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.

Cost Rica: Beginnings, bumps and San Jose impressions

It seemed a long two weeks of waiting between the drive home from California and the getting packed up for our Costa Rica trip out of Houston. Prepping for a six month trip seemed to cause our mother an inordinate amount of worry directly inproportionate to the amount of input we wanted her to have in the process. I was lucky to escape most of mom’s stress and worry over the trip by slipping off to New York for the three days immediately preceding our departure. Highlights included Sutton Court tennis, Laura’s 25th birthday dinner and subsequent Antarctic shenanigans, and a Sunday football BBQ at Frank, LT, and Hart’s new place. Thank you guys for a great weekend and sendoff!

When my sister and I finally escaped US airspace and touched down in San Jose on Oct. 23, however, we were anxious to immediately head down south to the surf and rainforest of the Osa Peninsula. We decided to spend only one night in San Jose simply to secure the rental car, gather info on the upcoming drive, and to do a tad bit of city exploring. If we found out there was a lot to see in San Jose we could always return later in the trip after we had quelled our anxiety to be off and running with our outdoor adventures.

With the gringos San Jose is probably most renowned for its whore houses and casinos, which are coincidently most often housed in the same complex. This impression is based mostly off eavesdropping into the conversations of those dining and drinking around us at the downstairs café of the Hotel Presidente where we were staying. Here businessmen, real estate developers and speculators, tourists, surfers, ex-patriots, and local Ticos (Costa Ricans) sat at open air tables looking out over a short wall at the Avenue Central in the heart of downtown. From many of these tables we caught wind of late nights spent at the famous/infamous Hotel Del Ray, gambling away all but enough colones to allow a late night tour of the locally euphemized “petting zoo”.

At the café drinking at the table next to us, Laura and I met Steve, an ex-patriot developer who had been living south of Dominical for 8 years. He was staying there after having brought his wife to a hospital in San Jose for the birth of their fourth child. Characteristic of most ex-pats, Steve was outgoing, from California, had been originally attracted to Costa Rica by the surfing, and had stayed after finding a welcoming and relaxed Tico culture rife with opportunities through cheap land and an expanding tourist industry. Over the course of a number of hours and Imperial drafts, he helped give us an initial feel for life in Costa Rica, where to go, what to avoid, and how to experience the most. Maybe it is something about the experience of having just seen his new child enter the world, but we were lucky that Steve was willing to sit a share with us about his life for most of that afternoon. We plan to visit him later in our trip.

Our wandering sightseeing was predominately along the Avenue Central, the main east-west thoroughfare in the city. The most characteristic element of the street was the ubiquitous lotteria tables selling tickets for some unknown drawing. Apparently even one table per block was not enough to oversaturate the market, as all the vendors seemed to be doing at least some business. Apparently gringos aren’t the only ones who enjoy gambling in San Jose. There was also a healthy amount of pedestrian traffic. We noticed students with backpacks, some office looking suits, young people in sun glasses, the homeless and the crazy, some street kids addicted to glue sniffing, and most obviously a menagerie of street performers, tourist scammers, shoe polishers, and impromptu tour guides all vying for our attention. Though believing myself above such obvious ploys, I was briefly inticed into following around a guy who claimed to be buddies with Warren Moon and promised me he could set me up with a local phone chip for my blackberry that would make phone calls much cheaper. Ten dollars and a stern warning from Steve later, I recognized there was no way I was going to get the elusive local phone chip and wrote it off as a learning experience into the art of the street scam. But, god, did he ever have me going by dropping the Warren Moon bomb.

That night, of course at the suggestion of Steve, we went to dinner at San Jose’s most famous Asian cuisine restaurant Tin Jo. The food was amazing and showed the city does have more to offer then seedy casinos and crowded streets. We had eaten gourmet quality haute-couture food at one of San Jose’s finest restaurant and spent only $30 between the two of us.

The next day we picked up our car at the rental car office, loaded up our luggage, and then looked blankly at the crowded and unmarked San Jose streets as we tried to orient ourselves to getting on the road to San Isidro- our halfway point for the drive to the southern Osa peninsula. As I sat in the driver seat of my Dihatzou BeGo in the parking lot of the EuropaRenta Car, silently congratulating myself on securing both a good rate on the vehicle and my surf board safely to its top, I realized to my horror that I was staring at a manual transmission. I had only driven a manual once before in my life, and that was only for a total of about eight days. Looking into the morass of San Jose traffic, honking horns, roundabouts, and unmarked roads, I recognized I was approaching a trial by fire. I took a deep breath and engaged the clutch.

In the first 10 minutes of driving down Avenue Colon I must have stalled the car 8 times, been cussed out in Spanish 20 times, and been laughed at as an idiot gringo unable to drive his own bright red rental car pretty much constantly. The traffic was all stop and go, so I was constantly having to transition into first gear without lurching into the car ahead. Things seemed to be looking up as a gained some degree of comfort with the clutch, when a Tico on the side of the rode ran to our car and began pointing at the back tire. I had written of the bumpy feel as due to the roads and my poor driving, but indeed we had managed to get a flat tire less than 5 miles into our trip.

We were profoundly lucky in the man who stopped to help us. The tire was changed and EuropoRenta car brought us a new spare within 40 minutes. I say profoundly lucky because, as we were told, tire slashing is usually part of a larger scam in San Jose where thieves slash the tires of obvious tourists and swarm in when they pull over, initially offering to help but really looking to distract the distraught motorists and rob them of their belongings. Somehow we must have driven either too far past our slashers (our tires had indeed been knifed) and been stopped by a true good Samaritan or possibly we were simply not distracted enough and the area was to public for the scam to be pulled off. I suspect the former as the man did an amazing job changing the tire and was so sincerely nice and helpful to two obviously out-of-their-element gringos. Nothing was stolen and we were back on the road. What a lucky break.

The rest of the drive to San Isidro consisted of lots of attempts to ask directions in broken Spanish, climbing up and out of the mountains bordering the San Jose central valley, pleading with local cops to let us through a road block only passable for local residents and official vehicles, and finally cruising through the rainforest jungle road at night for the last 50 kilometers into San Isidro. The road block had been set up because the main road, Calle 2, had become impassible due to a mudslide and the detour around it was a dirt road through a hilly valley that could only accommodate limited traffic. However, fearing that by turning around and trying to find an alternate route would surely only get us lost, we begged the cop to let us through and to pass the mudslide using the backroad detour. I soon learned the other challenge of navigating a manual transmission was in climbing wet and muddy hills at 45 degree angles. I stalled out numerous times on such hills and terrifyingly was unable to execute a mid-hill re-start and was forced to roll in neutral back down to the bottom in order to restart. This must have been extremely disconcerting to the other traffic, which was forced to dodge the fire red tourist rent-a-car hopelessly sliding down the muddy hills.

We eventually did make it to San Isidro that night and by the next day were cruising through the rain to the Pacific Coast and Dominical. There by eight, we got breakfast, checked the surf, and then drove the last leg of the drive down to the Osa Peninsula. The road down the peninsula is all dirt and rock and cuts right through the rainforest of Corcavado National Park. To the left and the east is the water of the Gulfa Dulce which separates the Osa Peninsual from the Costa Rican mainland. We reached the main town on the Osa, Puerto Jimenez by 1:00, and by 2:00 were at our hotel at the far southwestern tip of the Peninsula in a collection of houses called Matapalo. I had stayed here, at the Encanta La Vida, twice before and arriving felt like a homecoming after our long trip from San Jose. Laura and I are looking for some relaxing days of three cooked meals a day, surfing at three walking distance breaks, and jungle monkey watching which can be done right from the wooden rockers on the front porch of our cabin.

Grand Canyon

The road trip back from Catalina Island to Houston included two amazing stops over three days of driving. The first was the Hampton Inn in Barstow, CA where we got hot showers, free wireless high speed, two amazing plush queen size beds, and were able to watch the end of the Colorado / Arizona NLCS championship.

The second cool stop was the Grand Canyon. We were originally thinking about bagging the South Rim Grand Canyon National Park scene and instead camping at Havasu Falls- just to the southeast. You don't get the great canyon views at Havasu Falls but apparently the swimming holes have amazing turquoise water.

Well anyway, we ended up deciding to just go to the park at South Rim because we wanted to drive some more miles later that evening instead of camping. Our short Grand Canyon stop involved walking around the South Rim path and then eating a 4:30 dinner at the Arizona Room in the Bright Angel lodge, which overlooks the canyon rim. Since we came at such an early hour we got a table by the window and surprisingly the food was almost as good as the view. After dinner, a cactus margarita, and a pint beer we were back on the road.

By the way the official language of the Grand Canyon is anything but English. As US tourists we were definintely in the minority.

Catalina Island

Before starting our 1500 mile drive from Los Angeles to Houston, Laura and I decided to spend a little time camping on Catalina Island- a 20 mile ferry ride due west into the Pacific from the Port of Los Angeles in Long Beach.

Santa Catalina Island is about 22 miles long, rarely more than 5 miles across, and has a resident population of about 3,000. While around 1 million people visit the island each year most never travel beyond Avalon, its only significant town. About 15 miles northwest of Avalon along the coast is the port of Two Harbors, which with a robust population of 298 residents, is the second most populous settlement on the island. The bay at Two Harbors juts inland a significant distance slimming the island briefly into a "neck" section. North of the neck the land widens to from the Northwestern "head" section of the island, which with its manageable size and remote location Laura and I choose to camp in and explore.

Map of Catalina showing Avalon, Two Harbors, and Parson's Landing

Laura and I took the ferry directly to Two Harbors and rented two kayaks, loaded them up with our camping gear, and spent our first afternoon paddling 5 miles up the coast to Parson's Landing, an uninhabited beach campground just shy of the island's western apex. We camped at here all three nights. Amazingly, despite being less then 25 miles from greater Orange County and its 10 million inhabitants, we were totally alone our first two days and got to enjoy the beachfront in the absolute peace and solitude usually only provided by remote wilderness.

Laura on the beach at Two Harbors where we rented the kayaks

Parson's Landing not only offered refreshing afternoon swims, picturesque ocean vistas, and camping right on the sand but also clean toilet facilities, which were set back behind the beach camping area. You make reservations and get a permit to camp at Parsons at the Ranger station in Two Harbors and when you reach the site (either via a backcountry hiking trail or via kayak) that $12 permit also provides you a combination to a locker which contains 2.5 gallons of fresh water and a bundle of firewood. Not having to pack in all your fresh water, not having to search for firewood, and having access to restrooms are three luxuries which made the fact we had the site all to ourselves all the more remarkable.

View of Parson's Landing Beach from western edge ridge

Our two full days at Parsons followed a similar pattern. We woke up around 6:30 and read in our tent for an hour as the sun would not have yet risen above the eastern wall of the cove and the beach would remain cold in the non-direct morning light. As the sun emerged we made breakfast and ate it at the campsite's wooden table looking out across the ocean to California coast and trying to identify Hermosa Beach where we had been living the previous two months. Around 8:00 on both days we went on a hike; one up the coastand the otherup to the trans-Catalina trail along the mid-island ridge from which we could see the ocean on both sides of the island. While hiking the first day we saw the deposited evidence of Catalina's buffalo population which we had read about in a blurb on our trail map. After being transported to the island for the filming of a movie during the 1920s, the buffalo had been left and survived as a resident herd. On the second hike we turned a corner and found one of these magnificent American Bison (what a "Buffalo" really is) munching on his grass breakfast out in the sun.

Hunched before my buddy the Bison

After the hikes we returned to our campsite for a snack and then some swimming. Catalina's coast is known for its kelp forest ecosystem which is the home to a wide variety of aquatic life. The protected cove at Parson's landing was no exception. Kelp is an underwater sea plant which grows anchored to rocks on the seabed and stretches upward along a thick stalk with broad bushy leaves. Giant kelp "trees" have been known to reach from 250 feet down at the ocean bed all the way to the surface.

The kelp tree forests around Catalina where we did most of our swimming and diving ranged from the shallows of 8 feet to depths of perhaps 60. Swimming amongst the kelp and seagrass covered rocks we saw numerous fish- perch, bass, opaleyes. giribaldis, barracuda, and massive schools of small anchovies and topsmelt called "baitballs". We also saw bat rays, guitarfish, jelly fish, star fish, sea urchins, and most magnificently a four foot leopard shark.

Diving down, weaving the underwater forest, and then looking up for a break in the tangled kelp masses to navigate to and surface through was an otherworldly experience. The underwater world is remarkably still and quiet, seemingly suspended in a smooth blue medium which absorbs both sound and movement. The green colors of the kelp, ranging from florescent slime to deep forest depending on the light, stand out against the blue. Along the bottom rocks provide blue-grays and purples, with large ones rising to create walls teaming with aquatic life and covered in whitish sea grasses. Amidst this forest are patches of pure white sandy bottom with nothing growing which occur seemingly at random. Here the water is a lighter, brighter blue as the lack of kelp covering at the surface allows the sun to shine right through it.

A black and white polka-dotted starfish

It was in this world thatLaura and I would snorkel in the afternoons after our hike. The water temperature was around 65 and we both wore wetsuits and weightbelts to stay down when diving. I also swam with a pole spear, which is simply a 5 foot long aluminum shaft with a sharp tip propelled by a heavy rubber band loop which is attached to its base. By grabbing the rubber band loop by its free end, pulling it up and holding it at the top of the spear, the stretched band creates a lot of tension wanting to propel the shaft forward. When you release the shaft the tensed band anchored to the spears base shoots the spear forward as it contracts.

I had just bought my polespear and the Catalina trip was my first chance to try my hand at free-dive spearfishing. The primary targets are large kelp bass, a fish called sheepshead, and halibut which live along the bottom like flounder but are very hard to spot. Around Parson's I did not see many of these particular gamefish (I did see some bass but they were small). I did, however, hone my skills by shooting some larger perch, opaleye, and a bottom dwelling ray-like fish known as the guitarfish.

Spearing the guitar fish right in front of my sister was probably a funny site. I had noticed three large fish laying flat along the bottom and at first had hoped they were halibut. The seemed too ray like- with their wide triangular heads and long tails- however, I did not want to take a chance and miss a tasty kill. I pulled my spear band tight, dived down to about 15 feet where I knew my shot would reach them, and then, hoping for the best, let go. The fish shot up off the bottom thrashing at the end of the tri tipped spear sending my arm, which still gripped the spear's base, into wild undulations. The tips had gone through the fish's large flat head but it did not appear to be rapidly dying. I remembered the advice from the guy who had sold me the spear, and reached down for the dive knife strapped to my calf. After struggling to free the knife from its sheaf, and trying to ignore my bodies increasing insistence to surface for air, I pulled the speared fish towards me and delivered two knife stabs below the its eyes. Its thrashing stopped and I swam up and broke the surface. Laura was waiting for me up there a bit wide-eyed but laughing at the whole scene.

The guitarfish poses after being speared

As I mentioned the fish did not end up being halibut, but instead a guitarfish which was indeed a member of the ray family. Luckily, however, the fish/ray's tail yielded some meaty filets, which after some googling on my blackberry (all of Catalina has cell coverage) were found to be edible. We cooked the fish over an open wood fire along with the perch and served it with rice for dinner.

Cleaning the guitarfish with my dive knife

When not swimming and hiking, we spent our downtime at Parson's campsite reading, napping, and- for Laura- painting in the cool beach cove. The wooden table provided a great platform for her to do her water color paintings from. While she painted, I slept or read the biography of Ghengis Khan I had brought along. At night after dinner we built a fire on the beach and sat out under the stars before bed.

View looking over our tent at sunset

We left Parson's beach on the third day and paddled back to Two Harbors to catch our ferry. The afternoon before we had been joined by two other sets of backpackers who had arrived at the campsite from the trail. We felt lucky to have had the site to ourselves and were happy to share the beach that night and leave it to them the next day. At least a few other people in the vast expanse of greater LA area had recognized that such a magical spot existed right under their nose.

Hasta LAvista

Laura and I are sadly almost through our last week in the LA Southbay area. Living in Hermosa Beach has been a great transition between NYC and our upcoming trip to Latin America, but I think we are both ready to get to traveling and escape our computers, cellphones, and their related stress. It is always a relief to escape the perceived obligations that our phenomenally interconnected technology can create. There is peace in knowing that you simply can not be reached, it reduces distractions and refocuses one's mental energy on living in the moment.

Our flights to San Jose, Costa Rica are booked for October 23 out of Houston. Between the 7th, when we move out LA, and the 23rd we are going camping in Catalina Island for three days and driving back to Houston with a camping stop in the Grand Canyon area for another three days on the way home.

Surfing has been a focus, despite the lack of consistent swells, over the past two weeks. I have surfed breaks in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, San Onofre, Malibu, and Santa Barbara. The waves around Manhattan and Hermosa Beach are all from the beach break and tend to close out (when the wave breaks all down its length at once). These can be tough waves to learn on but I still probably feel most at home here, since its where I surf the most. The water is still in the mid 60s making it still possible to surf without a wetsuit. The rides on these waves are anything but picturesque, I am rarely up for more than a few seconds, but just getting out into the water and catching a few of these steep, quick breaking waves challenges and refreshes me. Hopefully in Costa Rica I will get into some of the longer rides and deeper barrels that one sees in surfing videos and I dream about.


San Onofre State Park


Laura spreads out her reading at San Onofre Beach


Always wanted to throw up the surf sign


Malibu Pier, home of a famous right point break and some dirty water


The lineup at Malibu waiting for the yet unseen wave to arrive

Pitt River British Columbia

My Dad and I just got back from spending four days fishing the Pitt River in British Columbia just east of Vancouver. This backcountry glacier fed river is only accessible by boat and has some amazing trout fishing. The Pitt also holds tons of salmon but during September the sockeye salmon have already run and are spawning or dying in the river (i.e. not fishable) and the coho or silver salmon run has not started yet. Other than hooking into a decaying sockeye or two, are fishing consisted of rainbow, bull, and cutthroat trout. The highlight was the bull trout or "dolly vardens" which are a seagoing trout that follow the salmon in from the ocean to feed off their eggs. We caught a couple Bulls in the 7 pound range and hooked a monster 9 pounder that narrowly escaped.

The fishing lodge itself was just upstream from where the river meets Pitt Lake. We got to spend much quality time with the owners Danny and Lee who were amazing cooks and had lots of cool stories from their years running the lodge. Apparently the Pitt is a favorite fishing destination for LA writer/producer David Kelly and his wife Michelle Pfeffier. We were lucky and had the lodge to our self for 4 days since we were between salmon seasons. The last night we went out sturgeon fishing on Pitt Lake with deep sea rods. Sturgeon, known for being the fish whose eggs are caviar, are protected in BC but can be fished for and tagged for research. We hooked into a 6 1/2 footer that Danny said was at least 5o years old. Check out the pictures below this guy was pretty gnarly.


The Pitt River with the glacier that feeds it just visible in the background


My Dad and I with a 7 pound Bull Trout I caught


Dad, me, our guide Alexei, and a lot of green coats


One of the five black bears we saw one day while rafting down the Pitt


The first Sturgeon we hooked into was 3 1/2 feet- which I thought was huge


Dad redefined huge when he hooked this massive 6 1/2 foot sturgeon

Vancouver Half-Ironman Triathlon

Well after a final 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile ride, and a 13 mile run the quest for the half ironman is finally finished. I finished the Subaru Vancouver Half-Iron in 5 hours 7 minutes which placed me 29th out the 102 competitors. It was about 55 degrees throughout the race which was a bit cold (and rainy) for the bike portion but probably helped on the run. This race was certainly more painful than the previous Olympic distance races, and gives me some pause about training for the full length Ironman anytime in the near future. For now, I think this is a nice capstone for the end of this seasons triathlon training. I completed four races, with the last three coming within a single month, and so now I think the focus will return to surf and travel.

Dad and I flew into Vancouver on Sep. 14th, two days before the race, so we did get a little time to see the city sites before the race. Downtown Vancouver is on a peninsula on the Pacific coast of British Columbia but the greater city area sprawls to the adjacent mainland to both the north and south. It was fairly overcast for most of the time we were there. Looking out through the mist over the ocean and seeing the thick coniferous forest wilderness that surrounded it seemed the classic picture of the Pacific Northwest. Outside the race, the weekend went really quickly; mainly filled with logistics and a few meals. Thanks to my Dad who was a great help in getting everything done and a great companion for the pre-race dining and sports watching we filled our time with.We did go on one nice walk through Stanley Park which occupies the northen portion of the Vancouver Peninsula.

Anyway, have a few pictures from Vancouver and the race below.

View from the deck of our Vancouver hotel room



About 7:15 AM at Jericho beach. 15 minutes before race time with air temperature of about 58 degrees and water temps of about 60

Glad to be out of that water

Just after coming across the line

Pretty excited but definitely about to pass out. Notice the sleeveless triathlon suit; something I have been thinking Ruiz might like to incorporate into his weekend casual wear.