“The bee’s knees...”

We are having the most wonderful day today here in Ostional, and I have Peter to thank for it. We had planned on staying in Nosara before our trip began, but Peter told us about Ostional, just north a little bit with good waves and empty beaches and surf. It has also turned out to be a lot cheaper. Just this morning I had the best surf session of my life and Denielle saved the life of a troubled mother sea turtle trying to return to sea. She walked down the beach while I went out into the water, only 100 meters from our place no less, and encountered what she believed to be a big dead sea turtle being eaten by vultures. She approached and scared the vultures away to let the turtle die in peace when she realized that it was still alive. She kept the vultures at bay while the turtle was able to slowly crawl, at a turtles pace, back into the ocean and swim away. Probably to die, I offered, but she felt quite proud of her accomplishment.

I wasn’t expecting much of my surf session as it was low tide and I couldn’t see many waves coming in as I was going out. With only one other person in the water, I used the strong rip tide to get out past the breakers rather effortlessly. Then quite quickly, a big set came in, and the first wave that I caught happened to be the biggest of my life. The steep takeoff to the left had me grabbing my rail to hold high in the wave and I shot like a rocket down the line, much faster than I had ever gone before. Too fast mind you as I had now outrun the wall of the wave and upon turning back found that I no longer had the speed to keep going along. I paddled back out and caught half a dozen more big waves within less than half an hour. I decided to catch one more wave to preserve my strength for an evening sunset session. Not too long later, another big set came through, and I caught this wave very late, getting pitched forward as I was swinging my legs up, but still managing to pull in towards the left. I ducked my head under the edge of the lip and race ahead to the open face of the wave. This wave had a nice long steep wall where I put in a few turns, the last of which inadvertently turned into a floater as the wave broke under my board with the nose of my surfboard up in the air. I rode this way for what seemed like forever, but was really only a fraction of a second. Upon coming down with the breaking section I was able to turn my board around and keep riding with the wave for a couple of turns more. That was definitely the best ride of my life. All of this happened in less than an hour.

After showering up, we got in the car and headed to Playa Guyones to check out the beach and try and find some other groceries that the small pulperias were lacking in Ostional. The waves here were incredible. While I was surfing overhead waves in the morning at our own beach, these were now being shaped by a strong offshore wind upwards of ten feet high with some barrelling sections. No beginners to be found here. It was fun watching some of the more advanced surfers catching these fast hollow perfect waves. We then had some lunch, sweated on the beach for a while in the 37 degree heat, picked up some groceries and headed home through the two river crossings. We have internet at our place, so we may be getting back into contact with some people and updating the blog more frequently. Tonight we may try to go see some nesting turtle action.

Tyler.