara who wasn´t local. This included many French-Canadians, having had many drinks! But yea, they certainly added to the experience! From there, we checked out another bar, this time on the beach. We soon met this funny guy, a tall Canadian (who also used the universal "-a" a lot) . He had cornrows, which he called cornholes, and had a "yea, man" approach to everything. But talking with him, and found out that all he really does is goes to Cuba, buys the nicest cigars on the market, returns to British Columbia, and sells them. And them vacations elsewhere in-between. Ohhh who ya meet! On the way home, which was incredibly painful caring a backpack over sun-blistering shoulders, we designated awards to the four of us. Leslie got the Surfing Award because she went for her first time, and got up. Susan got the Clumsy Award because she had 3 different encounters with Mr. Clumsy in a 3 day period. She would be walking, straight and on the sidewalk and then WHOOP...fell and scrapped herself. On the island we snorkeled at, she got pushed up onto shore by a wave, again, scrapping herself pretty hard. (Dont worry, she took it well...everytime) Kelly got the Cooking Award because every morning she was on it!!! And for a tiny hotel kitchen, she did a hell of a job!! And myself...I got the Dumbass Award. Throughout the weekend, I would get so frustrated and tired of Spanish, English, English, Spanish...I would start to mix them together. Hearing and speaking modified Spanish, if you will. So we were walking down the one main street and I stopped at a vendor´s display and was looking at some necklace...why I have no idea. He said something to me, as I was realizing I had no energy to try and translate anything about anything...so, I just said laughing to myself, "Hey sorry man. No hablo Espanol." He responded with, "No. That was in English!" I now think he said that the necklace was made from coconut. We all got a good laugh out of that, and so...I take home the Dumbass Award with honor. The six of us made quite an impression on the nice little town of Samara over a three day period. Surely a success!!