Results 3rd Annual Travel Writing Contest to Europe
Thank you to everyone who submitted an essay and entered our 3rd annual travel writing essay contest! We received so many excellent essays - it was difficult picking one winner.
Essay Grading Procedures:
1) Every essay was read at least once and scored based on our 4 categories**: (1) Originality and creativity (25%), (2) Writing style (25%), (3) Grammar (25%), (4) Responsiveness to Contest theme question (25%).
2) About 1/3 of the essays went to round two and were read and scored twice per the above categories narrowing the number of essays down to ten.
3) The final ten were read at least 2 more times before choosing three top essays and then the final essay shown below.
The winning entrant is Dominique Channell (see below for the 9 top finalists)
Finding Pura Vida in Tamarindo , Costa Rica
On a hot corrugated tin roof, an iguana lazily chews the tip of a surfboard. Seeing me, it huffs up its belly and benches out a few front-legged push-ups, losing steam with each one like the bounce of a flat tennis ball. Then it runs away, its claws clattering like hailstones on the roof.
Here in the little beach town of Tamarindo, Costa Rica, every moment is filled with natural sounds. You'll wake up to a howler monkey's far-off bellow, deep in the bosque outside your window, have lunch at a local soda with olive-throated parakeets squabbling in the trees overhead, and retire to a serenade of crickets and tree frogs. But there is also a sense of peace that extends deep into the afternoon, when people tie bags of groceries to their bicycles and ride home along the hard-packed sand. This is the land of pura vida, an expression, greeting, and general philosophy which carries all kinds of generous meanings but is literally translated in English as “pure life.”
And here, life slows down. Olga, who owns the organic coffee bar in town, doesn't have a clock. She can tell when it's time to close by looking at the sun, which rises and sets at the same time every day, year round.
Tamarindo is part of a bay formed by a cape, Cabo Velas. The town is a medley of Ticos – locals – and people from various other parts of the world who have established a friendly surfing community here, one of the settings for the 1960s surf film “Endless Summer.” But if you get “skunked” – surfer lingo for a bad wave day – you can hike in the nearby cloud forest canopies or travel to the steamy base of Rincon de la Vieja, one of Costa Rica's active volcanoes.
Here, nature is indeed still king. Shoreside trees, like bonsai, are shaped by a hot wind that blows in only one direction. Bent into arabesques, they offer curling pods at their tips, like fingers. Dune plants quiver with insects – butterflies and grasshoppers the size of your hand that seem to drop from the sky. Turtles nest in Playa Grande, a long, luxuriously deserted beach in one of the many natural estuaries.
At night, the air cools and the town livens up. From beneath the dried sugar-cane roofs, everything from club music to traditional marimba (xylophone) music pulses out onto the streets. Besides the ubiquitous arroz con frijoles there is other local food – deliciously sweet corn pancakes smeared with natilla, a buttery, yellowish sour cream, or papusas, corn fritters filled with meat, shredded lettuce, and tomato. A can of Imperial, the local beer, is about 75 U.S. cents, but locals like to tell visitors that guaro, a Tico liquor made from sugar cane, is the best cure for sunburn.
Some chance travelers to Tamarindo fall under its languid spell, and never leave. If you dare to visit, come prepared to be taken captive by its rare and curious natural beauty.
The other nine finalists in no particular order are:
Tara Karr
Lindsay Barton
Nicole Laskowski
Dani Jacobs
Tiffany Fish
Walton Walker
David Hedrick
Karlyn Pratt
Jigme Nehring
Their essays can be read by downloading the following word document:
Top 9 Essays
Thank you again to all contest entrants, we appreciate the time and effort each one of you has put into submitting your essay!
Sincerely,
David Barish
Publisher
