Samara

We're home now, and all glad to be back where the humidity is a tick less than 100%, the toilet paper can be flushed, the tap water can be drunken, and the Chinese food is generally a bit better.

I just wanted to add a post about Samara, since it looks like no one wrote about what was possibly the best day of tour.

We had spent two nights in Nicoya, which was hot and humid and notable only as a town along the way to the beach, so when we finally got to the beach early in the day on... Tuesday? yes? it was quite a relief. Samara Beach is a thoroughly tourist-ized area, but this was midweek and the off season (which is to say, the weather was so perfect that a NY beach would be packed to the gills, but in CR that's par for the course) so the beach was completely deserted when we arrived, and stayed mostly empty for the rest of the day.

After applying many, many layers of SPF 65, we dove in. This was basically the perfect beach. The water was wonderfully warm, probably about 80 F. The waves were frequent, high, and just below the cusp of too-rough-to-be-safe, which is perfect. Swimming past the break took some effort and you generally got wiped out several times before finally forcing your way past, but it was worth it, because past the break the water was calm and you could float on top of the waves before watching them crest and slam the inattentive and Cara Ferrentino off their feet.

Because we're good responsible RCS, we implemented a buddy system, and no one was drowned. But quite a few bathing suits were rendered momentarily ineffective by these waves (memorable moment: counting heads after a particularly rough wave and seeing Anne Lew holding her bathing suit bottoms in her hands)

Antonia was our resident surfing expert, and put us all to shame by looking so incredibly cool on her surfboard - she's been suffering from some seriously severe sunburn since, though. We had lunch at the beachside cafes, then checked into our fantastic hotel, led there by a local dog who took a shining to us. We were also flagged down by a guy who'd been at one of our previous concerts and recognized us, despite being in bikinis instead of black gowns, since I guess a pack of 40 American women is pretty easy to spot.

My section of the hotel was designated the Quad, for being smaller and separater and awesomer than the rest of the hotel, with our private swimming pool and its jungle backdrop. The Quad even lived up to its name by hosting the evening's party, which eventually devolved into an aloe-application party, since the Costa Rican sun was not very nice to the Whitey McWhites of RCS.

In the morning we swam again, and several girls took surfing lessons (and were so hot that the surf instructors took their picture for publicity purposes), before we packed up to head back to San Jose - and had a very, uh, adventureful bus ride that inspired a prank that you'll just have to ask an individual RCSer about. Even with that epic traffic jam, for me these were the best two days of tour - nothing can beat having full run of a perfect beach and battling the gorgeous warm waves of the Pacific with RCS.

Meanwhile, the Glee Club was in Idaho.


-Liz-