Coda

In the last few days I was lucky to receive some more photos (thanks, Laura!). Here are a few of my favorite close-ups:

Girl, look at that body

Game face

Cute curly wave

Foamy

Intentional

All good things

After a long day of travel, I'm finally back in Seattle and looking forward to lunching on some delicious Indian food and a big slice of the beautiful raspberry pie Holly made me as a welcome home present. Later on, I may flush an entire roll of toilet paper down the toilet, just because, dammit, I can.

To my friends in Nosara - thanks for the kindness and the joy you brought to my adventure. I already miss paddling out to a lineup of friendly and familiar faces.

The end of the line

Nice ride

A scorching left-hander from yesterday, presented in two parts:

Steep

Steeper

Surprisingly, I managed to ride this one all the way in, even after that wall of whitewater you see above landed between my shoulder blades. Check out that offshore wind!

If you can't be with a wave you love...

... love the wave you're with.

February 29

The wrong way

Today, I picked up a copy of all the photos that Surfing Nosara has taken of me over these past 11 weeks. I thought I'd share some shots of a few of my less successful rides.

January 18

February 9

February 9

Februrary 10

March 24

Aaaah - I do enjoy a good wipeout picture.

A funny joke

The property manager's assistant just stopped by. The complex just got a real internet hookup. They are putting a wireless router in my apartment tomorrow. After 10 weeks of super-glitchy skype calls, I am going to have high-speed internet. For one day.

The final countdown

Only three days left.

It seems like I left Seattle a lifetime ago, but somehow I feel like I've only just arrived in Nosara. It's hard to remember the job that I quit two days before I got on the plane that brought me here. It's hard to imagine why I didn't quit sooner.

It will be good to be home. I miss Holly, my friends, real grocery stores, good restaurants, taking walks in sub-90-degree temperatures. But I'm going to miss the handful of friends I've only barely begun to get to know here. I'm going to miss the sun and the beach. I'm going to miss surfing most of all.

The experience of this trip wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but it was more like what I was expecting than I expected it to be, if that makes any sense.

I'm pleased with how far my surfing has come. It was hard work, pleasant as the work environment may have been, and I'm quite proud of what I've achieved. I still have an almost infinite list of surfing skills to acquire and master -- but I've made that first, quantum leap from beginner ("I'm learning to surf") to intermediate ("I'm a surfer who's learning X"). That feels pretty good.

My first cutback

This morning's session featured my first successful cutback!

It was slow, it was sloppy, but it was undeniable.

More news from the water dept.

Updated: 8:29 PM

Joke's on them. It's pouring rain outside!

Original post

Received just now:

Date: 3/21/2012 9:41:40 AM
Subject: section K

everyone.....someone ran over a meter last night and no one knew about it so we lost a whole tank of water.......possible outage in K section today until it recoups.....thanks chiqui

Oh, Nosara, I'm not going to miss your quaint civil infrastructure at all.

The whole ball of wax

The waves were too big and too mean for me (or almost anybody else) yesterday. So instead of going out in the afternoon, I cleaned all the grungy old wax off my freshly-repaired surfboard. Over time, the wax loses its stickiness and turns into a dense, dull, grunge.

A plastic spatula worked great as a scraper

Compressed scrapings

The fresh, clean, new wax coat I put on this morning was a pleasure to surf on.

Dedication

Check it

Seven-six

Last Friday, when I came in from my morning surf session, I discovered that something had knocked a pretty big dent in the bottom of my surfboard. Bummer - but the odds were good that sooner or later it was going to happen, so I'm not going to get too worked up about it.

Whatever

The upside - it finally forced me to ride another board. I've been meaning to try a shorter board for a while now, so I rented myself a 7'6" funboard - four inches shorter than what I'm used to.

For those who don't surf, here's the lowdown on surfboard length. Longer boards are more stable, more buoyant, easier to paddle, and are capable of catching smaller waves. So why would anybody want to surf a shortboard? For the same reason commercial jumbo-jets aren't used as fighter planes - agility. A classic longboard pretty much wants to do one thing - travel in a straight line along the face of a peeling wave. With a shorter board, you trade away stability and ease for the ability to do quicker, sharper maneuvers.

I've been riding the new board for a few days now with pretty good success. It really does take a lot more work to paddle, but my stamina and fitness are good enough now that I can do it without much difficulty - which is not to say without soreness and tiredness the next day. It is surprisingly more maneuverable. Overall, it's a fun change and I'm happy to have achieved one of my technical goals for this trip, which was, in fact, to be competent on a 7'6".

Wheels

Last week, Kris, Hugo, and I rented a golf cart, the cheapest form of motorized transportation available to tourists here.

That's right

Since we have to return it tomorrow, we decided to check out Nosara Centro today while we had the chance. At top golf-cart speed (aka barely moving) it takes about 15 minutes to drive there. Here are some of the highlights:

Turning onto main street of Nosara Centro

Some kind of awesome (presumably) half-finished building

The local airport

A post office (function unknown)

A surprisingly large display of Tang at the supermarket

Monkeys! Right off the porch!!

A movie Kris Shaw made on his iPad. You better enjoy it, because it took approximately 1 million minutes to upload.

Wave-assisted macro-dermabrasion

The technology needs some refining.

Constellation #1 by Mar Pacifico, 2012,
surfboard fin on human skin through Lycra

It's just cosmetic. There's no bruising, no pain (after the initial bit), and no blood ever got out. Just a bit of a rough scrape is all.

Hangin' out

There was some debate between Holly and me over the proposition "sometimes monkeys hang by just their tails." I took the the pro side, she the anti. This evening when a troupe of howlers was queuing up to cross the street in front of my apartment via the power line, one rudely held up the line by dangling by her tail for about three minutes when she got to the front of the line.

Monkey, hanging by its tail

Some moves

I was flipping quickly through some of the pictures of Kris and me couldn't resist posting this:

Dance! Dance! Dance!

Going gold

Who's that boy with the dreamy blond locks?

Why it's me!

Twice bitten

For the benefit of the faint hearted, let me preface this story by saying that it ends well.

I was a dozen paces from the apartment on my way to the beach this morning, surfboard tucked under my arm, when something stung me on the front of my left knee. I didn't see what it was - I assumed, and still assume that it was a wasp or a bee - but it was immediate and painful, and with much muttered swearing I hopscotched back to the casita, quickly stripped off my board shorts to make sure there wasn't still a stinging creature lurking in them, popped a Benadryl, and with more muttered swearing and a painful red welt on my knee, put my board shorts back on and headed out for a second time.

Ten minutes later, I arrived at the beach, and headed over to the big log under which I habitually hide my flip flops. As I bent over to put down my surfboard... I felt something sting me in the left side of my ribs. I frantically clutched at my rash guard and yanked it away from my ribs, and that's when the scorpion fell out. Not a little tiny baby scorpion like in the photo I posted before. A big one - probably in the neighborhood of two inches long. You see, my rash guard fell off the hanger it was drying on last night, and I forgot to shake it out when I put it on this morning. I probably spent 30 minutes with that scorpion just hanging out against my skin before he finally decided to get feisty.

Luckily, the sting was probably not a sting at all, for it didn't turn red, swell up, or even really hurt after the initial nip. I suspect it may just have been a pincher grab. In any event, I was thankful that the coincidental beesting had led me to take that Benadryl.

And, as they say, you should have seen the other guy. My standard protocol when I encounter a scorpion is to smash it, and in this instance I followed protocol with a large stick and somewhat more than the usual frisson.

Tangled up in blue

Today Kris, Hugo, and I independently chose to wear the outfits documented below.

The best part is that the brightness level of each shirt corresponds to the brightness of the wearer's skin.

Guests!

I'm happy that my friends Kris and Hugo have arrived safely and are settled in. Contemplative solitude has its virtues, but pizza and beer with friends can't be beat.

Smoothie time

I am very thankful that my apartment is furnished with a working, albeit very cheap, blender, because it means I can make smoothies. My signature smoothie recipe is as follows:

• Three or four ice cubes
• A big, slightly overripe banana
• About a half-cup of pineapple
• A few spoonfuls of yogurt
• A splash or two of milk (optional)

I keep all these ingredients on hand at all times. Smoothie time follows the lunar calendar, but it is nevertheless somewhat unpredictable, and it's best to always be prepared.

Today I discovered that I mistakenly bought strawberry-flavored instead of plain yogurt last time I went to the store. I didn't even know they had strawberry-flavored yogurt. Turns out it is delicious in smoothies.

Oh, what a beautiful morning!

The stars aligned this morning to create a surfer's paradise at Playa Guiones - persistent offshore winds, high tide, warm, clear water, blue skies, and plenty of chest-to-head-high swell rolling through.

The result - tons of smooth, moderately-powerful, mellow, super peely waves. Sometimes the waves were so easy to catch it was like getting on a ski-lift. I had by far my longest rides to date.

The kicker is, after 9:30 AM there was hardly anybody in the water. By mid-morning on most days, the winds shift onshore, the waves start to get choppy, the surfing gets lousy, and the sun gets hot. Because of this, most of the surfers here habitually do early morning sessions and clear out by 10 AM. So when the conditions miraculously stay perfect, like they did today, anybody who sticks around has the waves all to himself. No hustling for position in the lineup, no deferring to better surfers, no drop-ins.

On a side note, I was sitting on my board, scanning the horizon for waves, when a sea turtle poked his head out of the water about 10 feet away from me. He must have decided he was at the wrong beach, because he didn't stick around to surf with us.

It was a good day.

How I spent my winter vacation

The irony of my current lifestyle is that I have a lot of free time, but very little free energy. As a result, my recreational activities are pretty undemanding. The lack of energy is mostly due to the all the surfing, of course - most days I spend a couple hours in the water in the morning and another couple in the afternoon (the exact times and durations of the sessions depend on the tide schedule and on how sleepy, sore, or lethargic I'm feeling). And don't forget the accumulated 40 minutes of walking with that 7'10" surfboard under my arm.

There's also the heat to consider. Between 11 AM and 3 PM, the sun is strong enough to send those of us from more northerly climes crawling to the sanctuary of a dark, air-conditioned bedroom. Especially following a foray into town for lunch or groceries - on foot, of course, so add another 20 minutes of commute time there.

Cooking anything also takes a long time. As in every rental apartment, the quality of the kitchen gear is abysmal, so chopping vegetables with the super-dull knife on the super-tiny cutting board takes forever, and the super-thin cooking pot distributes heat so poorly that everything has to be stirred constantly. And the super-crappy stove only has one full-size burner, so you have to cook things in stages and set them aside. And... you get the idea.

But when I'm not surfing, walking somewhere, eating, or cooking, I am totally free to use my tiny amount of remaining energy in any way I choose. I read books. I read the Internet. I usually Skype with Holly for a while around dinner time.

I don't have a TV (well, I do, but it only plays DVDs, and I don't have any) and my Internet connection is way too slow to stream video. So in lieu of watching TV, I've taken to listening to various old radio shows from the 1930s-1950s, many of which are available for free. When I was growing up outside of Washington, D.C., I used to listen to a bunch of these shows on WAMU every Sunday night on a program called The Big Broadcast, which apparently is still going after all these years. A lot of the shows are really corny, but also kind of fun, especially the advertisements. It's also fascinating to hear how WWII affects everyday life in the U.S. as it progresses. I can only imagine the uproar that would occur nowadays if the U.S. government imposed price controls and a ration coupon system on all food and consumer goods, and made public service announcements encouraging people to fight inflation by not buying new things. But hey, Kraft Dinner is only two ration points, ladies!

We're halfway there

Apologies for the dearth of posts lately. I was enjoying a few days hanging out with Holly, and the time just flies.

My sabbatical is past the halfway point now, and it seems like a good time to take stock of what I've accomplished and what I still hope to achieve.

For starters, I got the angst and anger about my old job out of my system. That actually took surprisingly little time, and the mental cleansing was so thorough that I almost wonder if I'm going to be able to coherently summarize what I did for the last few years when it comes time for me to write a resume or do an interview. Whatever. Good riddance, I say.

I haven't had any epiphanies. I haven't thought up the next great startup idea or the next major world religion. To tell the truth, I haven't done very much thinking at all on this trip, and it's been very refreshing.

I've read about 20 books so far, including a handful of excellent ones. Having the Kindle has totally changed the experience of reading on vacation. I won't bore you with book reports - at least until I run out of other ideas for posts.

I've got an insane farmer's tan, and the hair on the crown of my head has started to go blond. I think my tan has reached its fullest potential and stabilized. My hair will probably continue to lighten. I would like to add some lemon juice to the mix and see what would happen, but lemons do not exist in this country. There has been speculation in some quarters about whether lime juice would work. Your thoughts are welcome.

My surfing has improved a lot. I hear this from various people who've seen me in the water over the past weeks. When I arrived, I had a lot of difficulty catching waves. My paddling was weak. My wave reading was not very good. My popups were slow and inconsistent, and I used my toes. When I was riding a wave, I had a lot of body tension. I had not successfully done an angled takeoff, much less ridden a wave for more than a few seconds. Today, my paddling is pretty strong, and I'm able to chase down a decent number of waves. I don't have trouble catching waves (unless the waves are intrinsically hard to catch, as determined by whether everybody else is having trouble catching them). My angled takeoffs are solid, I usually pop up quickly, always without using my toes, and I can frequently claim a good high line on waves that don't close out right away. I've had a few rides that were pretty damn good. I still have a long way to go, and I'm honestly not very satisfied with my progress; then again I'm never satisfied with my progress, so I will defer to wiser minds and acknowledge that all things considered, I am doing all right.

Guest blogger: Holly

Here's what I have to say about February: it's much nicer here in Playa Guiones!  At the mid-point of John-Anthony's surf sabbatical, I am visiting and checking on his progress.  I'm pleased to say that his surfing skills, Spanish vocabulary, and tropical tan are all coming along nicely.

We've been busy checking out all the restaurants within walking distance, enjoying a few sunsets over the Pacific, reading each other The Hunger Games in the hammock, making banana-pineapple smoothies, getting bitten by mosquitoes at the pool, observing the monkeys and other passers-by, and, of course, playing in the surf.  I can't believe I have to leave tomorrow.

No hay agua

It's easy to forget how important water is - until there isn't any. Even in places in the U.S. that routinely experience drought, water conservation efforts rarely involve what in Guiones is apparently the standard response to a water shortage: turning off the municipal water supply.

This has happened a few times during my previous visits, but never for more than a couple hours at a time. But a couple days ago the water went off at mid-day and stayed off for about 24 hours - ruining my plans for a pasta dinner to say the least. Last night it went off for another 12 hour span. An email forwarded to me by the property manager this morning explains - well, explains is perhaps giving too much credit, touches upon is more accurate - the situation:

Subject: no water
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:16:11 -0800 

everyone.....i am sorry but tonight thursday at 8pm we forced to shut off the water to the entire system and project.......the board of directors are doing our very best to over come this crisis but it is what it is as i explained today in my earlier e-mail......you have no idea how much time and energy we all putting into delivering water to your homes......the system will be turned on again at 6:30am tomorrow and many locations may experience low pressure until the air escapes........hopefully with shutting it down tonight everyone can experience 36 hours of water until we have to shut it down again......this will be happening for at least the next 14 days...also i still do not have my complete mailing list so please pass the word to your friends.......thanks rick walker

One can readily surmise the severity of the crisis from the quantity of ellipses involved.

I might note that 6:30 proved to be optimistic by about two and a half hours, but this difference can safely be attributed to "tico time" - a mysterious time zone some unspecified degrees longitude west of here, according to whose clock all Costa Rican deadlines and appointments are approximately kept.

At any rate I am stocking up on water. Pitchers and bowls and pots full of it are crammed in the fridge and on the stove. And toilet use has assumed a tactical dimension normally experienced only during long road trips through unfamiliar country.

Happy Valentine's Day

Three Valentine's Days ago, in Manuel Antonio, Holly and I got engaged. It's too bad we can't celebrate that anniversary together today, but I'm very excited to see her when she arrives on Thursday.

Just engaged

I love you, Holly!

Climb and drop update

I've been striving to get the hang of the climb and drop for a few weeks now. It's been slow going, mostly because the surf conditions haven't been very cooperative. What I need in order to practice it effectively is medium-sized, clean, peeling waves. But what we've mostly had in recent weeks is no waves, tiny waves, choppy waves, and closeouts (waves where the whole face breaks at the same time instead of peeling). It's been frustrating.

In the last week, however, I've had three or four sessions where the waves were doing what I wanted and I was able to successfully execute some crude approximations of the climb and drop. In one or two cases I was even able to use it to get around a section of the wave that was closing out (a section closes out when the crest of the wave actually topples over and crashes down into whitewater - once you're surfing in whitewater the only thing you can do is let it push you straight in to shore or jump off and end your ride). A competent surfer can often get past a section that is closing out by dropping down the face and going around the front of the section, then climbing back up the still-peeling face on the other side. I haven't quite got the last bit down, but I'm getting there.

But most exciting of all for me was the one ride I had this morning when I for the first time managed to gain noticeable speed using the climb and drop. Being able to add speed beyond that at which the wave is peeling opens up a new world of possibilities in surfing. And it turns out that the climb and drop allows you to do this without violating the first law of thermodynamics. Here's my best attempt at unraveling the physics: most of the energy of a breaking wave is in the upper part of the wave face. You tap into that energy when you're riding along high on the face. When you drop down the face you trade some potential energy for additional speed, but because you are now lower on the face, you get less energy from the wave and quickly slow down. The climb and drop lets you use muscle energy to quickly move the board up and down the face in a kind of a salsa-ish body motion, and in so doing you repeatedly gain speed during the drops and then reclaim the high-energy region of the wave face before you lose all of that new speed. At least that's how I understand it. However it works, it works!

The king and the pawns

Because my IP address is identifiable as being in Costa Rica, the ads that I see online tend to be a bit different than what I'm used to. But this one, which has been showing up all over the place for the last couple days, really got my attention:

This makes me sad in so many different ways.

Camouflage

Seen during my lunchtime constitutional.

Ctenosaur aka "black iguana"

Little lizard of unidentified type

Corona on your pancakes?

Just to be clear, all the rest of the beer is kept in refrigerated cases at the other end of the store. Only the Corona is kept in the syrup section, and I would dearly love to know why.

Surfing tip: paddle right

Disclaimer: This post contains no pithy observations or photos. It is intended to document and clarify my insights into surfing technique for my own benefit more than for yours.


As I've said before, paddling is hard. But if you're like me, or many of the beginner and intermediate surfers I see out in the water every day, you're probably making it a lot harder than it has to be. In my estimation, poor paddling is the single biggest obstacle to beginners catching waves, bar none. The good news for beginners - especially scrawny ones like me - is that more effective paddling doesn't necessarily require a huge increase in muscle strength.

Position

If you are too far forward or too far back on the board, you are doomed. Find the right spot before you start paddling, every time.

Chest and back

If you're a boy, your nipples should be off the board when you're paddling. If you're a girl... well, the point is, your chest should be tilted up and out, not lying on the board. Don't hyperextend your back to achieve this. Think of it more as a backwards rotation of your ribcage. It takes a while to figure out the exact position that's right for you, and in my experience, the mid-back muscles that will allow you to hold this pose need a few days to build up the requisite strength and stamina. But once you get the hang of this, paddling will magically get twice as easy.

Shoulders

Assume the paddling position as previously described, with your chest up. Now make sure your shoulders are pulled back, and just let your arms dangle. If you're doing this right, you should be able to relax your arms completely and let them hang from your shoulders. Which brings us to...

Arms

In the first half of your paddle stroke, you're pulling yourself through the water. In the second half, you're pushing yourself. People tend to overemphasize the pulling and ignore the pushing. Imagine trying to climb onto a ledge. Is it easier to pull yourself up from a full hanging position, or push yourself up once you've got your hands below your shoulders? Pushing is much easier, because the muscles you use to push (chest and biceps) are much stronger than the muscles you use to pull (shoulders and triceps). So what you want to do when you're paddling is really focus your energy output on the second half of the stroke, when you're pushing water behind you. You can make this even more effective by describing a slight S shape with your hand as you paddle, so that your hand passes underneath your board as you pull and then curves back out as you push.

Hands

It's counterintuitive, but paddling with your fingers together doesn't make you go any faster. What it does do is require the muscles in your forearms to be constantly engaged to hold that flipper hand shape, which consumes energy that you could be using elsewhere and adds unneeded tension to your body. Instead, you want your fingers gently curled and completely relaxed. Shake your hands out in front of you and when you stop, you'll have perfect paddle hands.

Speed

Alex once told me that I only had two paddle speeds - OFF and FULL. The truth is, you usually don't need to be paddling at FULL. But as a beginner, when you're trying so hard to catch waves or paddle back out through them, you can get in the habit of always paddling as if your life depended on it. Relax. Developing your wave reading skills will get you way more waves than busting your lungs for every bump on the horizon.

Power

There are definitely times when you do need to paddle really hard in order to catch the wave (or avoid having the wave catch you). The key in these situations is to make sure you're actually paddling hard and not just fast. Every paddle stroke should make a noticeable difference. It's easy to paddle so fast that your form goes out the window and you don't actually go anywhere.

It took me a couple of weeks before I felt like my paddling finally "clicked," but when it happened it led to a huge leap forward in my surfing ability. All of a sudden I was paddling for more waves and catching more of the ones I paddled for. And catching waves is the prerequisite for everything else.

Wonders of modern telecommunication

My only previous experience living abroad for longer than a few weeks was the 1996-97 academic year I spent living in Florence, Italy. My phone contact was limited to a weekly call to my parents, using my AT&T calling card, which undoubtedly cost them a small fortune. At school we had a handful of computers that shared a dial-up Internet connection, and we had a single email address for all 22 of us students to use. We encouraged our college friends in the U.S. to put the recipient's name in the subject line so that whoever logged on first each morning could move the incoming emails into the student's folders in Eudora. Nobody else back home had email, so I went to the post office and stood in line to buy aerograms. And the occasional postcard:

Actual postcard sent from Italy

Fifteen years later, I'm in middle-of-nowhere rural Costa Rica, but I can talk to Holly every day over Skype for free. I have unlimited calling to any phone in the U.S. for less than $3 a month. Granted, my Internet connection is dog slow (it's via 3G) so video chat is pretty jerky. But holy crap, I can video chat. And email anybody I know. And post pictures of stuff I see so that my friends can see it too.

It really is amazing how different the experience is when you can stay connected.

Gee, it seems kind of crowded out here

Big, beautiful waves greeted me this morning when I arrived at the beach. You couldn't ask for a nicer swell. The only catch - the ocean was positively teeming with ugly yellow-brown jellyfish, millions of them, ranging from a half inch to several inches long, drifting around me, washing over my surfboard, bumping into my legs, tangling in my fingers as I desperately tried to paddle away from the horror, the horror...

In truth the psychological revulsion was much worse than the occasional stings, which are mild and utterly harmless. The sensation is akin to having something tugging on your arm hairs, and is irritating but not painful. Still. Yuck.

Notwithstanding the challenge of paddling through these swarms of tentacled sea-vermin - and perhaps partly owing to the slightly diminished number of surfers out in the water - I snagged some rides that undoubtedly constitute the best of my career to date. I successfully executed climb and drop sequences on several really screaming waves and a couple of times managed to stay on through the thunderous closeouts that followed. A stranger paddling out through the whitewater complimented me on one of my rides - a personal first.

Things I wish I had a picture of, but don't

• A foot-and-a-half-long fish that I saw swimming nonchalantly in a nearly vertical head-high wave that I was paddling out to last week. It was like an aquarium tank with no glass. I was so surprised I stopped paddling and got nailed by the wave. The fish appeared to have no thoughts on the encounter whatsoever.
• A stingray jumping out of the water about twenty yards from where I was surfing. The maneuver was so graceless that it took a second before I realized what I'd seen. It looked more like a mortarboard being tossed in the air at a gradation ceremony than anything else.
• Pelicans dive-bombing for fish. They do a good imitation of a WWI fighter plane getting shot down, first stalling out mid-flight, then spiraling wildly down and finally crashing dramatically in the water.

Becalmed no more?

Lest you, gentle reader, imagine that I have abstained from long and boring descriptions of my surfing progress of late out of respect for your preference for colorful anecdotes and photographs, you will be dismayed to hear that in truth it is only the poor quality and quantity of waves these past two weeks that have stayed these nimble fingers.

That could change today.

There are signs that the waves are indeed getting a bigger and arriving somewhat more regularly than they have in a long time. After yesterday afternoon's session, when I caught a scant two waves in my first 45 minutes in the water and had dry hair for the first 20 minutes, this morning's session was a godsend, even if the waves were objectively still underwhelming relative to the historical norm.

I'm not the only one excited by this. The surfing population of Guiones has been increasingly on edge as the lull has dragged on, the days turning into weeks, and the forecast perpetually claiming that a new swell will arrive in another three or four days. Unfortunately, that population has undergone a huge boom since last season, which has made the competition for scarce waves even more intense. Having been featured recently in Outside magazine and the New York Times, it seems this off-the-map surf spot is no longer as far off the map as it used to be, even if the two and a half hour ride from the nearest airport is as bumpy as it ever was. The silver lining in this wave drought may be that some first-time visitors will document their disappointing experience here online, and thereby dim Guiones' star a little.

Hopefully the new trend continues and we get some consistent, good-size, peeling waves in the next few days, so that I can resume boring you with the minutiae of my achievements (or lack thereof) in the water.

Molasses revisited

A few days ago another road - a stretch roughly 50 yards long on the way to the beach - was inexplicably selected for the molasses treatment. This time I took some photos for proof. To bad I can't take a picture of the smell of all that sugar going off in the sun.

Surfing tip: hands on the rails

Disclaimer: This post contains no pithy observations or photos. It is intended to document and clarify my insights into surfing technique for my own benefit more than for yours.


The following is something I came up with that has dramatically improved my board-handling skills and the consistency of my popups over the last couple of weeks:

Step 1: Find the correct spot to grab the rails.

First lie in the correct place on the board (this assumes you have already figured out where that is), then put your hands on the rails so that the bottom edge of your hands lines up with the bottom of your rib cage. You should already be grabbing the board here when you pop up - if you aren't, you're doing it wrong!

Step 2: Whenever you aren't paddling, grab the rails.

Whether you're sitting up, lying down, doing a turtle roll, scooting back to spin the board around, scooting forward to sit up, popping up, whatever - grab the rails at the spot you found in step 1. Imagine that there are elastic bands connecting your hands to those spots on the rails. When your hands aren't busy, they should snap right back to that spot.

Step 3: Make it unconscious.

Practice consciously putting your hands in the right spot until it becomes an unconscious habit. When you're waiting for waves, paddle a couple strokes, then put your hands on the rails, sit up, scoot back, scoot forward, and lie back down without taking your hands off the rails. Do this over and over and over. Eventually you will find that when you are ready to pop up your hands will magically already be in the right place without you having to think about it.

The littlest scorpion

This is the second pequeño escorpión I've discovered on my bedroom wall. It's blurry-looking because I already smashed it.

Around town

Here are a few pictures of some of the places and things I've mentioned in my previous posts.

Entrance to the footpath to town

Guiones main street

The mini - home of Costa Rica's most expensive produce

The produce truck, here shown across the street from the mini

Boutique row on main street

On the road to the super

The super

Entrance to the beach

The beach at low tide