“Grilled mahi mahi...”

When you go without television for a long period of time, your brain becomes sensitive to stimulus of all kinds. You tend to appreciate the beauty and wonder of the natural world all around you. And then when you are confronted with the idiot box once again, your brain doesn’t stand a chance. Inundated with a vast array of colours, images and sounds, it becomes overloaded, and you simply sit there and waste vast periods of time. There isn’t a whole lot to do in Playa Hermosa once the sun goes down, as it’s not a town really, just a small village of a few small hotels, no street lights, and only the sound of the crashing surf from the beach. Therefore, each night of our week long stay we have been enjoying all the movies on our cable television, and slowly watching our brains rot.

There is one thing that I have noticed from watching all the Spanish subtitled movies here, and that is that the Spanish language seems quite incapable of capturing the vast descriptive vocabulary of the English language. Knowing a handful of Spanish words, and being incapable of ignoring anything written on the screen, I find myself spending the whole time reading the Spanish translated dialogue that flashes along the bottom. I’m not sure whether it is just the translator that lacks the ability to translate the many nuances and colours of the English language, subtle differences between words that make the language more poetic, more interesting, or if there truly isn’t sufficient Spanish vocabulary to capture the dialogue on the screen. I feel sorry for my Spanish brethren if the latter is the case, as they are missing out on a wonderful thing.

By day, we recharge our minds through the written word while sitting under the hot sun on the hotter sand on the beach, but even of later, our selection of available books leaves little in the way of mental stimulation. A far cry from the zombification of the idiot box each night, but still, not quite the strong literary works of the books that we began our trip with. Why do tourists read such drivel? Simply visit any used book store in a beach community and you will be bombarded with the works of James Patterson, Danielle Steele, and others that seem to write approximately 20 books per year with the same formulaic pattern of steamy love scenes, haphazardly slapped together plot lines, if you can call them plots, and characters that lack any more depth than that of a wading pool. Perhaps these books are just as close as television as you can get, seeing as no one is going to be able to find extension cords long enough to plug in their portable televisions on the beach, so they let their minds melt in the heat of the sun while page after page of detective/lawyer/spy loosely skips through the story in front of them. We have managed to find a few gems along the way, Cormac McCarthy’s Cities of the Plains is one of the best books that I’ve read in quite some time. I suppose I’ll just have to keep my eyes open and my hopes up.

On another note, things have turned towards the better here in Hermosa, fittingly as we are just about to leave. Last night we went out for supper for the first time in a long while, and I had the pleasure of having a wonderful grilled mahi mahi. Imagine the best grilled steak, unfortunately for the vegetarians in the house there is no adequate comparison, but more tender and flavourful than you have ever experienced. This is the wonder of the mahi mahi. This fabulous flat headed trophy fish found his way onto my plate and into my heart. And then today while Denielle was working her way through Yolates class, half yoga half pilates, I had the best surf session of the week. I caught a metric tonne of waves, most of which had some decent shoulders to ride, and some very steep late take offs with life or death bottom turns that were truly enjoyable. The session ended with a ride that went right to the beach, so that I had to jump off right before the sand. Denielle caught a few pictures, and also managed to get some of the talented skim boarders. These were the best skim boarders that I’ve seen before, as most tend to just run along, throw their little board down on the low tide standing water and skim along the beach. These guys stand atop the edge of the steep slope, run down towards the water and toss their board onto the sand, skip over the small wave right at the beach and go out about 20 feet to an incoming waist high wave, snap back and ride it back into the beach. Quite a sight indeed. Tomorrow we leave for Mal Pais to rendezvous with Skya and Nicole, and while the surf forecast is looking small, it should pick up midweek. So we’re leaving the screeching scarlet macaws behind and heading back to evil country.

p.s. there was no tsunami apparently here in Costa Rica after the 8.8 earthquake in Chile. We were inland being harrassed by the police at the time anyway, which resulted in Denielle having to drive for a short period because they had a problem with my name not being on the papers. We wrestled on the ground for a while, but I was albe to put him in a secret karate hold, so we didn't have to pay a ticket.

Tyler.