The first days in the water and our new found diet

---

As I sit here in this tiny little backpackers room (check out picture), I can't help but smile on how epic the journey has been so far. After making it to pavones and attempting to sleep, we were awaken by epic surf. I had been here once before and it was nothing like it. Usually this places about half the size of central costa rica (playa dominical and playa hermosa) yet it was pushing 10+ feet faces. As I've seen from pictures all around central America, it was really big every where. Fortunately for us, pavones was very manegeable.



We paddled out at about 545 am with our bigger boards (thank you Craigslist 3 days before) after quickly seeing wave after wave come in. From the top of this point to the very end is about 400 meters. Very few surfers were able to make it all the way from point to point, but I saw a few locals make it. Matt and I both were immediately separated and surfed by away from each other the whole time. I had waves where I was getting into the double digit turns. After surfing many close outs in my life, it is mind blowing to get so many turns in one session. After catching a wave, the current brutalized us. I felt like I was in the CataLina paddle board race. I never stopped paddling for the 4 straight hours I surfed. Marathon session Matt stayed out for 5.5 hours. I think we were both pretty antsy to get our time in the water. The afternoon and next morning we scored surf as well as the swell began to drop.



As we watched the swell drop, we decided it was time to leave. Although pavones is a great wave it gets a little crowded and needs a lot of swell. We began our journey to Playa Dominical just 3.5 hours away. As it was blazing hot, we decided ac was necessary. After talking to a couple places, we found a place that offered us free breakfast everyday, 3 nights for cost of 2, and free dinner last night. We were stoked. The room may be small,but nothing beats ac. We woke up this morning to offshore winds, head high waves and no one out. It was a little fickle, but we both got our share of waves.



I am finding out on this trip how much worse my Spanish has gotten. The 4 years of high school Spanish were great, but after not speaking for a while it is killing me. We became homies with the guy at the soda across the street who speaks no English. He is probaby our age and he has a younger brother. Together they seem to run the restaurant. We actually saw the younger brother buying chicken from the store this morning. The meal we get there is chicken, rice, beans, potatoes, salad, extra side of fries, and a smoothie. Between both of us, the total meal is 13$. Hard to beat.



The biggest downside of our triP so far has been the cost of places, and gas being really expensive. Due to these reasons, here is a typical day of food for us(different now with free breakfast):

1. 5am Wake up eat full cliff bar each that we brought from USA. (half cliff bar) 1$ each.

2. 545 am Surf

3. Usually nothing (at this place we get free breakfast)

4. Try to make it to noon and make lunch. Before it was a shared can of beans straight from the can(we had no spoon) and an avocado each. Now we have upgraded with spoons and putting the avocado and beans with hot sauce on bread. Costs 1.75 each.

5. 3pm get ice cream sundae thing that is $1.25 because we can't wait for dinner.

6. Dinner is the big meal where we spend about 6.50. Our last couple days have had a grand total spending of 10$ a day.



We will continue to surf here for a couple more days, drive up a couple hours to playa hermosa and likely have a similar set up for two days. After that we will be visiting my brothers friend Patrick in Malpais area. After that we will be meeting some friends in tamarindo. Hope you are all enjoying your summer. More ocean photos to come, we have been focusing on surfing.

puravida,

Ben

---