Buenos dias from Costa Rica!
I’m in San Jose ahora and having mad fun.
For the past 2 weeks, I’ve hit some of the best surf spots in the country, learning to ride the waves, short board and long. The Pacific is beautiful, you guys. It’s a little overcast most of the time, but the water is warm, and the waves are enormous. At night, the whitecaps glow green with phosphorescence.
Soon we’ll be starting a hike from Puerto Limon on the Carribean coast, all the way across to the Pacific again, but first, here’s a little bit of what’s been going on.
After an unexpected 12 hour layover in Miami, I flew into San Jose at about 9am local time, June 17th. I met 17 other students and a number of instructors on a mountain overlooking the capital city and we spent 3 days getting to know each other while earning first aid and CPR certification. Then we split. I went with a group of 9 students to Playa El Rey, a secluded beach near Playa Dominical. We spent three days there in the home of Don Juan, getting our first taste of Pacific surf. From El Rey, we took a taxi to Playa Bejuco, apparently a vacation home for many ticos. It was a pretty wild beach with great rip tides. Three days at Playa Bejuco (with running water this time), and on to Playa Santa Teresa. The trip to Santa Teresa saw us on a couple of Taxi rides, a couple of busses, and a ferry from Puntarenas to Paquete. Santa Teresa was pretty secluded, but the water was drinkable and the waves were fantastic. A couple of 10 foot swells really gave me a pounding, but I had a chance to perfect my surfing on some of the more manageable waves.
Now it is time to wash clothes, repack, call home and start the 30-day cross-country hike blisters and mosquito bites, here I come!