Panama and Mexico

We spent a few days in beautiful town of Puerto Viejo on the Carribean side of Costa Rica, but got a little tired of the stoners trying to weed and coke on every corner, and Bob Marley playing on every radio in town 24/7. So we decided to cross the border into Panama, as we´d heard there was some great snorkelling off some islands called Bocas Del Toro.

We crossed the border, jumped in a little boat and headed up the river. We passed heaps of wooden shcks on the river banks where local families lived, they were extremely isolated and was crazy to see. We came out of te river mouth into the ocean, crossed a massive bay that was full of Dolfins and flying Stingrays and realised that we had quite poissibly stumbled onto one of the best places we´ve visited on our trip! Every day we caught boats out to different islands and snorkelled. Nicko brought a new spear gun and got some great fish. We spent every day out in the water for about 6-7 hours and never got cold once, as the water was about 30 degrees!

We were just about to organise another fishing trip and realised that we had been having such a great time there that the days had flown by, and we needed to get back to San Jose in Costa Rica to get our flight to Mexico!!

We just made it back in time for the flight and headed to Cancun, Mexico.

Man, that place was crazy! It wasn´t even peak season and the strip of nigthclubs and bars that were about 100m from our hotel was pumping all night, every night. We stayed there for 2 nights and partied pretty hard, with just about every club having Bikini contests on, every night of the week! This place would go off over spring break time, thats for sure..

So all partied out, we headed down south to a less touristy town called Playa Del Carmen, which is where I am now. This place is very chilled and has heaps of bars and restaurants right on the beach. Tomorrow we are going to check out the local reefs and hopefully spear some dinner, and the day after we are headed to a place called Xel La and Talum, where there are some old Maya ruins and some excellent snorkelling spots. Should be great, I love Mexico :)

More of Costa Rica..

What a place Costa Rica is.. It has everything from the perfect surf in my last post, to great nightlife, tropical rain forests with heaps of wildlife and even active volcanoes.
After the massive surfing session at Ollie's Point and Witches Rock, it was hard to surf the smaller breaks in and around Tamarindo, but we still got some great waves over the next few days. Daz reckons he saw a crocodile near the river mouth one day so we got out quickly, but apart from that, we had some good little sessions. We partied pretty hard as well, with the nightlife in town being pretty crazy. We met a heap of people at our hostel from Israel, Canada, Sweden and the US and they all wanted to party, so every time we went out, we had a massive crew. One of the nights we headed to a bar where they had a band and it turns out it was jam night! Anyone could get up there and take over the band, so we played a few songs.. Was a great night and yet another country we could add to the list of gigs for Afterglo.. Great times :)
One night out on the town that wasn't quite as good as that was our last night in Tamarindo. An argument over a game of pool escalated into a guy smashing a beer bottle on my head from behind and then his mate hit me in the face with a pool que.. Ouch!! Turns out the locals dont muck around when it comes to bar fights and I was lucky to get out of it with only 3 stitches and a black eye! A couple of the other boys copped a few hits as well but only fists, and all in all we were quite lucky.
Anyways, we loved our time in Tamarindo but it was time to see some more of Costa Rica. So a little sore, we sold our surfboards to a local surf shop (I got a sweet $20 for the banged up and well used 'Firestick' and also got $20 more for my fins from one of the yanks) and headed for the active Arenal volcano in the centre of the country.
The town near the Arenal volcano is called La Fortuna and had the best backpackers hostel ever! It was a great place with a pool and you could see the volcano looming over the entire town. We took a trip to the base of the volcano, and on the hike, we saw a heap of wildlife including toucans, spiders, monkeys, wild turkeys and snakes. Our tour guide had been there in 1968 when the volcano first erupted and showed us photos of before and after the eruption. He knew his stuff about the volcano and the wildlife and was a great tour. We

arrived at the base of the volcano just as it was getting dark and could see red hot lava flowing out.. It was a little cloudy but was still great to see. When the cloud cleared, you gould see the orange glow coming from the top of the creater. Was very cool.
After the volcano tour, we headed to the Baldi hot springs for dinner and a swim. These natural springs are heated by the volcano and have been turned into a wicked water park, with wet bars in the middle of the springs and even a water slide! They were about 60 degs and it was a wicked place. Even when it started raining, it was still toasty in the pools.
The next day we headed to a town on the Carribean side of Costa Rica called Puerto Veijo. It is a tiny town near the border of Panama, and is a lot different to the rest of Costa Rica. The people who live here are mainly from Jamaca and Cuba, etc so the town has a real rustifarian feel. There is no surf here as its the wrong time of year but the snorkelling s great, with a couple of coral reefs just off the coast.
Unfortunately, due to the 1 stich in my forehead (courtesy of the pool que) I can't put a snorkel mask on so i haven't seen it yet!! But the other lads are out there checking it out and say its pretty crazy. I should be able to check it out in a few more days when the forehead is healed.
We have about 5 more days until we fly out of Costa Rica to Cancun, Mexico so we plan to travel along the Carribean coast for a bit. There's a lot of cool little towns here and we might even travel into Panama for a night or 2.
Can't upload photos in this internet cafe but will try to add some to this blog in the next town. Got some great pics to add :) Cheers..

Costa Rica

Well we arrived in Costa Rica safe and sound, with the only casualty of the flight being my f#@king surfboard!! Grr, after paying $120US to get it on the plane, I picked it up and the nose had been crushed by something and was just hanging on by the stickers!! That makes a total of about 7 broken boards on this trip so far between 3 of us.. Its def getting a little annoying and expensive!!
Anyways, we took the broken board and headed for our hostel in San Hose. After spending the entire night on planes and the entire night before that on a bus, we were completely sleep deprived and needed some shut eye. We crashed out pretty early and didn´t see a lot of San Hose, and the next morning headed for the town of Tamarindo, up on the south west coast. Tamarindo is a very popular tourist place in the dry season, and is known for its great surf in the wet season. Luckily for us, it is wet season right now so the surf is up! Tamarindo is also extremely close to 2 of Costa Rica´s best surf breaks, Witches Rock and Ollie´s Point. These 2 breaks were featured in the movie Endless Summer II, and were the main reason we came to Costa Rica.
As I said, it was the wet season and when we got to Tamarindo, it was pouring. The entire street flooded and we were paddling down the street on our surfboards!
Although it was pouring, the surf was cranking :) We spent the first 3 days surfing at the main beach of Tamarindo, along with another beach down the coast called Avellanas. Avellanas was about an hour away, and the roads were terrible. With dirt roads the entire way, we were almost washed away a couple of times, coming back in the rain. We got some great waves though, (Including a wicked lefthand barrel!) although both the breaks were on river mouths, where crocodiles are known to frequent! A little scary but we haven´t seen any yet (touch wood)..









There are a lot of nice retaurants and bars in Tamarindo, and although Costa Rica is not as cheap as Peru, prices are still pretty reasonable. So we spent the nights chilling out in the restaurants and bars and the days surfing and watching the surf report, waiting until Witches Rock and Ollie´s Point were going to be cranking.. And yesterday was the day!!
I had been hanging to surf these 2 breaks since seeing Endless Summer II, over 10 years ago, so I was pumped to see that there was 7ft of swell and no wind, meaning the waves would be 2-3ft overhead and clean..
We took a 1 hour ride in a mini van to Playa Hermosa and then jumped on a boat for the 1 hour journey to Witches rock. There were about 10 of us on the boat, but i don´t think anyone was as stoked to be out there as I was! We were up that morning at 4am and after loading up all our gear, we were in the water paddling onto our first waves by about 7am. We jumped off the boat next to the massive Wiches Rock and paddled into the line up from behind. The wind was coming from the wrong direction, however the swell made sure we still got some huge waves.




Some rouge sets were coming in that were double over head, but most of them were a little too fat to paddle onto. We got some great rides on some waves about 2 ft overhead, although, because the wind direction wasn´t the best, they weren´t as clean as I had imagined for all these years. The beach was unbelievable though, as it is all national park around there, with not a house, hotel or person in sight! After about an hour, we paddled back out to sea to the boat, and headed to Ollie´s Point, where the tide and wind direction were just right..


It took about another hour to get to Ollies, and on the way we saw sea turtles, dolfins and heaps of fish. We stopped for a 10 minute session at a crazy reef break called Labrynth, however only 3 of the locals jumped in, as there were exposed rocks everywhere amoungst the heavy, heavy wave, and we spotted a couple of sharks in the line up when we got there!!
The locals still jumped in regardless, but didn´t get many waves, as it was too heavy and the tide was too low. Turns out the sharks were actually some big type of ´shark looking´ fish that they get around here, but we only found that out after everyone was back on the boat when they swam past again!!
We arived at Ollies Point and it was perfect.. Big sets that broke perfectly along the point, creating a huge face to carve up. The waves were about 2-3ft overhead as you can see in the pics here, so we were a little nervous paddling onto them at the start. Then we grew some balls and paddled onto a few, and the ride was amazing. As the wave was so perfect, you could paddle on as late as you wanted and not get eaten. (Well apart from a few of the huge sets, which gobbled me a few times, hard!!).
I got some of the biggest and best waves of my life here and we spent about 5 hours in the water, only paddling back to the boat once for some food and water. Nicko was tearing it up on the perfect right handers, and Daz got the ride of his life, dropping in on a head high lefthander and carving it up.
There was a guy there with a massive telescopic lense who took some professional photos from the beach, and Daz got some great shots from his camera in the water. A guy was videoing from the beach as well so we got some great shots and footage of the day.
Was a wicked day and was easily the best right hand wave I´ve ever surfed.














The surfing part of our trip is almost over now, as we only have 2 more weeks in Costa Rica, and we plan to check out some volcanoes and forests over the next few days. Even thinking about heading up to the country of Nicaragra for a few days tomorrow and checking out some of the wildlife up there. We´ve had some great surf on this trip though, with the best Lefthand break of our lives being a tie between Chicama and Lobitos in Peru, and the best righthand break of our lives been Ollies Point.
Thats all for now folks, will update you all with our next adventure soon. :)