Costa Rica Day 1

Get up at 4:15am, head for the airport at 5:40, flight leaves for Atlanta at 7am. All fine thus far. But our flight lands at Atlanta at 9:10 and our connecting flight is already boarding, five terminals away. Fortunately the airport had trams running every couple of minutes; we hustle and--while hearing "Passenger DeBoe, party of two, please report to the gate immediately"--we make it in time.
We take off and sail south at 35,000 feet, skimming down the west coast of Florida, crossing--is that Cuba?--and some small cays. We can see white wakes trailing behind invisible ships. The cumulus clouds are like tufts of meringue.
Cross the coast of...Honduras? There were isolated conical mountains, presumably volcanoes, near the shore. We pass over Lake Nicaragua and land at Liberia. It's a new airport, only two years old, and small, only six gates.
The drive to Tamarindo reminds me of driving in Appalachia, years ago. The road--the main highway for this region--is two lanes, no shoulders, and desperately needs to be repaved. If a vehicle breaks down, they just stop right there in their lane and put out warning triangles ahead and behind, because there's no place on the side of the road to pull off. Lots of barb wire fences, and some trash along the road. Poor quality houses, not set back far enough from the road, but they're gaily painted aqua or burnt orange or sand color. Better houses, or businesses, tend to have high fences or walls around them. No mown lawns, but lots of flowers and trees around the houses, including hyacinths and palms and mangoes. It's about an hour's drive from Liberia to Tamarindo. We're the only passengers in the van; the driver doesn't speak much English but he and Diana chat in Spanish and I can usually follow the conversation.
We arrive at Hotel Capitan Suizo around 4pm, and on opening the door of the van, I promptly drop my camera onto the driveway, after which it refuses to power up. Fortunately I only had about twenty pictures; if I had 500 pics from the whole vacation, I'd be ill, wondering if they could be recovered (on getting home, we find the pics are all on the SD card so even though the camera is dead, we didn't lose anything). We sit on the beach chairs to enjoy our "welcome to the hotel" rum punch, and then head to the bungalow for a nap--needed both from bouncing along the road, and getting up while it was still "last night".  Our bungalow main room is a square 20ft on a side, with 12ft walls and a central peak that was at least 20ft high. The room is divided diagonally into two levels, the sitting area being at ground level, and the sleeping area raised by three steps . To the right of the bed is the door to the bathroom, with a big jacuzzi, and an outdoor shower. The floors are concrete, but dappled green and warm enough to be comfortable. The bungalow is surrounded by trees--palm trees, three banana trees, and others. There is occasional noise from trucks passing on the road in front of the hotel, but not much and it's intermittent during the day, almost none after dark.
Dinner is at one of the tables under the trees between beach and pool. It's chicken cordon bleu and teriyaki tuna--there's almost no Costa Rican food on the menu, although they do have filets and quesoburgers and spaghetti Bolognese. While we're waiting for dessert, BAM!--something lands on the table. It's a mango seed, with teeth marks. Max the waiter explains that there are monkeys in the trees, one of them must have dropped it. A little later, as we're having cheesecake, two velvety raccoons come padding along; one of them climbs up the arm of Diana's chair (while she's sitting there, mind) and is starting to get up on the table. until I whack it on the nose with a cloth napkin. Cheeky blighter.
The beach is dark, but we take a short walk anyway. Bright stars, Orion overhead, Cassiopeia on the horizon, a planet in the middle of Taurus, the Milky Way making a river of stars. The beach is wide and flat;  breakers 75 yards out are down to little ripples when they reach us, smooth and flat enough that I can look down and see the stars reflected around my feet.