Bad Country, Part Dos and Back to Nosara

Little point of clarification: Mal Pais means Bad Country. Many were confused, sorry, I meant to integrate the translation in the last post! (BTW the picture above is the view from our hotel on the beach, hollar).

So, Phil arrived in Mal Pais safe and sound and E.J. and I were happy to introduce him to the tranquillo attitude of CR and the beach. Most of the time we spent was watching the sun set or chillin with cutie dogs around town. The boys took to surfing a bit but I mostly just sat on the beach. I wish there was more to report but, really, we didn't do much! Our one activity was to find the Montezuma waterfalls. After a beautiful drive and a short hike we found the first of three waterfalls. I kind of freaked out about the hike (which, in my defense was a bit insane to do in wet flip flops) and talked the guys into throwing in the towel and we stumbled apon a deserted strip of beach and jumped in. Check out the pics that E.J. took of our trip!

Waterfall:

Our own private swimming spot, this was Phil's happy place:

This is my happy place:

The cousins are awesome and it was great to chill with them for a bit before heading back to Nosara. If you have the chance, check out E.J.'s pics on my picasa album: http://picasaweb.google.com/mahureau/MalPaisCostaRica#

My trip back to Nosara was simple and easy and I managed to stay in a hostel there for a few nights before crashing again with Sarah and a couple of her friends. They were so nice to host me (again) and all three have amazing energy and are doing great work at the Nosara Yoga Institute. I loved them so much that I took pictures of them being awesome on the beach:

It's time to move on from Costa Rica and go home for a couple weeks. My stop in CR was an amazing one and I definitely needed it after South America. I am so thankful for reuniting with family and friends and meeting new, great people. On my last full day in CR, Fred (pictured above) taught yoga on the beach at sunrise. It was my first offical yoga class and I was terrified but there were many perfect things about the experience. He first asked us to write a word in the sand and I of course chose "courage" because of the moment but also for the first half of my trip. He then asked those people to reflect on their training experience and I traced my steps to arriving there. Most of the work we did was partner based and Sarah and I did it together and then we jumped into the ocean. In so many ways it summed up my first leg of traveling. I couldn't be more ready to go back to NH with the family for a couple of weeks.