The Ranch Skate Park & Playa Yankee

Having missed out on a surf on Friday and Saturday being far to busy to fit one in (we had witnessing then a meeting re teaching English to anyone interested from the Spanish congregation and then our meeting) the boys were keen to head to the beach on Sunday.

Alas, this was not to be the case, we woke up to gale force winds ripping around the town which would be no good for the surf :(   So instead we decided to head to 'The Ranch' just out of town, Porl had read about it and it was meant to have a skate park open to the public so we rang them and they said they'd be there to pick us up in half an hour.  The pick up was free but they said we'd need to take a taxi home that would be about C100 for the four of us ($NZ5 approx) - it sounded like a deal so we headed off to check it out.

The boys were stoked, it does indeed have a great skate park there, entry is free and if you but a drink or something to eat at the resort you can also use the pool.  We met the owner, a young guy from Canada who seemed very friendly and said to come and use the park whenever.

Porl showed that he's still got it going on .....

Giovani had a couple of nice tricks up his sleeve ...

... as did one of the young locals

Kieran quickly found his way around the park ....

And although it was still very windy and rather overcast the boys finished off with a swim in the pool.

When we were ready to go home the owner kindly arranged for his driver to take us back to town, he was going to pick some guests up so when he dropped us off he told us we didn't owe him anything which was a nice bonus to end the afternoon.

The next afternoon Pete & Hayley kindly invited us to Yankee Beach with them ....

so the nine of us all piled in their 4wd and off we went.

Those mountains you can see in the background are Costa Rica.

The landscape near the beach was a kewl combination of cacti and frangipani.

And some neat looking dried out trees.

The waves weren't big but the boys still had fun ....

The girls made the most of the sun, here's lovely Vinita and Hayley.

And the it was goodbye Playa Yankee.