Warm seas, green trees, and monkeys, Pura Vida! (translation: Pure Life) The locals use this saying for greetings, goodbyes, thank you's etc. they say it and mean it living the pure life. This was the trip of a lifetime, full of extreme adventures... and of coarse plenty of relaxation. We arrived in Guanacaste in the mid afternoon so stoked to be in Costa Rica but kinda burnt from travel, we went straight out to the ocean. The beach we were staying at does not have waves so we went for a quick swim in the almost 80 degree ocean water, just hung out had a few drinks. But day two, is when the real adventures started. We commandeered a local taxi driver "Don Carlos". Don Carlos drove us around all day one of our stops was about 20 miles away, headed to a beach call Flamingo. We were about half way to Flamingo when we drove through a small town called Brasalito this was where Don Carlos is from so he took us on a couple of detours showing us the way the locals live, pointing out the landmarks along the way, it was right about then when we said to ourselves "we found an awesome taxi driver". When we pulled up to Playa Flamingo we got to see one of the most beautiful picture perfect beaches in the world, yep just like the Corona commercials, but better because we were actually there. Not even one foot print in the sand much less a crowd of people. Next stop Tamarindo. When we are leaving town we pulled up on a couple dirt bikes with men wearing uniforms that read "Policia" they were cruising pretty slow but that doesn't slow our taxi driver down. No joke Don Carlos was driving about 40 MPH riding the ass of the cops leaving only about 12" between his front bumper and the back tire of the Police motorcycles! Our hearts are pumping and we are thinking oh man here we go what is about to happen, you wouldn't believe it unless you saw it but the cops just pulled over to the shoulder and flagged us to pass them as if they were apologizing for getting in our way?? Mind blowing! Anyway, we get back on the road and we are still headed to Tamarindo, we see several motorcycles on the road while on our way, but the most interesting was the guy that was sitting on a weed whacker, yes a weed whacker while riding a motorcycle and of coarse it was spread across the seat like an airplane wing so if he were to get to close to anything while riding by it would spin right around and rip his ass right off of his legs. We finally got to Tamarindo and checked the surf. After talking to a couple locals we found out that the talk of the town was that a crocodile had gotten loose from the sanctuary in the nearby riverbed and bit off a tourists had only a few days before we got their. Anxious to surf Ollies Point and Witch's Rock we started in on the hunt for someone with access to a boat. We met a local surfer Rolfi Obando who's buddy has a boat in CoCo beach, Double Shakas! We planned the trip to Witch's Rock & Ollie's Point... I have no words that can describe the feeling of filling a life long dream of surfing some of the best waves in the world. Perfect breaks all day myself, my wife and maybe 3 other guys in the water (super cool surfers). Pura Vida!!
Costa Rica