As I write this I'm sheltering in an internet cafe as the rain lashes down again. Thanks to not going out on the booze with the others last night I was awake and pretty fresh this morning to see the sky clouding over and building up to this assault, but the others all only just got up :-) And now they can't do anything while I can sit here pretty nursing my sunburn.
Talking of which, after George and I burnt our backs on the snorkelling trip, life was pretty uncomfortable for a few days. Naturally when your hotel is on the beach and you're out surfing everyday, sand gets everywhere, which means sleeping is pretty y uncomfortable if your back's hypersensitive. But then, after the previously described evening surf, when George came in his back caught fire. Maybe it was the day's exposure through his t-shirt, maybe it was a reaction with the saltwater, but he went from enquiring if my back was itchy to pretty much screaming at the fire in his own in about 5 minutes. We rubbed aloe gel into it and put him under a cold shower, but as soon as he stepped out his face twisted with pain as the skin ignited again. If there had been a cheesegrater with anaesthetic on it, he would have happily used it to take the pain away.
Stephen came to the rescue with an antihistamine pill, and after about an hour the fire died down to ling embers, but he was still had the shivers for a day or two after that.
Which brings us to today. I met the president of the Tamarindo Surfriders Association who was taking water samples in order to build an environmental case against a local hotel who is discharging the euphemistically named aquas negras - black waters - on to the beach and into the sea. He told me that the surf has been unusually good and will be calming down now, so we're going to head off tomorrow. We've been staying in a very quaint beachfront hotel run by a charming French couple. The wife speaks no English whatsoever, but communicates with us by speaking French and expecting us to understand, which seems to work. And sometimes the schoolboy French comes back again: 'Pardonnez-moi, les chiens est sur la plage!' But we've exhausted ourselves in the surf, and it's time to mvoe on. I can reliably get up on smaller waves, and sometimes on the bigger ones, and I can catch massive, terrifying breakers on the bodyboard. I bashed my rib on day 1 of the surfing, which seems to be my weak point; I've had 4 such injuries in 2 years and each time it causes me a lot of pain for about 3 weeks. This time I've just had to push through it, because I'm not going let a bit of pain interrupt my chance to learn to surf, and it's been OK. Sleeping is pretty uncomfortable, however, as lying on either side stretches or compresses the sore parts. In addition to that, I've got tons of scratches and bruises. I hope my jabs have kicked in.
And talking of sickness, I saw in the local paper that Tamarindo has had a large outbreak of dengue fever - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever - with 62 cases in October. Since we've all been bitten dozens of times despite the DEET, we're pretty nervous about this. Symptoms tend to appear 5 to 8 days after infection, so let's see what happens in the next stop.
