As some of you may know, this past week featured an astronomical event that won’t happen again for another 105 years, The Transition of Venus. Now, where I happened to be this occurred during the middle of a rainstorm, so not only did I not get to see it, but I won’t live long enough to see it again. Even if a magical elixir was invented that could extend life to the next event in 2117, I live too fast and hard to survive to that ripe old age. Truthfully if I’m not dead from burning the candle on both ends in the next five years, I’d be surprised. While I will live without seeing a little dot in the sky go across the sun, the event did make me think back to all the other things in my life that I’ve missed or won’t get a second chance to experience again. And by other things I of course mean other nacho related things.
Many of you in the nacho know have seen the above picture and thought to yourself, “Man, I could sure go for some nachos the size of my ass,” and really, couldn’t we all? Yes, is the answer, yes we could. Through Sherlock like sleuthing it has been determined that the picture was taken at the Eat at Joe’s Restaurant at Witch’s Rock Surf Camp on Tamarindo Playa, Costa Rica. “What is a Tamarindo Playa?” You may ask. This.
BTW, “Playa” means “Beach” in Spanish. And “Costa Rica” means “Rich Coast”.
Tamarindo is billed as one of the better beaches in Costa Rica by the internet and the AAA travel agent I went to. I guess “better” when describing Costa Rican beaches means “touristy”, so if that’s your thing, then it is better. It wasn’t my thing, especially having just come from the superior, less touristy, Jungle/Volcano area of the country. I wouldn’t go so far as to say where I stayed was a tourist trap, but as you can see from the “X” below where I stayed, it wasn’t out in the jungle.
The hotel walls were covered in Geckos though. It was awesome.
You will notice on the map that about 500 feet north of where I stayed was Witch’s Rock Surf Camp, home of the Nachos As Big As Your Ass. However, every time I left the hotel I always went south. And there were no nachos south of the hotel.On sleepless nights I look back at that vacation and think, “Why couldn’t I have just turned left instead of right?” I’m an ambiturner so I very well could have done it, but for some reason the stars weren’t right for it to happen. Much like Robert Frost’s diverged road, sadly, I took the one more traveled, and nachos don’t play on more traveled roads. The nights I can sleep, I often wake in a cold sweat and wonder how my life would be changed if I had consumed my asses’ weight in nachos, and nothing can sooth me back to sleep after that. Not even my tears.
I’m sure they look better in real life, which only makes missing them all the worse.
Perhaps one day I will return to the ‘Rich Coast’ and make it out to Tamarindo to get some of these delicious, ass-sized nachos, but probably not. I can get a pizza dish covered in nachos a few towns over, which is probably larger than what they consider “ass-sized”, but that’s just not the same. Nachos being of a certain size is one thing, but nachos being of a certain size with an awesome descriptive name can make them seem much larger. “Nachos As Big As Your Ass” are good, but I will only be truly satisfied by “The Largest Nachos That God Has Seen Fit To Create”. I do worry though that when the day comes where I consume the Holy Grail that even those won’t be enough to quench my insatiable nacho hunger, and that’s not a hunger that even the most awesomely named nachos will end...