The swell jumped up at Playa Negra, and I scored more epic waves, pulling into several barrels and even getting my bikini top blown off, an event which everyone in the lineup found very exciting.
Bob Witty said the swell looked promising for Northern Guanacaste, and organized a Real Surf Trips expedition to Santa Rosa National Park, where we planned to surf Witch’s Rock and Ollie’s Point, two spots I had heard about, but doubted I would have the chance to see due to their inaccessibility.
But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body. And not only this. Our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the water from the sea is salty. We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and our sweat. And we are crying the oceans, in our tears.
-Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
As I drove from Pavones back to Playa Hermosa with Marie and Roberto, we talked about my plans for heading north. On their recommendation, I decided to go to Playa Negra, a heavy, high performance reef break. Roberto warned me that it tended to get crowded when it was good, and the bus situation was questionable, but I decided to take my chances.
She wondered what it was, this sensation: if it might be called happiness, or whether it would more rightly be called fear.
– Naomi Wood, Mrs. Hemingway
A massive south swell was rumored to be heading for Costa Rica on the first of May. It started as a whisper. As April drew to a close, it gained momentum, building to a crescendo of cackling jesters, becoming a singular, maniacal fixation. I was eager to keep heading north, and began to solicit information about surf breaks on the Nicoya Peninsula that could handle a big south. A tico who had lived in the area for years told me that nowhere on the Nicoya would be able to manage it. I looked at a map in disbelief. How could this be? It didn’t make sense. But the more people I questioned, the more certain the answer became. Nowhere. Nothing. No.
We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
– Joseph Campbell
My friends Marie and Roberto live in Playa Hermosa, just a few hours bus ride to the north of Dominical. Looking back, Marie was an important inspiration for this trip from the moment it began to take shape. I met her three years ago in El Salvador. I was traveling with friends and she was solo; living feral on the beach with her tent and surfboard. A fuse lit up in my mental circuit board, expanding my comprehension of what is possible in this life.
One morning I awoke to find Pavones flattened and overcast. The marching lines of waves had slowed to a dribble of diminutive looking soldiers washing up drunkenly on the shore. I had suffered through two days without tap water, submersing briefly in the mucky river after each surf, tentatively dipping my head under the surface, shiny with oil and bubbling with patches of brownish foam, gingerly picking dead leaves from my hair, not quite clean after the shoddy attempt at a bath. I had wiped my dishes clean with a handkerchief after cooking, rinsed my hands with a splash of water from my bottle, squeezed paste onto a dry toothbrush, gone to bed with a sunscreen smeared face, brushed the sand from my cut feet and cleaned them as best I could with a handkerchief moistened with alcohol, my insect bites singing for want of a shower all through the night. Oh yes, I did all this without complaint, and more, so long as those shapely waves kept wrapping around the point and fanning out in lustrous splendor. But the morning the waves ceased, I packed and planned my exit.