Surfing, baby!

After reading a number of blogs and travel reviews, I had reluctantly decided not to surf in Montezuma. After all, all of the cognizati agreed that Santa Teresa had much better surf and since we had decided to go to Montezuma instead of Santa Teresa, that meant no surfing, right? Wrong! Who cared if the surf was not as good, it was still surfing. Nicole and I booked a surf lesson through the guy at Luna Llena and arranged to be picked up at 7am by our instructor.

Come 7am, we were up and ready to go, excited to try riding the waves. Nicole had never surfed before and I had only tried once, when I was 15 years old, so we were both starting fresh. Our surf teacher met us at the hotel and then led us on a half an hour hike along the beach to a secluded bay that was completely deserted. There, he lives in a small enclave with other locals and rents out a couple of cabins to people interested in staying for a surf camp. We picked up our boards in his shed, covered ourselves in 50 spf sunscreen and headed out to the beach. There, we were met by Blue, another surf instructor, who would be my teacher for the morning. We were also joined by a couple who appeared to know our surf teachers. The woman wanted to brush up on her skills while her boyfriend surfed, so she joined our lesson.

I don't know how the average surf lesson starts, but for us, it started with surfboard shaped outlines in the sand. We three ladies were each assigned an outline and practiced paddling and then pushing up to our feet into the approved, wide legged, sideways stance with the weak foot forward. The initial movement from the prone position to the feet is just like a push-up and takes a lot of pectoral and abdominal strength - it's supposed to be one smooth movement: one second laying down on the board and the next, hanging ten.

After a short practice session, I strapped on my ankle cord and headed into the surf with Blue. He spoke good English and I pretended that my Spanish was worse than it actually is so that we could stick with English. I know, shame on me, but I had reached the point of needing a little break from speaking Spanish. Blue walked the board out to the proper spot, with me swimming along to the side, attached to the board. I was grateful not to have to paddle it out myself as that is one of the main things that I remembered from that long ago surf lesson, how hard it is to get a board past the breakers. We actually set up where any waves would already have broken before hitting me and then Blue told me to paddle and on 'go' to jump up to my feet.

Hmm. Surfing is harder than it looks. For my first five tries, I kept going to my knees instead of my feet. Yes, I knew that I was supposed to go to my feet; no, I couldn't seem to help getting to my knees first. Of course, that meant that I was unbalanced when I actually tried to stand from a kneeling position, and I had some interesting dismounts. One good thing, after the third wipeout, I lost a little of my fear of the board. One time, I just rode in on my knees to experience riding a wave. Blue was very patient and kept giving me good advice. When I responded that I really was trying to do those very things, he looked at me and said, "Try harder." :)

That actually seemed to do the trick. On my next try, I paddled paddled paddled, and then, on go, I jumped up to my feet! My position was bad and my balance precarious, but I was on my feet! About half a second later, that changed and I was breathing water, but now I had the motion and after a little trial and error with how far back I needed to be on the board, I actually rode a breaker all the way in. After that, Blue took me further out and had me surf some waves all the way in, from the swell. That was a little scarier. The board gets some speed when riding down a wave. I had one memorable wipout when I rolled myself in a ball under the water and tumbled with my hands over my head because I had no clue where the board was and preferred not to get bonked in the head.

I had one perfect ride, from sitting on the board, at peace and fully centered in the moment, to spotting a swell and asking Blue, "that one?" to riding it in all the way, perfectly balanced. It was amazing. I was so proud of myself and Blue had a huge smile, too. Of course, then he wanted me to repeat the ride and told me, one more wave, this is it, make it a good one, last wave, no pressure. Predictably, I wiped out. The other ladies were already on shore, and Blue said, OK, one more, the last one, this is it, just one more ride, make it a good one...and I wiped out again. Oh well, I would've liked to end the morning on a triumph, but I had that one perfect memory and was feeling euphoric from the sun and surf and great exercise.

We rinsed ourselves and our boards off in a hose, returned the boards and hiked back into town. Nicole and I both had a fabulous time and only regretted that we would not be able to surf without a wetsuit at home in San Francisco. I have a feeling that we might want to try this again. Anyway, we gave our teachers generous tips and then said goodbye and went off to the organic restaurant for a huge, well-earned breakfast. If you are ever in Montezuma, you have to try the french toast with papaya, mango and banana. It is a religious experience.

Back at the hotel, it was already checkout time, and we still needed to shower and pack our bags. We hurried as much as we could but still ended up checking out about 2 hours late. Oh well, we'd checked in late, too. Our flight from Tambor to San Jose was at 3:45pm and we ordered a taxi for 2, just to be sure not to miss the flight. Our return flight home from San Jose was the next morning at 6am and if we missed this little short flight, we were looking at a frantic trip over land and sea that would take about 8 hours and which might not even be possible. We really needed to make our flight. Funny thing, we had asked the hotel to book us a cab the day before, but they were having problems finding someone. We mentioned that to our two surf gurus and they offered to drive us to Tambor. Well, we ended up having 2 cars ready to take us to the airport, and after a brief consult with our hotel receptionist over who it would be ruder to stand up, we took off for Tambor with our two friends from the morning.

The trip to the airport was made exciting by our use of a 'short-cut' which involved a road filled with ruts that were 3 feet deep. It was off in the middle of nowhere and if we had broke down, it was extremely unlikely that anyone else would have driven by to rescue us. It would have been us hiking down the road carrying our packs. Anyway, we made it to Tambor by 2:30 and discovered that the small airport was a seriously small airport. It was an open airfield with what looked like a covered bus stop outside the chain link fence. We shared the 2 small benches under the awning with 10 other people, one of whom was Cote de Pablo, the actress who plays Ziva David on the TV show NCIS. Cool, huh? She sat right behind me on the plane. The funny thing was, I noticed her when we got to the airfield. She was with a male companion and they were both really well dressed. I thought, 'hmm, she's pretty... I wonder if they're on their honeymoon?' It wasn't until the plane arrived and a group of Americans deplaned that the family patriarch took one look at her and said, "NCIS, right? You're that Mossad agent!" She was really gracious about it and didn't deny who she was. None of our group said anything to her, but it was a nice confirmation that even TV stars think that the Nicoya peninsula is a pretty good place to be.

We rode in a great little 12 seater plane to San Jose and then were shuttled back to where we started at Hostel Pangea. Funny story, we missed the shuttle to begin with, or the shuttle missed us. We stopped at one of the many cab drivers all of whom were yelling, "Taxi! Taxi! Necesita taxi?!" and Nicole explained that we were supposed to have a shuttle. That's when the amazing thing happened. Instead of just taking the fare, the cabbie actually whipped out his cell phone and called the hostel to ask about our shuttle. Then, when the shuttle drove right past us, he told us to stay where we were, jumped in his cab, and chased down the shuttle driver to tell him where we were waiting. I swear, the people in Costa Rica actually are the nicest people in the world. They actually seem to enjoy having tourists visit their country. In most places, the people like having the money from tourism, but hate the tourists. Here, most people seem to enjoy interacting with foreigners. Odd.

At the hostel, Nicole and I checked in, went out to buy some food for the plane and then had dinner and went to bed by 8pm. Our roommates were three girls from Finland who had been working at a meatpacking plant in Iceland for 6 months to earn money to travel. It was so sad, they took this disgusting job because it pays so well and then Iceland's economy crashed right near the end of their stay and their savings were worth about half of what they had been. Iceland does not have the euro, they have the krona and it devalued rapidly during the September/October financial crisis. These poor girls worked cleaning out cow and horse stomachs for six months and then saw their big money turn into nothing, meaning that they now only get to travel for three to six months instead of the year that they had planned.

That was our last night in Costa Rica. It is a beautiful country and we had a wonderful time but I was ready to go home and see my sweetie. Also, I'd picked up about 30 mosquito bites during my last 48 hours in the country and I was happy to be going back to an area without biting insects. I swear, my next trip is going to be to a country without mosquitos!

The morning went smoothly. We were up at 3:25 for our 3:40am shuttle and rode to the airport with one other guy who was on the first leg of our flights - from San Jose to San Salvador. We paid our departure tax, dropped off our change in a box collecting for ecological preservation and bought hashbrowns and coffee at Burger King. Isn't that funny? I actually went to a Burger King. I wanted to get the BK Pinto, a rice and beans breakfast special, just because it was funny, but resisted and stuck with an order of hashbrowns.

The first flight to El Salvador was fine. After a short layover, we continued on to LAX. That flight was a bit longer and pretty boring. Then, after going through customs, Nicole and I split up, she to stay overnight in LA and I to continue on to home. Another quick taxi ride and I was home! Another wonderful trip. I have now visited 26 countries. Each time I go somewhere, it just makes me want to travel more. It really is never enough. There are so many amazing places, people, buildings, art, national parks. There isn't time enough for all of the places that I want to see and all of the things that I want to do, but I'll keep going and seeing and doing as much as possible. I'm stuck stateside for the next year or so, but will be back on the road eventually. Hasta luego.