Traveling Costa Rica's Central Coast

After three weeks in Matapalo, Laura and I decided to move north from the Osa Peninsula to explore and surf our way up Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast. Christophe, a French traveler whom we had met in Matapalo, was going to hop a ride with us.

Christophe and I had become pretty good friends out in the surf lineup and later spending time hanging out at his little beach camp. His camp was the paradigm of outdoor camping efficiency. To survive the rainy season in a tent in the Costa Rican rainforest, you have to know exactly what your doing. Christophe did. He had his tent underneath a large tarp which extended six feet beyond his tent door; giving him a dry open-air living space in which to cook and relax outside, even on rainy days. In this area he had one small chair, a makeshift wooden shelf for cooking, and a hammock attached between the tree at the front of his abode and his main tarp pole. It was cozy, clean, and you could see the surf from his “front porch”.

Things must have gotten a bit lonely out there solo for months, but Christophe always found entertainment in nature. When he did get human visitors he would talk about the animal adventures which he witnessed, like the time two crabs-both in need of a shell- fought each other over his toothpaste cap. Frenchman or not, Chris was fun, easy going, an experienced traveler and outdoorsmen, and we were happy he was joining us for the drive north.

On Thursday November 8th, four days before Laura, Chris and I were planning to leave I got really sick. That night I had a nice surf, we cooked out beef tenderloin with Andy and Terry, and all of us had a few beers during the evening. I started to feel ill and during the night I came crashing down with some sort of terrible fever. Full on teeth rattling shivers, body ache, and weakness followed by burning fever, soaking sweat, and general delirium. That first night felt like it lasted a week. Unfortunately the sickness was just beginning. I stayed in a state of high fever for the next two days, soaking through all my clothes with sour sweat and devouring ibuprofen to try to alleviate my vice like body ache. On Sunday, however, I felt a little better and assumed my sickness was not Dingy fever, as I feared, but instead a simple but painful three day flu virus.

Boy was I ever wrong. That day I made the mistake of going into Puerto Jimenez with Andy and Mike and having some beers while watching NFL games over the satellite. It was a good time, I guess, but I started to get nervous about a relapse when I felt my fever creeping back during the second half of the afternoon game. By the time I got home it was full on raging again. The fever from hell had started again and would last another three days.

We left Matapalo on Monday as we planned, despite my relapse, and Chris took the wheel while I shivered in the tropical heat in the passenger seat. That day we went only as far as Jimenez because I needed to take the ferry from there to the town of Gulfito the following morning to get tested for Dingy fever at a clinic. The ferry ride was interesting. Weakened by another feverish nights ‘sleep’, I passed out twice on the crowded boat. The only thing I remember is an old Tico attempting to revive me by shoving cotton balls soaked in rubbing alcohol in my nose. After coming to, I eventually did make it to the clinic and get the test that confirmed my low blood platelet level count was consistent with dingy. On the way back I missed the ferry to Jimenez by five minutes and was faced with the proposition of spending an hour and a half at the disgusting Gulfito port waiting for the next ride. Far too fatigued to even contemplate this boring proposition, I abandoned all financial restraint and hired my own private water taxi which took me and a boatload of lucky Ticans- who had also missed the ferry- back to Jimenez.

There is really nothing you can do to cure dingy fever. You simply rest, hydrate, try and control the fever through aspirin, and let the virus run its course. Over the next four or five days, I alternated between periods of relative strength and total fever delirium. During this time we made progress heading north. Once off the Osa Peninsula we made our first stop in the town of Ojochotal, which is just south of Dominical. We choose this area because the friendly ex-pat Steve, who we had met at the bar in San Jose, had encouraged us to visit him there.

Unfortunately I wasn’t to much fun at the time and Steve was about to leave for San Jose on business. This two day stop ended up consisting mostly of Laura, Chris, and I looking out from our hotel room porch to a view of the Pacific and talking the philosophical nonsense that foreign travelers always seem drawn to when thrown together. These sort of conversations always seemed to accompany Christophe’s nimble rolling of one of his signature splifs, which became a staple of the dingy recovery.

Our next stop was the picturesque beach and tourist friendly restaurants of Manuel Antonio, where we stayed for three nights. We found at room for only 30 dollars a night that was just a two minute walk to the beach. After the rest in Ojochotal, I began feeling well enough to surf the small break. Laura enjoyed walking on the long beach. The surf was so small through that Christophe left a day ahead of us and headed to Playa Hermosa, just south of Jaco. Laura and I spent extra day eating out and exploring Manuel Antonio national park, where we hiked through some forest trails and got to see a sloth and an albino agouti. We joined Chris the next day for the final section of our trip up the central coast in the town of Jaco and the adjoining Playa Hermosa.

Jaco is the closest beach town to San Jose and has some of the most consistent surf in the country. It was a shock the first day to paddle out and see fifty other surfers strung out along the lineup at Playa Hermosa. The wave there is very quick and can be unpredictable in messy conditions. Surfing here, even in the relatively small conditions we had, was a wake up call that my surfing still had a long way to go. I took the first step though by upgrading to a 6’6 short board, which- while more difficult to take off on-allowed me to ‘duck-dive’ under big waves and gave me more control over my turns. This was what I needed to keep improving, as it allowed me to learn how to generate my own speed with the board and follow waves down the line. While many of these advances are still yet to come, surfing my new board has at least has provided a feeling that I am finally playing with the big boys.

The consistency of the break at Hermosa attracts the best Tican, ex-pat, and traveling surfers. In the water I was surrounded by experts who knew exactly how to work a wave, generate speed, and control every aspect of their board. The top dogs were the locals, many of them black Rastas originally from the Caribbean side, who surfed during the day at Hermosa and partied in Jaco’s clubs at night.

The town around Playa Hermosa was about 3 kilometers outside of Jaco and was totally surf focused. It had perhaps a dozen cabinas along the beach where you could stay for from 20 to 80 bucks per night. Laura and I found a room with a view of the surf for 30 bucks and stayed four nights. For the first three days I surfed with Christophe, until he had to leave to go back home to France. While he was there we cooked dinners together over his gas burner and, on his final night, did some goodbye drinking together at the local bar. The next day we took him to the bus stop in Jaco, and then found ourselves a new hotel room on the beach there for a change of scenery. I continued driving the five minutes back to Playa Hermosa to surf on most days, but Jaco beach still had a small wave which was good for a beginner like Laura.

Jaco was the first real population center we had seen since we left San Jose a month before. While certainly dangerous, dirty, and filled with hustlers pushing drugs and prostitutes, Jaco did offer many of the familiarities of home including a Best Western, three casinos, numerous night clubs, a Subway, a Quiznos, and a TCBY. Our first night there was Thanksgiving and just about every restaurant was running a special for the gringos that served up turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce. Pretending like we were back in the states, Laura and I watched the Cowboys game on our hotel TV and then went out and stuffed ourselves on a Tican turkey dinner.
We spent another four nights in Jaco, enjoying our hotels giant beach view window, AC, wireless internet and pool. At 60 bucks a night it was at the high end of our budget, but we gladly splurged for the familiar amenities. I was able to finish my application to UT business school from the comfort of my bed and at the same time keep my eye on the surf to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. The Tico hotel manager also had a major crush on Laura and kept asking me weird questions such as, “is it ok for me to buy her a flower” or “is it ok to ask to hold her hand”. She spent much of her time sneaking around the hotel trying to avoid having to talk to him. Eventually, however, his patience was rewarded as Laura came around to find his persistence endearing and allowed him to hold her hand the day we left.

North of Jaco there is no surf along the Costa Rican mainland because it is sheltered by the Nicoya Peninsula, which extends south from the Nicaragua border and creates a calm gulf along the northern mainland coast. Our next phase of the trip was to drive an hour north to Punta Arenas and catch a ferry across the gulf to the Nicoya Peninsula. We again picked up a traveling partner for this leg of the journey. Tim, a nineteen year old surfer from Holland, heard our plan to head north and asked to catch a ride with us. We left Jaco and made the two hour drive to the ferry and, after getting scammed out of 16 dollars in the process of trying to buy a ticket to get our car across, crossed the Gulfa Nicoya by boat thus concluding our two week tour of the central coast.

One day recovered from Dingy Fever I slapped a smile on for the group shot

Chilling on the poch in Manuel Antonio

Laura doing her Vana White at the park enterance sign

One of the white face monkeys at Manuel Antonio National Park grabs a berry

Sunset Manuel Antonio

View of the cost from Manuel Antonio park

Beach chairs for rent at Manuel Antonio beach

Christophe and I after putting a stomp pad on my new board at Playa Hermosa

Some weak sets rolling in at Hermosa Beach

You can't stop Larry Kudlow you can only hope to contain him . . . even in the Rica

Matapalo

Laura and I have just spent the past two and a half weeks (October 25th to November 12th) on the Osa Peninsula, which makes up Costa Rica’s southern pacific coastline. We stayed on the southwestern tip of the peninsula in Matapalo, an ex-patriot surfing community.

The only way to get to Matapalo is over a muddy and often impassible twenty kilometer road from Puerto Jimenez, the only significant town on the Osa. A left off this “main road” brings you to an unimproved dirt and rock track that runs through rainforest and along the coast for two kilometers to the cape of the peninsula. Tucked alongside this stretch, most well hidden by trees, are perhaps 20 different cabins all less than 200 yards from the beach. There are no stores, electricity, phone lines, or development; just the Pacific Ocean to one side, rainforest covered hills to the other, and a strip of muddy track between. This is Matapalo in its physical entirety.

Matapalo is the unnamed black dot at the tip of the Peninsula (this Peninsula is at the extreme south of Costa Rica's pacific coastline).

Matapalo’s magic is that within its two kilometers stretch of peninsular coastline are at least five different surf breaks with waves ranging in difficulty from mellow to extremely gnarly. These breaks occur at three main beaches which all seem to spring from nowhere and are linked by little paths through the rainforest. From the coast to the foothills on the other side of the road, the forest is all secondary growth, meaning at one time significant sections had been cleared, and what remains is a slightly more interspersed mix of younger rainforest trees with creates a canopy which is both lower and less dense. The combination of more sunlight and the closer proximity to the treetops makes seeing monkeys, toucans, macaws, and all sorts of other wildlife a part of any daily walk.

On October 25th I navigated our Daihatsu BeGo through the final stretch of pot holes, ruts, and boulders and we arrived at a group of cabins tucked off the Matapalo “road” which an engraved sign told us was the Encanta La Vida lodge. While many of the property owners in Matapalo rent out cabins on a daily or weekly basis, the Encanta La Vida is the only place that also feeds you three meals a day. Laura and I were a bit strung out from the trying drive and wanted to pony up the extra dough to have our meals prepared for us. Since I knew some of the Encanta La Vida crew from my two previous trips there, I was able to drop a few names and the new manager Karlos gave us a deal on one of the nicest cabins at $130 a night for the two of us.

Arriving in late October, the rainy season was still in full swing. Of the nineteen days we were in Matapalo it rained at least fifteen of them. Sometimes hard gushing rains that lasted all day, sometimes bursts in the afternoons, and towards the end just evening showers. The rains, despite depriving of us of sunny days, did not prevent us or the other Matapalians from enjoying life. We woke up at dawn each morning to the roars of the howler monkey’s, who let us know it was time for a morning surf. I just grabbed my board off the cabin porch, strolled down through the jungle path, and paddled out into the Pacific to catch waves as the sun rose over the mountains on the far mainland. The great thing about the rainy season is that there were mornings where I was the only surfer out there in the lineup. A pretty amazing setting for a solo surf session.

We stayed at the Encanta La Vida for four nights. Laura began surfing, did some painting, and quickly made friends with much of the local Tico and Tica staff. I had a great time surfing, and was quickly challenged when a large swell pushed in overhead waves at Backwash Bay (one of the surfbreaks) for our second and third days there. Laura and I also did some hiking/exploring to a nearby waterfall which was throwing off huge cascades of water because of the resent heavy rains and provided a pounding shoulder massage. Just hanging around our cabin and the Encanta La Vida bar, our favorite spot, we saw all four kinds of monkeys darting between trees during breaks in the rain. The dark and thick necked howler monkeys; the long, athletic, and graceful spider monkeys, the mischievous and ubiquitous white faced monkeys, and finally the little golden furred squirrel monkeys. Our first afternoon a white face monkey even dropped/threw a coconut from a tree that missed Laura by a hair as we passed under it. Always got to be careful when crossing beneath armed monkeys. The monkeys also did battle with the local toucans, and sometimes even Lola the pet parrot, for bananas and other food scraps that were left hanging out.

A white-face monkey walks through the trees

Me and Laura under the waterfall in Matapalo

The scene around the Encanta La Vida bar is a classic scene of life on the extreme fringe of civilization. Lots of ex-patriots talking about working on water heaters, car engines, generators, cabin repairs, and struggling constantly against the muddy road. In fact, because of the consistent rain, the road was washed out by rivers and impassible many of the days we were there. Many locals come to have a drink at the Encanta because Brian the owner was one of the originals who had made Matapalo happen as a surf community back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Brian was born in California but had gone to high school in San Jose, CR when his hippie mother drove the whole family down here following a divorce. When his mother moved back to California a year or two later, he stayed went through the motions of school while traveled and surfed all over the country during the 70s and 80s. When he started surfing the triple overhead breaks of Matapalo in the mid 80s his only audience was Tico farmers and gold miners wondering what the mad gringo was doing out amidst the giant surf. He eventually bought a chunk of land (rumored for only $5,000), prodded the local Tico farmers to help him extend the road from Jimenez, and finally completed the Encanta back in 1990.

Many of the original Costa Rican surf pioneers, Brian’s buddies from the old days, are still to be found sitting right at the Encanta bar. When we were there, the LA area surfer and artist Kevin Ancell was staying for the whole summer, carving amazing hard wood sculpture and totem poles for the lodge in exchange for his food and board. Kevin’s art is world famous. He designs board artwork and surfwear for RVCA creates large scale art exhibits, and also does large canvass paintings. His work is a bit eccentric, his most famous exhibit was of dozens of life sized Polynesian hula dancers ranging from the normal beauty to tracked marked, machine gun toting, junkie hula girls. Kevin grew up in the LA skateboard/surfer gang culture and it is his life among others that is featured in the Sean Penn narrated movie Lords of Dogtown. His story and some work are feature here- http://www.coastnews.com/art/surf_art/surf_trip.htm

The front steps to the Encanta La Vida office framed by two of Kevin's totems

Gruff, bear-like, and eccentric to the point of being even a bit creepy, Laura and I both really ended up liking Kevin. Laura enjoyed him for his sweet heart and artistic bent and I because, while knowing he needed a wide berth and definite respect in the lineup, there was something to learn from him. Certainly he made himself hard to warm up to, but you wanted to make sure was on your team when you paddled out. I saw him chew some Chuck out for dropping in on him with such vehemence and disdain, the poor dude didn’t even look at another wave for the rest of the session. When the sets were big and I wasn’t surfing well he busted my balls and told me to get out of the water, but for the most part he gave me a fair shake and a few tips.

After staying four nights at the Encanta for four nights, Laura and I rented a cabin about a kilometer down the road from an American couple that ran a small rainforest adventure tour operation. The owner Andy Pruter, his wife Terry, and their two kids lived in one bungalow house, and they had two separate cabins for rent on the property, which they called Sueno Verde or “Green Dreams”. At only $40 a night we got the smaller cabin, with two beds, a propane burner and kitchen, and an outdoor shower.

Our cabin at Sueno Verde

View from the beach at Sueno Verde at dawn

On the day we moved in, we first drove back to Puerto Jimenez to buy supplies and gave rides to town to Karlos, the manager from Encanta, and Christophe, a French traveler camping on the beach near our new cabin who was also making a supply run. It was the first day in a while with some sun and we enjoyed the drive with the windows down and the IPOD blasting tunes. Its weird to be driving through strange and exotic terrain with very familiar music. In town we bought lots of pasta, rice, beans, canned tuna, eggs, powdered milk, and some vegetables to cover our meals for the next week. They actually have a decent “supermarket” that was just built about a year ago, but packaged food prices in Costa Rica are actually pretty similar to the States and Laura and I easily spent a $150 on groceries per week. After shopping we stopped at our favorite restaurant, the Carolina, for fresh fish ceviche then walked across the street to the local internet café for a few minutes of wired time.

We stayed for two weeks at the little cabin at “Sueno Verde” with Andy and Terry and just living with them brought us in tighter to the local community. Laura walked in the morning with Terry and another local Katie, and I played ping-pong and drank beers in the afternoons with Andy and Katie’s husband Mike, who was the resident fishing guide and surfing badass/instructor. The ping-pong games were usually set up tournament style at the Encanta, where the table sat out prominently near the bar which housed our cold supply of Imperials (the local beer) and had speakers for blasting Zeplin and CCR. The reigning champion of the table was Brian, the old school owner, but he usually stayed above the fray leaving big surfer Mike to clean up the likes of me, Andy, Karlos, and the Tico participants, Bernie the bartender and Wender the cook. My greatest matches were with Bernie and Wender and I employed these opportunities to polish my Spanish trash talk. Wender use to always call me “cunado” then eye the rest of the staff and howl with laughter. I finally went back to my cabin one day and looked it up: “Brother-in-law”. Wender loved to flirt with my sister and apparently he found the idea of us becoming in-laws pretty funny.

Bernie and I engaged in a ping-pong grudge fest

We also ate family style dinner a number of times with the Andy and Terry at Sueno Verde, grilling chicken and beef on their BBQ and just having a great time talking and seeing their three year old son Talon and baby daughter Cayenne in action. On Halloween our cabin got to be the destination for candy on Sueno Verde since Andy and Terry were out walking the trick-or-treat loop with the kids. All the treaters came by in one big group, perhaps five different young ex-pat families all with their kids, and we handed out the candy Terry had given us. We tried to give them all a little scare by having our friend Christophe, the French traveler, put on the grim reaper costume from Scream (Terry had the costume) and spring out from the bathroom as we handed out the candy. I am not sure the kids knew what to make of the black ghoul, with the white face and red tongue but they did enjoy their candy.

Me and Andy Pruter at the front porch of my cabin. Andy was supposed to be a squid from Sponge Bob Square pants but his custom went downhill when his 3 year old son Talon ditched his Sponge Bob Custom and demanded to be Superman

Christophe in the Scream mask trying to scare the kids

The full trick-or-treat crew

That night the trick-or-treating ended at dark- which as always came sharply at 5:15 PM- at the Encanta la Vida where the kids ate pizza and swam in a newly built bar-side swimming pool. Later, after the kids had been taken home to bed, the adults met up again for a continuation of Halloween partying at Martina’s, the only bar in the area located just about a kilometer down the main road back towards Puerto Jimenez. Martina, the proprietress of the bar, had come from Germany with a rock band that had bought some large tracts of land and wanted to have a bar to drink at when they were in the country. Laura and I dressed as hula girls complete with homemade grass skirts and coconut bras (note much needed photo hopefully to come). We drank a lot and danced until eleven and it felt like four in the morning as we were used to our typical eight pm routine.

The surf for the first week and a half we were at the cabin was fairly consistent as we had some good southern and westerly swells. I would usually walk down to Backwash Bay for a morning surf at low tide then surf the Matapalo break, which was right our in front of Andy’s house, in the afternoons. Matapalo was by far the more dangerous break as the wave broke near a salient rock and then pushed down the beach towards another set of boulders called the widow makers. If you took off for a wave and missed or fell you could get caught on the inside of a large set of four or five waves that could push you down and rake you over the widow makers. It was probably a bit of an advanced break for me to surf, but there was no way that I was going to let it go unsurfed since it was literally my back yard. One evening I saw Brian and Karlos out surfing it alone in overhead conditions and I paddled out and caught a few waves with the old legend. It was definitely a big surf moment for me. I am recognizing waves better, moving better in the water, am getting up and catching waves more, but am still struggling to improve my board control and body position while I surf.

The Matapalo break wave during low tide

Towards the end of the second week the swell began to die down and we got less surf. Andy had his business partner Paul and his friend Steve down for three days staying in the other rental cabin. Steve and Paul played in an old-man rock band back in Cali and at night they played a bunch of classic rock hits on the guitar and harmonica and sang lyrics after we had a few drinks. They must have phoned ahead of time and found out my favorites because their playlist was the Band, Eddy Vetter, Pink Floyd, and Neil Young. Steve was also an artist so he spent a good bit of time with Laura talking about art and giving her a few tips on the sketch pad. They were a good injection of fun at a time when the surf was flattening out.

Steve teaching Laura some art fundamentals

After spending about three weeks in total in Matapalo, Laura and I decided it was time to move on and start north up the coast. Matapalo had made us feel un-like tourists just passing through and has given us an opportunity to share in part of something. We got to hang out with, surf, and hear stories from a group of ex-patriot pioneers who had come to the rainforest and surf of the Osa Peninsula and made their homes there. It gave us a feel for what life abroad is like, both for the good and bad. Enjoying life with them brought out the magic of Matapalo. No curio shops, souvenirs, or people trying sell you an experience. No packaging or marketing. It is just lucky you free to your own thoughts and waves on the rainforest frontier.