Left from TIA early Tuesday morning to MIA International, and then from there to San Jose, Costa Rica. Checking in at TIA took so long because there was 12 of us in our group and 4 of them surfers!! The cost per board was $70 each way! From TIA to Miami is about 40 minutes and from MIA to San Jose is about 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Once in San Jose we packed into two buses with all of our luggage and boards to get a rental van. After sitting around looking at each other for an hour we were finally on our way to Jaco in two Chrysler MIni vans!! Leaving the rental car shop we took a wrong turn and took to the local streets of San Jose. None of us in our group had ever been here before and no one was fluent in Spanish!!! Trying to get directions from locals and taxi drivers, it was all sign language to us, and when we did find someone who spoke english it sounded like go down this street 100 meters turn left at the pig pen then right at the old church and you will find your way from there!!! Everything in Central America is measured in Metrics system. So speed is measured in kilometers and gas is in liters. Every 500 Colones is equal to 1 USD.
The highway system in Costa Rica is very confusing and is easy to get lost! The roads are very bumpy and most are not paved. There are few street signs or lines on the road to divide spaces! I don't think i have ever been passed so many times before in my life! When stopped at stop signs locals on dirt bikes or motor cycles will squeeze to the front spot like its what your supposed to do! After making our way through very narrow 2 lane highway up and down mountains, almost being side swiped by semi trucks and buses. We made it to the beach town of Jaco! This town is very interesting in the fact that you can walk down the street and be offered the services of a woman or drugs on the same corner as a cop is sitting having his evening dinner!!! There are plenty of restaurants and bars ranging from really cheap to extremely expensive! With a mix of a few shops in between. Just south of Jaco is the next beach town called Playa Hermosa where we had rented a 4 bedroom 3.5 bath house. The dirt road leading to the house off of Hermosa road had 100000 potholes that were each a foot deep, rotted out bridge and too many frogs and red colored crabs to count! Driving down this road you can see all the different peaks that Hermosa offers. If planning on a trip to this beach and you have never been, Beware of very strong rip currents and heavier than expected waves with bomb set waves that come out of no where!! After getting situated into our house the surfers of our group headed out across the street from the house for a real wake up call of some southern Hemisphere Juice!!! The surf ranged from 1foot overhead to 4foot overhead everyday throughout the trip! The days are very long here with the sun rise at around 5:00 AM. In the morning the waves are very glassy then in the early afternoon the wind turns onshore along with the tide pushes in making for huge shore break! In the evening the wind turns offshore again and you can get an amazing night session with beautiful sunsets in the foreground and the tropical green rainforest mountains in the background! There are a ton of local activities to do in Jaco and Hermosa while the on shores are flowing. You can go Zip lining, hiking, horse back riding, casinos to spend a lot of money in a short amount of time, or check out the many local surfshops such as "WOW surf" in Jaco. Talk to locals and go on an adventure for a waterfall!
We went to a local bar restaurant called "Rippers" and met this local fisherman/surfer named Arnold! Every morning he wakes up and goes out on his boat with his buddies and what ever fish they catch they clean and sell that night! When he gets done he goes for a surf sesh behind the restaurant "The Backyard" then heads back to the bar for the night! He told us there was a waterfall on top of this mountain around the corner. So the next afternoon after surfing 2foot overhead glass at Jaco we headed up this dirt one way road that we kept on bottoming out on up this mountain in search of this water fall. After many trips down long dead end side streets we found this local who after 20 minutes of sign language communication agreed to show us where it was. He spoke very quickly to my friend Danny who didn't understand one word he said and all Danny said was "Si" and we turned around and he was sitting in the front seat of the van ready to go! Bottoming out some more, we reached the waterfall where it turned out was clean enough to drink and was very cold and refreshing!
We stayed close to the house surf wise, only surfing 3 different spots that were close to the house! We surfed Estereos Oeste which is about 15 min south of Hermosa, Hermosa and Jaco. Hermosa is a big powerful wave that has many close outs but many huge barrels and fast sections for big turns. Jaco was a little smaller than Hermosa but was still pretty big and powerful and had many playful lefts and rights along with barrel sections. I cant say enough about how strong the rip tides are on this coast. They are handy when trying to paddle out but if you are not paying attention you can get sucked out 50 yards or more away from where the waves are breaking without even noticing because you paddled for dear life to get under one of the bomb set waves that would sneak through!! The other spot that we surfed was Estereos Oeste. Which was a very long mushy playful left and right wave. It was no where near as strong as Hermosa or Jaco but still provided the size and playfulness of each without the barrels. I have never seen a stand up barrel or a body boarder get up drop knee and then throw a giant spray into a 360 before until i came to Hermosa. We didn't see any kind or sign of sharks at all. There was only one time when we were in the line up at Hermosa behind "The Backyards" restaurant that a Rooster fish popped up chasing bait!! That was a sight to see but scared me to death because it was only a few feet away!
We also visited a city south of us called Quepos which was about an hour away. The ride to there was pretty boring because for the majority of the ride there is nothing but giant palm trees. To get there you have to pass over these narrow,old, one way bridges!! When you are waiting in line to cross one of these bridges during the day you are greeted by little kids no older that 5 selling home made bread for 500 colones a piece on each side so when you are stopped both of them would come and knock on both windows. When you are on one of these is sounds like it is going to cave through any minute and you are just going to drop into the river! The last person that is to go through the bridge holds a red flag and passes it to a guy that is standing on the other side to give to the last person going the opposite way! Dirt bikes and motor cycles are always the first to cross the bridge no matter if you are stopped or are moving they cut in front of you with no regard to anything! We didn't really walk around the city because it started to rain but went to this restaurant called El Avion that was a C-123 plane that was one of 2 cargo planes during the Iran -Contra that took off out of Costa Rica to Nicaragua. The plane was set in place on top of a mountain over looking the water and an island with a spectacular view! We asked one of the waiters if they knew how high up we were and they said 500 feet, but i know it was higher than that! The ride back over those bridges at night was a little scary because you couldn't see anything looking out to the side because there were no street lights or anything around!
The ride back to San Jose was much easier now that we knew where we were going for the most part! The one sign on the highway that is most present is the speed in maximum velocity! It changes from 80kph to 40kmp around every turn! We got pulled over for doing 86kph in a 60kph zone, and one tip im going to pass on for those who get pulled over is PAY OFF the cops. Ask to negotiate because the cop that pulled us over said he was going to get the ticket and as he walked back to the car we yelled can we negotiate something. The cop came back and said yea you give me $20 US and you can be on your way.... Another interesting thing that we learned from Arnold the bar owner is that whenever a cop comes into his bar he treats them with royalty and they eat and drink for free! In return Arnold does not have to own a drivers license and will never get in trouble, nor have to pay a cop for anything.
We had an amazing time the week that we visited the amazing country of Costa Rica and I cant wait to come back! Book your trip this summer when the waves are at best and there is not a lot of rain!
