Nosara-Tamarindo

After leaving Santa Teresa, we spent 4 days in Nosara, a relatively sleepy little surf and yoga town on the Nicoyan peninsula. The waves were phenomenal and so much more forgiving than ST, so we had a great time taking advantage of that, and the fact that our new hotel had both a pool AND A/C (not to mention a beautiful yoga space). Even though WaveTrotter was beyond amazing, we were excited to revel in the luxury of a cool room at night and a dip in the pool during the hottest parts of the day. At the hotel, we met a really awesome couple from New Jersey, Dan and Laura, who we spent time with surfing and went out to dinner with at a great Argentinian steakhouse called La Brasa. We've been super lucky this trip in meeting great people. Outside of the surf camp in Portugal, it was hard to meet people when we were in Europe, so Costa Rica has been a dream for making new friends. It felt like just as we were finally getting the hang of the town and the wave, we left for Tamarindo, but Nosara was a great little blip in the grand scheme of the trip.

From Nosara, we continued north towards Tamarindo, or Tamagringo, as Niko’s brother, Sepp put it. And gringo is right. I felt like we had been

transported to a sort of San Diego like town, but filled with a bunch of New Yorkers. Everyone and everything was American. Sports bars, yard sticks of alcohol, cheese burgers, clubs playing weird remixes of the Black Eyed Peas (can you believe Let's Get it Started is STILL playing!?), and the unmistakably loud and truthfully, obnoxious speech of our fellow countrymen. Ah, the comforts of home, right in Costa Rica! Needless to say, we were mildly put off by Tamarindo from the moment we got off the bus and checked into our hotel. Not to mention the wave in Tamarindo was a giant, and I mean giant, cluster you know what. 50 people in the water, all paddling for the same wave, with big foam beginner boards, colliding with one another, boards flying in the air, landing on heads, blood everywhere, limbs floating in the water. Ok-maybe a little bit of an exaggeration but still, pure carnage. We took one look at that and said, NOPE and body surfed at at a safe distance away in the water instead. All of this is not to say we’re above beginner breaks. By no means are we good surfers but what we didn’t want to happen is we get knifed by someone else’s fin going for a wave with 50 other people at the same time, decommissioning ourselves for the rest of the trip. So again, NOPE. The only bright spot in our “Tama” trip was seeing the Frenchies again. We met up with them at their Airbnb on their last night in Costa Rica and had a blast drinking, talking politics, the prevalence of guns in America (they were enamored with the idea of cowboys-I didn't dash their dreams that cowboys are kind of few and far between these days and that most people who own guns are...well...not cowboys. No further

elaboration needed) and swapping surf stories.

After a couple days of floating around aimlessly, we finally decided to GTFO of there and book a new hotel in Playa Grande, just across the crocodile infested river mouth that separates the former from Tamarindo. The area is chill and surf focused with a good break, likely where we should have been from the jump, but it’s all good. We’re relishing this little pocket of quietness from the madness before we head up to El Salvador on Friday. A lot of factors are involved in planning a surf trip so it took us a little while to settle on El Salvador, but ultimately it looks like the right move for what we want. We’ll be staying at a Wavetrotter-Esque surf guesthouse, literally right in front of a couple of really great breaks in a town called El Zonte. El Salvador is by no means touristy, as far as we can tell, but this stretch of coastline is decently traveled by backpackers and surfers alike so it should be a good mix of authentic El Salvadorian culture and comfort. We’re excited to get a little more off the beaten path in El Salvador and get back to the only thing we want to do all day: surf.