Will's Adventure Update: 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.