After a not-too-late evening with our neighbors by their outdoor fireplace, and not-too-many beers with same, I wasn't all that excited about the waking up part of getting up to go surf this morning.

But I was out the door by 6:05 and had a nice session. The waves weren't good. Almost good, but not quite. It was, however, stunningly pretty out there. Glassy, light wind, birds soaring, sun streaming through scattered clouds onto a clean and deserted beach. Hard to complain! The best part is that I was out with three other people, all of them friends. So even with mediocre waves, it was a great morning.

Doesn't hurt any that my last wave was my best, and dropped me off considerately in about 6 inches of water.

I love it when that happens.

Labels: surf, tamarido, weather

We've been enjoying a sudden stop to the rainy season: the last 10 days have been sun sun sun, and not just a little hot as the accumulated moisture in the ground has been making 2 o'clock feel a little like a sauna.

The sunsets have been unbelievable, however, and there have been some nice breezy days.

Yesterday we got a typical November dousing of rain- pretty heavy, not very long duration. Great for all of our plants and a nice indication that the trees and fields will stay green for another week or two.

Also great as I've been procrastinating on the very important job of fixing up our irrigation system at the house. It was never done well, and the last five months of neglect haven't made it any better. If it didn't rain this week I was going to be forced into getting the drip system working at least well enough to keep stuff alive until I could fix it right. Now I can put it off for another week or two, *then* deal with the emergency that I will have ignored. Sort of like the Republican approach to fixing the economy...

Jocelyn seems to be winning her war with the bouganvillia. Her take-no-prisoners pruning approach was the subject of much debate between us, but I've got to concede that the areas in which she has been most aggressive are now the areas that look the best and are probably just about ready to explode in beautiful flowers (which is the only reason to keep that pernicious weed around the yard).

Last weekend we planted four plumeria trees around the yard- they are small now but two are in flower and we can't wait for "someday" when they grow up. We've also got four healthy-looking papaya trees that are coming along, though still a long ways from bearing fruit. I put two Jatropha trees in the ground as well, they are putting out new leaves and appear to be "happy". Our two volunteer tomato plants continue to grow and put out plenty of foliage, but so far no flowers thus no real hopes of fruit (yet!). We've been fertilizing them lackadaisically and with compost, now we are looking at getting some organic fertilizer more directly suited to making plump tomatoes come off of our plant! We take some consolation in that A) these are volunteer plants anyway and we didn't prep the soil at all and B) next year the soil will be much better for whatever we plant there.

As the dry season takes over, we are hoping that the two little tomatoes start cranking out some flowers. If not, ok, we'll just try again!

On the topic of soil- in case you care- I've been dismayed to learn that most of the "soil" in our back yard is really, incredibly, seriously, HORRIBLE. It looks like about two-four inches of mostly-clay is on top of about two or three feet of construction debris/rubble. While digging out a small hole for one of the trees I planted last weekend, most of what I pulled out was broken cinder block and 1-inch sized gravel. Good drainage, at least. But not much there to foster life. At some not-too-distant point we plan to build up some decking/planter beds. Instead of trying to amend the junk that is in the ground, we are planning to pile good soil on top, and plant our plants there. The preponderance of construction waste in the "dirt" helps explain why a large section of our front yard is about 8" sunken compared to the retention wall around it. I imagine that there is no small amount of form-work wood down there, rotting away, and also plenty of void spaces where the dirt is slowly but surely filling in. I only hope that our swimming pool is sitting on slightly more solid ground and that we don't awaken one morning to a new "water feature" spilling out of the front wall of our property.

The surf has been decent, got out twice last week and I'm really noticing the effects of a couple of months or rain. I refer not only to the sand bar being all messed up at my favorite break, but also to the dramatic reduction in paddling strength that I'm feeling out there! Between a long Sunday of gardening and a solid morning of surfing, my body was feeling pretty sore. In a good way.

Louie is back from the body shop! Hurray! And he passed his road test with flying colors. I had to replace one tire because it was worn too thin- the replacement that I got at a used tire shop was overpriced at $20, but got me through the inspection. If I don't sell him soon, I'll probably have to spring for two new tires anyway. Fact is, local "wisdom" has really rubbed off on me on this one and I'm stretching the life of the tires on the that truck to their utmost limit. It's pretty ugly. For the record: Louie is for sale, asking $11,000, 1988 hj60 Landcruiser (6-cyl diesel motor) well-built, well maintained.

Labels: Costa Rica, garden, landcruiser, surf, tamarindo, weather

For Orchid enthusiasts out there, this may not be impressive. Apparently these are very easy to grow, so I take no particular credit for having gotten them to bloom, but hey are darn pretty and I'm happy to see that they are happy, so I figured I may as well share. Also interesting: there are some ants that have been hanging out on the closed buds for the last few days. At first I worried that they might attack/eat/maim the blossom, but it seems that they aren't doing anything of the sort. They might be stealing nectar, which is fine with me, I suppose. Another theory is that perhaps they are "milking" aphids for a sugary substance that aphids produce. The thing is, I don't see any aphids, and aphids usually don't hang out on flowers, but rather on the sepals or stems of plants. So I'm at a loss. If you know more than I do about ants and orchids, please do enlighten us.

As a side note: if you like gardening, Costa Rica is your kind of place. A little bit of work, a little bit of attention, and POW! stuff grows gangbusters. It is even easier as you work your way up in elevation a little bit as the dry season is less dry, the wet is less wet, and the temperatures are more constantly in the high 70s. IF you are lucky (I consider us lucky) you might even have a little iguana decide to take up residence in your compost pile. I imagine that if (s)he is capable of complex thoughts, (s)he thinks of it more like "If you are lucky, you'll have a human come dump snacks on your sun-mound every day or two". Either way, so far we both seem to be enjoying the relationship.

Of course, there is no surf up in them thar hills, which has been a deal-killer for me, so far.
Speaking of surf, the minimal rain the last two days has allowed the bays to clean out some and I had a great session this morning. Only four of us in the water, nice sets of just slightly overhead.

A little sunshine in the swimming pool makes any day a little bit better.

Labels: garden, photo, surf, weather

After a long and muggy day of fixing the wheel situation on my Cruisers, I was torn between wanting to get in a surf and wanting to hold down the couch. In the end, I rationalized with myself that I would at least go to the beach and paddle out, for a minute or two. It I was tired/uninspired, I'd let myself be a couch potato.

Two hours later, with a huge smile on my face and the lingering memory of a technicolor sunset, I drove home a new man- relaxed, happy, and feeling wonderful.

Paradoxically, I almost always feel that great feeling when I go surfing, and yet I still only make it out about half as often as I could go.

In light of all the minor annoyances that we endure living in Tamarindo, I've got to try harder to enjoy the luxury of paddling out in chest to head-high waves, hanging with three of four buddies (and a few tourists, but just a few) and riding a really fun wave in a beautiful setting.

Labels: Costa Rica, sunset, surf

Paddled out over the holiday weekend and had some fun waves. Pretty strong offshore breeze that isn't the sort of winds we expect in March, but no complaints here! It wasn't a particularly notable session, except for the pleasant surprise on my way back to the car... I bumped into my office manager who is also a photography enthusiast and she told me that she caught a few shots of me surfing! Fun. To her credit- the wave was breaking pretty far out and to avoid shooting directly into the sun she had to get a strange angle. I think she did a great job. Now I've just got to surf better so that the pics are more fun to look at!

The following is one wave:






All photo credits to Pia Morera Castro (cropped by Steve)

Labels: Costa Rica, photo, surf

Here's another great surf photo by our pal Michael Pisarri.


He took it on our Ollies trip back in December '06. Fun times.

Labels: Costa Rica, photo, surf, weather

There is a fun swell in the water this week, I've spent the last two mornings enjoying the heck out of some small, but great waves in Avellanas. Down by the Avellanas rivermouth the waves have been much bigger (and HUGE in Negra) but for whatever reason I opted to take the almost-empty beach break waves and surf 30 or 40 instead of the crushing (and more exciting) larger waves of which I would probably only get five or ten. Getting out of bed with the roosters* and heading south to surf beautiful warm water on a tropical beach with lush green forest in the background..... is good.
Except yesterday. Yesterday it was good, until about 10am. See, I got up at 5:45, enjoyed coffee and some granola with soy milk to power up a little, before loading the board and some water into the cruiser. Headed down and was in the water by 7 (its only a 20 minute drive, where that other hour went... is beyond me). I enjoyed delicious Costa Rican coffee, piping hot, the whole drive down**. When I stopped and was putting on my rash guard, I was sad to see that my nalgene full of water had leaked all over the seat. Bummer. Surfed a solid two hours, catching literally dozens of chest-high, hollow waves in the brilliant morning sun until I was finally too tuckered out and called it a morning. Drove home, enjoying the dregs of my delicious coffee the whole way**.
Got home, had to attend to some questions from the gardener, who also pointed out that the pool pump wasn't working. Grrr. So under the house I went into the steamy and very hot pump room (think: concrete bunker, 5ft ceiling, 1/2 inch of water on the floor.... plenty of bugs to keep you company****) for half an hour while troubleshooting the pool pump***.
It was about then that I started realizing that I really should get something to drink besides coffee. You know... mild headache, parched throat, thirst...
Finished that, cleaned up quickly and headed to the office (where we have water) but remembered that I needed something at the hardware store (who also sells water) so detoured there first. Also needed to get a tire patched, which was convenient, since that is across the street from the hardware store. What is inconvenient, is that their soda fridge is out of order and thus they had nothing to drink. They did have plenty of sunshine in which for me to stand and sweat. I should have started to worry when I didn't notice that I wasn't sweating. Of course, not noticing the not sweating, I didn't worry. So at least I had that going for me, less worry is better, right?
Tire patched and off to the hardware store. By this point, I wasn't even thirsty anymore. In fact, it wasn't until after I had been rooting around in the back of the hardware store (approximately 115 F back there, I'd say, and plenty humid) looking for a specific electrical connector that the pump-timer would require in order to work, that I started to get the vague sensation that something was definitely not right. I was feeling a little cool. Almost chilly.
For those of you who haven't studied much in the ways of dehydration and hyperthermia... I was showing some pretty serious signs of being NOT WELL.
One of the cruel tricks of dehydration and hyperthermia is that one of the symptoms of a big problem is that you enter a state in which you are distinctly unable to notice that you are having big problems. Which really sucks.
So driving away from the hardware store, still feeling mildly chilled, some small, desperate part of my brain managed to penetrate the fog and I stopped off at the grocery for some powerade and a bottle of water.
One of the other cruel tricks of dehydration and hyperthermia is that you loose your sense of thirst and can actually experience nausea. Despite the fact that I really didn't want to drink the powerade, or maybe because I really didn't want to drink the powerade, I managed to choke down the powerade and some water.
An hour or two and three liters of water later, I was finally thirsty. Another hour after that I peed for the first time since getting out of the water at 9am.
Spent the rest of the day feeling like junk.... headache, lethargy, malaise, disgruntledness, and an overall feeling of not being very happy at all that I had been so freakin stupid as to actually do myself harm for lack of water despite being within five minutes of a drink of water throughout the whole morning. It was just plain stupid of me.
Fortunately, my lovely wife helped force down some delicious fresh salad and plenty of water and juice over dinner and by the time I went to bed I almost felt human again.
Human enough to get up at 5:30 this morning and repeat the surfing process. Only this time, decaf and two nalgene bottles of water, carefully closed. I feel much better this afternoon.... maybe I'll get back in the water for an evening session, the waves are certainly good enough to warrant it.

*Thankfully, there are no roosters within earshot of our house. Roosters crowing in the morning is a myth. Those little SOBs crow all day and night. If you lack proof that there is an evil force in the universe, spend time trying to sleep near a couple of roosters. Demon-seed, I tell ya.
**You can't actually drink coffee on the entirety of that drive, too bumpy, but you get the picture.
***Pump is fine. Timer is pooched. We have on, or off, but no timer. Which ensures I'll be spending more time in the pump room until fixed. :(
****Mozzies are further strong evidence of aforementioned evil force in the universe.

Labels: landcruiser, real estate, surf

Allan Weisbecker is putting out a new book... Our first exposure to him was while travelling, and we got a huge kick out of reading about his trip through Central America in In Search Of Captain Zero.
His writing is usually great, and the stories are always interesting, so consider taking a look if you like- order direct from the publisher

Labels: surf, travel

Ok, finally, more pictures with the submersible housing. Having some trouble getting my Canon A70 to stay on multi-frame. Not sure that it isn't just plain broken. But while Doug was here visiting we took a fantastic trip to Ollie's point.
Absolutely wonderful loooooong rights that we just perfect for longboarding. About head high. Delicious. I've got dozens, scores even, of photos but for now I'm just putting up a couple of myself, taken by Doug at Ollies. Nothing like a little narcicism to keep the blog rolling.
The best part? It looks like I'm headed back this weekend for a long day of longboarding with good friends. It just doesn't get much better than this.

Labels: photo, surf

We never post surfing pictures because we are lame. Except for today. Our buddy Mark took this picture right before his "waterproof" camera died in the surf last week. At least the media still had pictures on it. We hope to get some more morning surf shots in the near future. Oh, and for the record: Yes, Steve's partner Brian is in the process of dropping in on Steve.

Labels: surf

As is more or less usual with us... after months of struggling with how to deal with an untenable landlord relationship, a great opportunity fell into our laps. A friend has a nice place that they want to rent out but are worried about bad tenants.

We, being excellent tenants (in our minds, at least) and not happy with our current digs.... jumped at the chance to move. So in a matter of a week we went from "maybe thinking about it" to "so we moved in last night!".

Fun.

This was the view we woke up to this morning. Not bad....

More pics to come when we are done moving and have internet running again.

Labels: photo, surf

One of the many great things about having parents visit is that all the little things that we do as a matter of daily life have the potential to be interesting through their eyes.
While down in Avellanas for the afternoon, Mom took a few pictures of Steve surfing. The waves were mushy and the lighting wasn't great, but we'll share two pics anyway.

Labels: photo, surf

Just got in from a long day of work... grabbed a fifteen minute surf session (longboard, mushy shoulder high waves with a strong offshore)that cleared my head and lifted my spirits, now I'm sitting on the deck watching palm fronds tossed by the breeze and enjoying a cold one. Pura vida.
Summer is here, by the way- things are turning brown and dusty. We are starting to look forward to some rain... but still enjoying the dry warmth and thankful that the winds haven't died off yet.

Labels: surf

Small country, this one in which we live. While walking out for an evening session in the waves, Steve ran into Jose and Cecilia from Hotel Pacande in Alajuela. Those of you who are good with marginally useful trivia may remember that they are two very friendly and kind hoteliers with whom we stayed several years ago while on our driving tour. Anyhow, so there Steve was trotting down the beach with his surfboard and he almost literally bumped into them. To their credit, they remembered his name before he remembered theirs.
On top of the fun of seeing old friends, the surf this evening was AMAZING. If the waves were this good even once every week, the market here would go crazy. Ok, the market is going crazy, but waves like this.... would be really fun. Wish we could post some pictures, but Steve was way too busy surfing to shoot, and Beebee was at home helping our friend Bailey (who is eleven) bake some deliciousness for her school's bake sale.
Fun evening for everyone.

Labels: surf

Finally, the wait is over! Not only was the surf small enough that Steve was willing to forgo surfing in order to take pictures, AND Bb was there too, AND the weather was beautiful, AND it wasn't too crowded (who needs a buncha tourists in the pictures?) BUT we even remembered the camera. Which helps. A lot. So, without further fanfare, we present to you: a few surfing photos, by Steve

Here goes Bb...	...and she's up!	Our pal Jerry walks to the nose while Bb paddles back out

Unfortunately the batteries ran out before Bb could take pics of Steve surfing. We'll just have to keep our gaze pointed offshore, waiting for another batch of photos.

Labels: photo, surf

Just because we didn't write about it for a week or so, doesn't mean it wasn't fun. Right?
We had a great sunset beer and pizza with our close pal Christi. Then we headed to a great little party with new friends and soon-to-be neighbor Joseph, who is about to open a restaurant down the street from us. It'll be nice to have TWO places within walking distance where we can buy dinner. Even more exciting is that we may even have a place to get morning coffee!! Not that we can't pour boiling water over grounds ourselves, but there is something about buying a coffee drink on a lazy morning that is hard to beat at home.
Speaking of lazy, we stopped on the way back from Avellanas and shoo'ed some piglets out of the road. Not very lazy, piglets. They were pretty darn active- jumping around and making all manner of crazy little sounds. Calypso was entranced but we opted out of letting her chase them- who knows what a mother pig would do to a puppy?

Steve surfed some, but the waves were small, mushy, and inconsistent. Other than that it was a good time. Bb even came one morning to shoot pictures but the sets were so unimpressive that she didn't bother to swim out and thus we had mediocre pics of mediocre surf. We'll share one anyway, just so that we can honestly say we've included at least one picture of surfing.

The highpoint of Steve's rather long professional week was a horseback tour of a spectacular finca north of here. If you've got $6 million and the desire to own nearly 1500 acres of land abutting the beach, with views of Witch's Rock, drop me a line and I'll set you right up.

Labels: beach, food, sunset, surf

While Bb is working hard on her jewelry today, Steve is doing as little as possible. Nasty sinus infection. If you think being sick up in the States when it is cold out is lousy... try it when it is hot and humid. Ugh. Feels like someone inflated choice spaces in my skull up to about 110psi. Lousy. And hot. And sweaty.
But! all is not bad! Steve's Dad sent down a scan of a photo that he took several months ago that shows Steve surfing. Sorta. Mostly it shows him about to drop in on a mushy wave. But for the moment it is all we've got and looks a heck of a lot more fun than sitting around the house with a head full of hurt. At least it started raining this afternoon so the temperature dropped down to comfortable. And the rain sounds great pattering out on the roof, very relaxing. Oh- Happy Independance Day! Hope yours was wonderful.

Labels: jewelry, photo, surf, weather

Other than selling real estate, making jewelry, and surfing, most of what we do is play with the dog. Chances are we won't be posting a lot of pictures of the the first two activities- each has its own website (see the sidebar on the left). Surfing, we hope to post pics soon- the problem so far is that when the surf is big, we are nervous about takign the camera out. Not so much for the camera's sake (the housing is fantastic! thanks Growcery Store) but paddling out through big waves with a solid acrylic box attached to my neck or wrist seems like a great way to hurt me or my surfboard. Still figuring out how to make that work.

So for today the pics are all about the puppy. On the left she is playing with Donny and Christi's dog, Louie. Note that Louie's head is about the same size as Calypso. That fact notwithstanding she figured out that if she waited under the table long enough, Louie would investigate, and she could play with him on a more level playing field. On the right, Steve loads up to take Caly over to play at a friend's house. She didn't like the bike basket too much on the first try, but now she seems to be appreciating the advantages it holds over running alongside the bike.

Labels: dog, photo, surf, tamarindo

Feeling a little out of touch with US politics, Steve checked out the Department of Homeland Security web page for the first time today. Other similarly themed websites can be found here and here.
There are also more than a few websites that address the political and security changes made in the USA in the last few years. Hermes-Press.com makes some comparisons between modern US politics and those found in Germany in the Thirties. These posters reference Homeland Security's role in our society. The Homeland Security Institute contains several essays on current event topics and terrorism in general.
Finally, this site contains a long list of news items in a reverse chronological order. It has numerous links to what they claim are "opinions of the Arab street" as well as links to some of the horrors that are being faced by members of the military and civilians in the Middle East.
Interesting stuff. While I'm trying pretty hard to avoid infusing this with my own opinions, I am curious to hear other's opinions, so please feel free to leave a comment. If you aren't into commenting, no worries, poke through the links above if you like, or come back later to read more about surfing, landcruisers, our dog and the rest of the regularly scheduled program.

And speaking of our regularly scheduled program: We are now taking advantage of the puppy's need to pee at 4:30a.m. every day. As dawn um... dawned... we drove our landcruiser down to the beach for an early morning session. Frequent sets of chest high waves (with some overhead sets) for over two hours with a total of seven surfers in the water made for a nice, exhausting workout. Breakfast at Gil's place (amazingly delicious burritos) didn't do much to perk us up, but it did fill us up. Eating too much after early morning exercise is just the sort of thing to make one want to sit in front of their computer and read a bunch of rhetoric online....

Labels: beach, blog, food, news, surf

Got up at 5 this morning to take Caly out- she's getting better at holding it (a fact about which you probably don't really care at all but is paramount amongst our concerns these days). The fabulous morning light inspired Steve to take some photos, but instead we went surfing.
The surfing was mediocre: small sets, mostly closing out. We had some fun anyway and worked up an appetite. By 7:30 we were back home and frying up eggs. Mmmmm, eggs. Hard to find a better way to start the day than seeing a lovely sunrise, catching some waves all alone, then eating well. Life is good here in paradise. Mornings like this are a good reminder.

Labels: dog, food, surf

Got in some good surfing, finally. Ok, maybe not good. Definately not
great. But it was surfing, and that's something. Word on the street is
that we've got swell coming on either friday or monday. Either way, we
are looking forward to it!

Labels: surf

I enjoyed reading this, hope you enjoy it too.Surf Guru. Since we aren't surfing enough ourselves right now (the rains have been filling the bay with runoff, yucky) it is nice to read surfing-related fiction.

Labels: surf, weather

While chatting about a great new listing of his (Joya de Lagarto) Steve's buddy Mike suggested that we road trip down to check it out. So we did. After a quick stop to stock up on some sodas, fruit juice and cookies, Steve, Mike, Sawyer (Mike's 3.5 yr old son) and Casey (spelling?) headed down the muddy road looking for a little adventure, some real estate information, and maybe even some surf.
We found all of the above, but by the time we managed to wrap up the important business aspects of the trip, the wind had shifted onshore, so we just sat and watched some house-sized waves come mackin into the beach. Wow. Big day. I would say "Gee, to bad about the wind" but in reality, had the wind been offshore, I probably would have been too frightened to paddle out anyway. I like surfing. I may even love surfing. But drowning.... I'm pretty sure that's something I would rather avoid!
So after watching waves in Lagarto for a bit, we headed down one muddy road/trail after another and ended up on one of Bb's favorite beaches anywhere (playa frijolar) where we threw sand in the estuary (having a 3.5 yr old along adds flavor) and generally enjoyed a beautiful day.

Pretty blue church along the road on the way south	State of Mind: driving through mud to go to the store is a drag, driving through mud to go to the beach is fun	Sawyer and Mike striking a pose by Joya de Lagarto

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, Costa Rica, day trip, landcruiser, mud, photo, surf