Fun In The Sun

Today we decided to explore the town a bit, which it turns out is just the main street (Av Pastor Diaz).  We walked at least 2 miles in the blistering heat, checking out all the shops, heladerias (ice cream parlors) and restaurants.  It's a pretty touristy street, with lots of gringos, so Aaron fit right in.  The problem we're having (or I'm having) so far is that people try to speak to Aaron in English because they know he's white, but they try to speak to me in Spanish because they think I'm Latina.  It's getting to be quite a struggle, but I'm learning (at the rate of approximately one word a day).  I love exploring new places, but it's proving challenging in this weather.  It's hard to walk anywhere for more than 5 minutes without ducking into a store for some air.
Anyway, I tried to get a few pictures.  Here's the tail end of Av Pastor Diaz (I forgot to take pictures earlier):

I know these don't really show anything, I'll try to take better ones at some point.  We stopped by a Juice bar, which was pretty cool:

We didn't end up getting anything, but it was neat to see.  We also passed a few of these Adventure Tour places:

We might end up doing one of these, since they sound so super fun!
We saw an egret in a creek:

Man, I miss my camera!  The creek led to the ocean:

Multiple giant iguanas crossed our path:

Then we went to a soda, which is what they call a small, cheap local restaurant and we shared a casado:

A casado is a Costa Rican dish consisting of rice, beans, salad and meat (we ordered pescado-fish).  The orange blob is a weird potato salad type dish, I thought was pretty tasty.  It also came with a plantain:

It was my first time trying a plantain and it was delish!  It does taste like a banana, but not as sweet.  Yummy!
This entire casado costs about $4!  Then we spent another $4 on bottled water.  We've spent a lot on water so far.  This is the most common brand:

Notice on the far right where it says "The Coca Cola Company."  That's a good sign because you want to make sure your water is from a reputable company.  Smaller bottled water companies might not have the same purity standards, so not any old bottle of water is necessarily safe around the world.

Then it was back to the beach.  Jaco is a small town and unless you're shopping or eating, all that's left to do is go to the beach (which is fine by me).

Another egret!  So today while in the water, I lost my Coach sunglasses.  I guess I'll just lose one thing a day, until I'm left with nothing.  I can't believe I was dumb enough to go in the water with them, but oh well.

Aaron wasn't feeling well from walking in the heat, but the water tends to make everything better.  Except maybe, his white skin:

He's pretty burnt today.  His arms, shoulders, neck and back are well-done!
While at the beach, we went back to our new favorite hangout for a few drinks:

Now we're home and I made burgers with beans for dinner.  We started watching Heroes on Netflix and so far we really like it.  Being in the apartment with the AC on is the best feeling in the world!  The heat is really taking a lot out of us.  Hopefully we start to get used to it because at this point, it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere anytime soon!