The beach in Playa Grande was just beautiful. Sparkling white sand, beach break (best at high tide) with lots of shells and sea creatures to look at. Not too many people on the beach. We could see Playa Tamarindo from our beach, right across an estuary, but a 40 minute ride by car.

There was a large rock on the beach surrounded by tide pools. We found all kinds of interesting sea life in the tide pools on Playa Grande at low tide.

Upper left inset is a sea anenome; background and the other insets are nudibranchs.

See if you can find the shrimp in the background image. The lower left inset shows what he looks like. They are clear in parts of their body so that they are really hard to see. Upper right is a hermit crab; lower right is a brittle star.

What are these things? Not ocean cockroaches, that's for sure (a young naturalist, at a local park, mistakenly called them insects!).

The answer comes from a friend of Donna's - "those funny water critters are chitons - they go way back geologically speaking, like trilobites. "

There were nudibranchs in a lot of the tide pools, also some gobies and sea urchins.

Food and drink are a big part of the day for us (adventuring really gives you an appetite). Costa Rica had just wonderful food everywhere we went. But when the drinks didn't come fast enough Scott and Jeff resorted to taste testing the condiments!

Scott responds to realizing that he made the double - triple crown (that would be surfing on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's day in two different countries). Next year he is shooting for the triple - triple!

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