As I write this my friends are at the airport boarding a plane for Indonesia. Botik Resort. Deep in the Mentawai islands. Bamboo luxury and clean empty surf breaks. Dreamy. Those bastards…..
Originally I was scheduled to be part of this crew. Was all in with the locations and itinerary. A trip to an archipelago of islands I have dreamed of. A confluence of good fortune and great friends made all the details click. A lovely crew of humans for an early season surf mission on the other side of the globe. Big boards and early season micro swells. The dream….
But life has a tendency to interrupt all the best laid plans. The gremlins of love and other demons rose mischievously, and due to some unfortunate emails and cancelled plane tickets, a dream deferred. Fresh fish every night. Clean breaks every morning. So jealous. Life is a moody menagerie of pivots and pirouettes.
It is 130PM on the Osa Peninsula and Beck is playing from a tiny portable speaker atop an old wicker closet. Sea Change. A timeless classic. This is the current slow Sunday soundtrack between surf sessions. Gentle grooves to guide these warm siesta ambitions. Online I just bid $18 for the vinyl album on EBay. Stubbornly collecting records even from this deep jungle haunt. Delirious and moderately blissed out. The morning waves were lovely.
At the end of a bumpy dirt road I have found an escape hatch. A consolation to my Indonesian ambitions. A concious tear in the fabric of my own reality. A respite from the weekly Guanacaste hustle and the encroaching demands of work and family. An ongoing balancing act. Surf trips are great. Surfboards are great. Let’s go…..
J and S concocted a plan and rented a house on Airbnb. A small, wooden Tico style home at the end of a tiny lane. A throwback style to when rustic construction was all the rage, and likely the only option. The most affordable house in the area, is how the owner put it. A two story teak box with a large back porch. Genius layout. Open spaces and sufficient cover. A tree house with a kitchen and closed bedrooms. A simple floor plan direct from the Gods of Surf Trip Salvation. Adolescent visions with a hint of adult practicalities.
We have arrived. A multi day trip to a far flung locale with the sole intention of surfing and eating, with perhaps some writing and reading ambitions. No hustles and no errands. No invitations and no obligations. A genius floor plan. Have not driven the rented automobile since arriving five days ago.
Moments of bliss and genius. Something miraculous will come from all of this. When you exit the driveway you take a right along a rocky track road, wide enough for a car with high suspension, or a quad. About 200 meters down is another right onto a tight pathway. The jungle is constantly trying to encroach here, with vines and palms and branches creating a full canopy over a hallway of trees. The path is flat for the most part. The earth is soft. My bare feet are weary of critters and spikes. Walk gingerly along the path towards the ocean, delicately balancing a longboard on my head while navigating a steep stone stairwell. Then the path continues parallel to the curvature of the bay.
To the left is the Pacific Ocean, grand and indifferent. The ocean swell arrives from the south here. That energy drives into an outcropping of rocks that are visible from the short beach, at the end of the jungle path. When the swell hits the rocks here the ocean rises up violently. Waves form consistently here against the rocks, then proceed eastward into the bay. There is a second and third section, further inside, to this slow yet punchy wave. Reminds me of a far less populated Rincon. Wide open faces and potentially long rides. To connect all three sections and arrive deep in the bay is an accomplishment, and a long paddle back out. One can sit at any of the three points and be satisfied catching waves from there. The take off is surprisingly fast and tight, but then the wave softens and the face is a wide canvas to draw out smooth lines. A single fin longboard delight.
By this time I have not operated a vehicle in 6 days. Have not been to the hardware store. Have not visited any store. Have not tapped my credit card or eaten out. J and S rented the last Tico house in the neighborhood and we have been curiously bubbled up and gloriously exempt from the greater, chaotic, speeding world. The entire neighborhood is literally off grid. Although we do have solar power and Starlink to keep us connected. We watched the Knicks playoff game last night. Saw the president get rushed out of a ballroom. But this little tropical country, the size of West Virginia, has yet to run power lines or fiber optic cables this far out in the jungle. Charge the phones during the day, I am instructed. There is no inaudible buzzing from the overhead lines. No anxious waves and accumulative cancers. The horizon remains gloriously uncluttered. A deeply entrenched stillness. The hint of secrets. Permission to do very little. The privilege of disconnection. The sound of Howler monkeys all day and night.
To visit such a thoroughly unwired locale is a rare opportunity in this digital day and age. The modern hunger for immediacy and more of everything is viral. The tsunami of sales. Meetings and budgets. Deliveries. Lunch breaks. Economies of scale. The unknown AI storm on all the horizons. I get it. We are all in it. All willing participants. I love my stuff and do not like waiting long. Yet, the chance to get away from it all is a tonic of perspective. We are still organic beings that appreciates rest via a timeless commune with nature. In the soft hum of jungle and forest the muses whisper clearly. Adequate pace and time to remember whom you wanted to be before arriving here. Momentarily removed from the wheel of industry that drives all our lives, whether you are hawking watermelons on the road to Santa Cruz, or constructing microchips in Taiwan. The relatively untouched corners of the globe are like charging pads for our soul.
The Osa Peninsula is not really a secret. There are people around. I can see another house from the back porch. There is a small parking lot in front of the break. Across the road is an aging hotel hosting North Americans on yoga retreats. This jungle oasis is not a secret in the manner of mystery surf breaks at the end of a bush-waked 2 mile path. We are not completely out there. But we are absent from the paved roads. The commercial centers and the development billboards. The distinct rancor of growth and the competitions that inherently follow. This virus of progress is heavily prevalent around the Guanacaste Peninsula in Northern Costa Rica, where I live and work. I am a participant in it, and ensuingly a problem.
A few days down here amongst the Spider Monkeys and the empty dirt tracks will force any expat with a plan to wonder what we are actually doing here. Our eyes are big and our pockets are occasionally deep. To be so heavily fortified by nature here, on a tiny bit of land jutting out into the Pacific Ocean, in the second most biodiverse location on earth, demands peace. Serenity by osmosis. The negative ions rush up on the soul when paddling out into the clean ocean. The innocence of exotic colored birds, with their exaggerated yellow beaks and purple polka dot tails, crossing a muddy dirt road on their thin legs, seemingly oblivious to my presence. Fabulously ignorant to my purpose. To what I have.
All little weird niche activities arrive with their own brand of immersion and retreat. Yoga has a popular brand for that retreat action these days, especially in these wellness travel parts of the world. Luxury has transplanted the cave in that genre. Climbers have their dirt bag romances. Camp Four. The Pit. Mattress in the back of a Toyota Tacoma with a cab on the back. The small town ski bum, living solely for powder days, ten to a house, is a classic champion of rogue living. Everybody dreams up their own solution to the complex problem of living. The perplexing passage of time. Negotiating our own private greatness alongside the prickly demands of society and responsibility. Finding the disconnect; the peace and silence we hunger for, amidst the rubicon of modern adulting, is like desperately removing one’s head from a hungry lion’s mouth. Hence a surf trip down the coast.
Inner discourse can be a motherfucker. The stories we tell ourselves. The demands and devotions. Wives and work. Hard practiced excuses for daily existence in whichever jungle you roam. J and S rented a house. Surf trip destination One. Ground zero for salt and exploits and longboard romance. Clean on the inside. Breaking at the point. Rocks are showing. The wind came up and turned side shore at 8am. Bumpy and textured. The girls got a few early rides and looked like champions of skill and grace. J rode some short inside peelers, aimed directly at the half submerged inside boulders, but kicked out before getting boxed in. Eventually the tide comes up and kills the entire inside game. The sun is out yet there are significant clouds on the horizon.
Amongst this marine magnificence are those humans in the line whom you pass a few words with and remember forever. That couple from Telluride. That skinny longboard physicist with braids from Santa Terry. The family of rippers — dad with the blonde dreads and wiry frame, mom locked in and charging, their 6 year old left to fend for himself and learn. The older paddle board couple that no one likes. Everyone is trying.
Surf trips can be revered for their subtle simplicity. Like a race car driver stoic into a sharp turn. Just enough gas to hit that apex; just enough throttle to negotiate the curve. Fully present and wonderfully simple. Surf trip as jungle salvation. Curled up and waiting for the next session. The bed littered with journals and books and a phone. Guitars and coffee before 7am. The constant weights of love and finance are deposited at the front door. Dreaming of the human you were meant to be, and the skills you hoped for. In the closet hangs a well worn shirt passed down from my father. A fat longboard accompanies me down the path twice a day. Blessed be a surf trip misfit. The time and treasure and courage to not do all that much for a few days. Lock in and dream.
Fortune is a relative concept. The shop is closed until Friday. Closed for research and development. Jeff Parker is on the radio. Bury me here. Just like this. After days of surfing to exhaustion I have determined that the rails are too fat. This design needs a bit more rocker at the nose to be truly useful. Research and development. Paragraphs for sale. LL went out early because it looked really clean. Because she can. The entire cabin is waiting for sunset.
J and S are so stoked. Minimum two sessions a day. The tide chart acts as a road map. Alternating between breaks up and down the coast, never further than a short walk from our wood cabin. Locked in. Surf Trip Fever. Money down. Eyes up. We dream of these places and times. Dates between jobs. Years before kids. Limbs before ailments. J and S are packing up and preparing to head out. Every niche has their crazies. Every town has a story it tells itself, and others. Just strange enough to keep it friendly. Just enough money to get home.
Surf trip as a salty French Sunday. Bookended with waves. Head high and peeling. 9’0 short glider shape. Single fin. Took a few days to unlock the potential, because initially the wave felt new and the board felt slow and clunky. But just did not know how to ride her yet — where to place the curves. But on the third day I caught a long right and the board slid into gear surprisingly effortlessly. In an instant it all made sense. Transcendent. A moment of absolute oneness. Presence. The board made all the inside sections effortless. The single fin digs into the face like thin fingers through a bowl of rose pedals. A whole surf trip, hundreds of miles, thousands of miles, for a gliding singularity . That one wave. All the years and all the miles and a billion paddles and decades of battered optimism. The surf trip reckoning. Game knows game. Point and go. Take it square on the chin.
When I finally go home that one moment upon the wave face will follow me into the shaping room and out onto my local beach. Will serve as ammunition next time I am getting hammered on the inside. Next time I spend a whole session out there and get no waves. The next time I wonder why in the world am I doing this? Surf trip incarnate, as fuel to get over all the upcoming hills.
