Samara is a quaint little town. When you go to a rural area in a foreign country, I feel you get to experience it much more than in a resort. It's a vacation and an adventure, which we like.
Most people did not speak English. Some could get out broken English, but some just sort of sat there and waited for us to make hand gestures. Which we got pretty good at.
The town and the people are so laid back. We navigated the streets well (I use streets lightly). We only had to change course a few times when we simply could not find what we were looking for. There were no street signs and the directions consisted of "Go past the Pali, turn towards the beach and you'll dead end into it." Well. There are 4 roads past the Pali and we turned on all of them before we got the one we needed. The Pali was one of the grocery stores. I'll use grocery store lightly too:)
The main part of town dead ends into the beach and you can see it in the distance here. It's an atmosphere of relaxation. No one gets real excited. We were driving one day and Audra and I looked behind us when one of the boys was backing up (in the middle of the road, yes) and we both screamed "Watch out for the horse!" We got a little excited then. But we were the only ones.
The home owner was the best we've had to date. Pages and pages of information on grocery stores, restaurants, activities. You name it, it was there. Except how to communicate in Spanish with the administrator when you don't speak Spanish:)
Anyway, we sought out the grocery stores the first day. Here is the Super Samara. It wasn't quite what I expected from the pages and pages of info, but it worked. And funny thing, by the end we were all calling it "the good grocery store." Perspective.
Being by the ocean, we knew from the first day that we wanted to buy some fresh fish and cook it ourselves (the house had an amazing kitchen). We talked about it daily, and got a lot of differing accounts of where we needed to purchase it. Most of which ended down a dirt road in the "hood" as Scott called it.
So we asked our friend at the Info Center (oh my word, you would never expect this great resource out in the middle of NOWHERE, plus she spoke English). She said that the town fish monger (I don't think I've ever used those words) would be glad to sell us fish from their catch. Then she told us where to find it. And really, once we were looking for the signs, we had no trouble finding it.
However, when we pulled up, I would say we might have been looking for something a little different (although I don't know why we thought that, we'd been there for a week.) It was the home of the fish monger. Complete with laundry hanging in the front yard (very typical here). Audra and I stayed in the car while the boys tried to procure fish in Spanish. We were not sure they would be successful.
But lo and behold, they were. And it was the best red snapper I'd ever eaten!!
Try new things and you will be rewarded:)
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