Day 7

Samara is a very picturesque village, but there is not much going on there. So for our day off I had planned a walk on the beach and through the village in the morning and some down time with reading material and the occasional sudoku next to the pool during the hottest part of the day. That may sound a bit boring, but I generally don’t get to do a whole lot of reading, so getting to do what you like during your vacation is pretty darn good as well.
I did not get up early enough to make it for that early morning walk, so I went for breakfast instead. Like all places this consisted of fresh fruit juice and an predominantly American diet. The Americans have bought a lot of property in Costa Rica and have left a pretty large mark on the country – too large for my taste – making its authenticity fade. In addition to food resembling American cuisine (I use that term loosely here), service in restaurants, roads, shops and supermarkets, tv stations and commercial signs, the concrete trails in some of the national parks… all reminded me of the US. There were however two aspects where American influence, although destroying authenticity were a good (or at least convenient) thing in my opinion. One thing was money; in addition to colones, dollars were accepted everywhere and could even be obtained from ATMs. So instead of being stuck with some leftover coins and bills that I will most likely not use anytime soon, I have dollars left over that can be used on other future trips. The other was sanitation. I get that authenticity may come with sanitary situations that not fully meet my preferences, and I am willing to accept that if I have to. I do however get very happy if there is no need for such acceptance, which was the case throughout the entire trip. Also, the water from all tabs was drinkable (I drank it the entire vacation without any problem), while NOT tasting like the swimming pool water that comes out of American tabs.
After breakfast I made it to the poolside for some leisure time, but around 3, I felt like I did need to take that walk, otherwise I would not have seen anything of the surroundings. As I left mother and son were walking out as well, but only the son was going for a walk, so we walked together. I don’t know whether it was him being even paler than I am, his pulled up socks in his sandals, my overheated look (3 pm was still too hot), or a combination of those, but for some reason we attracted at least 3 people taking pictures of us. In the meantime I took some pictures of the surroundings, as the beach was magnificent. The fact that the Pacific side of the country is drier than the Caribbean side, became eminent when we realized at the end of the day that we had not had any rain that day.