We’re happy you’ve chosen The Greater Tamarindo Metropolitan Area as your vacation destination, and would like to offer a few suggestions for things to do after you’ve exhausted all the fun things found in your Fodor’s or Lonely Planet.

Buy Real Estate

It takes most visitors a couple days to realize Tamarindo is the place they’ll want to spend their remaining days on earth, and the sooner they buy a condo or begin a nine-month construction project the better. Fortunately, you’ll find over 900 friendly real estate offices here to help with your plans, staffed by people from virtually every country in the world except Costa Rica. All it takes is the ability to keep coming up with more and more money and paradise will soon be yours. Forget about those pesky trees and stuff that may interfere with a potentially stunning view. “Mow ‘em down” has become a popular local saying along with “pura vida” and “mas concreto.”

Get Robbed

Some famous former Texas governor – I can’t remember if it’s the one who became President or not – once said, “if it’s inevitable, enjoy it!” Getting robbed, whether it’s the $50 sandals you left on the beach while attending surf school or the $3,000 snatched from your purse because your hotel doesn’t have safes, does not have to be an unpleasant experience. Being able to interact with local law enforcement performing their ritual “shoulder shrugging” in response to your pleas for help, while understanding you have contributed to a vital part of the local underground economy, should more than compensate for any undue trauma.

Die

Not as hard as it sounds. A popular way to die these days is by catastrophic health event occurring on the other side of the DIRIA bottleneck, where it takes three hours for an ambulance to get through the stationary delivery trucks lined up by the No Parking signs. Or you can die of old age waiting for someone to pave the road to Langosta. Take your pick.

Learn something

Knowledge has become a popular cottage industry, and just about everybody here is willing to teach you something for a modest fee. Surfing schools can be found plying their trade on any given morning. Each aquatic center of learning sports its own dazzling T- shirt colors, giving the beach a Christmas tree look and providing students with something new to do on their return to Montana.

Or you can learn a new language. Spanish, for instance, is popular here. Several well-established language academies, as well as individual programs, abound with instructors from Switzerland or De Moines ready to put you through your verb tenses and dangling participles. Truly adventurous scholars may even try to find a local (or Costa Rican) who is willing to teach the language spoken here – incidentally, not “Spanish.” Here we speak “Guanacasteco.”

Or you can take one of our specialty courses offered here at the Howler International Communications Center. Next January, a course in “Advanced Nuclear Psychology” will be offered by visiting University of Santa Rosa professor Pedro Golobios to any and all interested. Incidentally Don Jose is also the Tico member of the infamous local band Los Tingos.

Write the Community a Letter

Greater Tamarindo Metropolitan Area citizens really appreciate it when visitors who have spent all of three of four day “in country” are tuned in enough to list all our faults in the popular Letter to the Editor forum of various local publications. Make sure your comments are as insulting as possible, feel free to call us as many names as you’re comfortable with, and by all means, please don’t leave an address where we can contact you, as I’m sure it would generate more “fan mail” than you could handle in response.

Buy Drugs

Once again, a no-brainer, closely tied to No. 5. We recommend this one for the younger crowd, as most of the action goes on way past bedtime for people my age. Simply go down to the circle and wait a few minutes until someone really scary approaches offering you a joint for $35. Not the best bang for your buck in this writer’s humble opinion. Dealers are now somewhat in the habit of killing each other off for a shot at your hard-earned dough. A classic example of supply and demand, and an inspiration to those who believe it’s the entrepreneur who will make Tamarindo’s future secure.