yoga farm

I made it to yoga farm. it is an amazing little place built into a hill above the ocean, surrounded by jungle. there are about 10 or so other people there, from all over, all staying for various amounts of time. on the way in i saw pavones peeling and peeling and peeling left. and then they told me its not even good right now. so, i have a feeling i might get a few waves down here too. phone and internet are a 1.5 hour walk away. so i´ll write a few times maybe, but otherwise i will be surfing, and doing yoga and hiking in the jungle behind our place. i hope all is well with everyone back home!

adios surf adventure

Well, our surf trip is now over. Tomorrow we travel to Montezuma, a town nearby that is supposed to be cool. It also has a waterfall that we can hike to. Then, Sunday we head back to San Jose. I will head south to Yoga Farm, and Lorraine goes farther south to Panama. The waves have been really really good in Santa Teresa, about shoulder high and they peel all the way to the beach, like 300 yards. I won´t write too much more than that. You can use your imagination. Here are a few more photos from the trip.

Expensive sushi dinner night. They were playing surf videos on the screen that my head is blocking.

500am waiting on the ¨curb¨ to catch the bus to Nicoya on our way to Santa Teresa.

Hammock time at Tranquilo Backpackers.

some photos

(View from our balcony at Tranquilo Backpackers in Santa Teresa)

(Lorraine at the bus stop in Nicoya at the beginning of our bus, taxi marathon to Santa Teresa)

(Lorraine and I on the path to the beach in Santa Teresa)

(On the beach at Santa Teresa)

(Main road of Santa Teresa, lined with sodas, restaurants and hostels. And gutters that smell like a sewer and have either grey or neon green water filled with trash, and empty right into the creek, that empties right into the beach where we surf. CA residents please call your local Regional Water Quality Control Board and thank them for all their hard work.)


(Pre-made rum and coke out of a can! Not so helpful for recovering from a 2 hour hike down the beach in the heat of the day.)

Well, we finally have a swell after a week of waist high surf in Nosara. Today the waves were about head high, peaky lefts and rights all over. I surfed for about 4 hours this morning, until there was no more wax left on my board and I could barely paddle. The surf was no good this evening, blown-out, but the sunset illuminated the whole sky and ocean with bright blue, gold and pink. Santa Teresa is a cool town, lots of European bohemian backpacker types. And mostly speaking lanuages other than English or Spanish. The hostel is cool, with lots of hammocks and a big kitchen that everyone cooks in. Basically the same routine as Nosara, surf, eat, hammock, surf, eat, sleep.

santa teresa!

we made it to santa teresa after getting up at 430 am and 12 hours of travel that included a walk in the dark, a bus, another bus, a taxi, another bus, and another taxi with some sitting and waiting on curbs mixed in. i am not in a blogging mood, but lorraine just wrote up the story, so check out her page. adios for now!

fire

What have we been doing?

A few photos curtesy of Jeff from Canada

Besides surfing, on Wednesday night we walked in the pitch black down the jungle path to the main strip of Guinoes to go to a boxing match at a place called the Enchanted Forest. I think it was a bar-boxing training center. Everything here has a bar in it no matter what it is. Anyway, it was the talk of the town that day, so we had to check it out. It was a match between a woman in a tiger print sports bra and skirt and tiger stripes tatooed all over her body against a guy that looked like he wasn´t trying. The match only lasted about 5 minutes, then they were like, hey everyone! go drink at our bar! Luckily, we got in without paying, and then took off to walk back to Kaya Sol under the full moon. Otherwise, lots of surfing, with howling offshore winds.

nosara continued

its a rough life in nosara. two sessions a day, my eyes are sunburned. the waves have been good, with offshores in the morning, and fun high tide backwashy in the evening. we will be here until saturday morning, when we will set off on another bus adventure to mal pais. lorraine has a blog too, so check 2009traveler.blogspot.com, she has some more photos. below is our feast. above, lorraine and i at the north end of playa guiones.

the beginning

21 years ago...

eat, sleep, surf

Here are some photos from our life in Nosara for the past few days. Generally it goes eat, surf, sit by the pool, eat lunch, sit in a hammock, go surf again for sunset, come back home, eat dinner, watch some music or sit in the bar, go to sleep.

Like good San Diegans, Lorraine and I made the trek to Casa Tucan (about 10 minutes away from our hotel) to eat pizza and watch the Chargers get kicked by the Steelers. It was strange to be in a palapa bar watching football en espanol. We were bummed they lost, but, we get to be in Costa Rica, so whatever...

Where the streets are paved with sugar!

Well, after a crazy day of bus adventures we made it to Nosara. We were supposed to get up at 4:45am to catch the 6am bus to Nosara. But neither of the alarms we set worked. I happened to get up at 5:15 so we frantically grabbed our stuff and dragged it out to the street corner to catch a taxi to the bus station. We got there to find out it was the wrong bus station (the hostel people told us the wrong one), so the taxi driver took us to the right one. We got there to find out we had the wrong time (the hostel people and Lonely Planet were both wrong on the time). So we began our adventure by waiting for two hours to catch the 7:30am bus to Nicoya, where we could get another bus to Nosara. We got to Nicoya at 12:30 to find the 12:30 bus to Nosara was about to leave and was full to the brim with people and bags in every seat and people hanging out the window. So we had to wait for the 3pm bus to Nosara.

We managed to push ourselves onto that bus, which was almost as crowded as the first. The ride to Nosara was a classic, dusty, jolting ride in an old school bus.

(This is a view inside the bus.) We sat there trying to sleep while being bounced all over thin, sweaty vinyl seats. I had a few moments of panic when we got off the bus, as the driver started driving away before I got my board off the back, so we were running after the bus yelling and pounding on the back. Luckily, the people inside knew what was going on, so the bus stopped, we got the board, and walked the longest 450 metros of my life to Kaya Sol, our hotel.

Yesterday was our first full day in Nosara. I woke up to the bellowing of howler monkies against a background of new agie-classical guitar-soundscape massage music because our cabina shares a wall with the massage studio. Lorraine and I got up and walked to the main strip of town to get Lorraine a surfboard. To keep dust down, they dump molasses all over the roads here, so by the time we made it to the surf shop our legs and feet were splatterd with liquid sugar and dust.

(Lorraine watching the molasses)

But Lorraine found a board, so we got a blown out mid-day surf session in the blinding sun, I almost had to keep my eyes closed it was so bright. Last night we ate a makeshift dinner of canned beans, tortillas, cheese, salsa and canned veggies in our cabina at a makeshift table. Gourmet stove-less cooking. I ate my food off of my frisbee.

Then we sat at the bar and drank Imperial and played cards and watched a band of old hippies play Creedence Clearwater Revival covers. This morning the surf was better. I am figuring out how to surf without the restrictions of a wetsuit and it is great! Well that´s all for now.

first attempt at posting photos

We made it to Nosara just in time to jump in the water at sunset. The perfect end to 12 hours of crowded bus stations and jolting bus rides. The internet place is closing in 5 minutes so this is my hurried attempt to post a few photos. The gnome from the hostel, Lorraine and I on the balcony at the hostel with San Jose in the background, 5:45 am at the bus station after we missed the first bus to Nosara.

San Jose...finally

30 hours of travel [horray for storms in the midwest], 4 airports, 3 plane flights and a shuttle that included a drive down a 5 foot wide alley with a slope of at least 70 degrees, finally made it to the hostel in San Jose! The hostel looks like a fortress with 15 foot high walls lined with barbed wire rings. But it has good views of the San Jose. I was gonna put up pictures, but I am a little delerious from being awake for 39 hours, plus, the computers are all locked in iron cages too. The inside is cool though with murals of gnomes! and crazy jungles all over. Lorraine and I wandered around the city for a while and managed to piece enough Spanish together by completing eachothers sentences to find the park and post office, buy stamps, get 20 pounds of groceries that won't fit in our packs and find our way back home. Tomorrow, we wake up at about 5am to catch the 6am bus to Nosara and 85 degree ocean water...