They say you should never drive away from good surf. Nevertheless, yesterday we loaded up the car and headed off for the central coast towards Playa Hermosa. This is after catching the wave of my life earlier in the morning. A beautiful overhead wave that I just barely made the steep drop on, surging forward ahead of the crashing lip as the offshore winds sprayed water in my eyes. I dug in and made the bottom turn, coming back up to the face of the wave on my front side. The steep wall held up for close to 200 meters, staying consistently head-high as I pumped up and down the face at breakneck speed, staying just in front of the breaking lip behind me. But the crowds were arriving for the weekend, and we needed a break from the peninsula before returning in only 8 days to Mal Pais.
Loaded up in the car, we sped away through the two rivers, drifting around corners and skipping over humps bumps and jumps. We weren’t sure of the way, but I’d be damned if we weren’t going to go as fast as possible. I love to drive, and these rally-like conditions were better than the most advanced x-box or playstation game. We zigged, we zagged, connecting small road to small road until we finally found pavement. With the excitement of the rock and gravel behind, we smoothly sailed the rest of the way towards the edge of the peninsula towards the mighty friendship bridge that skirts over the narrow north point of the Golfo Nicoya. After briefly pausing to take pictures of the bridge, we resumed our journey south along the coast, now onto the mighty Interamericana, highway number 1. One would think that the major freeway connecting all of Central America might be faster than the cow paths and river crossings that we had left behind, but bumper to bumper traffic and long stops waiting for construction was what we encountered instead.
Three and a half hours later we came to the Tarcoles River, just north of Jaco. We parked on the far end of the bridge and walked back to the middle to join the groups of tourists looking at the main attraction far below the bridge in the river below. Basking in the hot sun were two dozen prehistoric monsters. Anyone who has ever wondered whether Jurassic Park would be a possibility need only look at the mighty salt water crocodile. The pictures I took don’t really show the size of these giants that well, but the bigger ones there I would guess to be between 15 to 18 feet long, much longer than our car. The long pointed head alone, struggling to contain the snarled mouthful of stalactites and stalagmites of flesh ripping teeth, would be just over three feet. Rest assured that these monsters would make quick work of anything that fell over the hand rail. I have always thought that drowning would be one of the worst ways to die, but then I learned of how crocodiles catch and kill their prey. The manoeuvre is called the “death roll”, a term that conjures up any number of horrific nightmares that pale in comparison to the reality of the event itself. Any unsuspecting animal caught near the edge of the water has one of these boat sized predators stealthily float up like a benign log, with little more than eyes and nostrils protruding from the surface. In an instant, with the tip of the nose mere inches from its prey, it lunges up out of the water and snaps its mighty jaws closed with literally tonnes of force exerted through the sharp point of each and every engaged tooth. If this weren’t bad enough, the crocodile then uses its mighty power to roll its prey in the water until every breath of panicked oxygen has been expunged. This combines the horrors of drowning with the pleasant feeling of a few tonnes of reptile clamped onto your body. That is unless you have the fortunes of falling victim to this beast in the midst of others. Then you can experience your complete body being torn to shreds, limb from limb, t-bone from prime rib, as you provide the local buffet. It’s very impressive and humbling to think that these mighty predators have survived from the time of the dinosaurs, once upwards of 100 feet or 30 meters long. Even these cold blooded beasts under the bridge, deceptively motionless in the river, are large enough to only need meals every month or so. We get back in the car and continue on.
A lot has changed in the town of Jaco, barely a town at all anymore, and I had to double take that we hadn’t been transported to Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta. Large apartment complexes had since arisen all over the landscape, and the streets were clogged with the weekend traffic from the big city. We stopped for lunch, and then continued on south 5 kilometres to Playa Hermosa, touted in the Lonely Planet guide as the most consistent beach break in the country. We arrived to find tiny waves and lots of people in the water. Oh well, you can’t surf all the time. We quickly found a place to stay, bargained from $40 to $30 dollars a night for 8 days. It’s a nice room with fridge, air conditioning and cable television. My mom would be happy to know that we spent an hour and a half last night watching curling on that television. Team Canada was playing Denmark, and fell behind nearing the end of the match. The game wouldn’t have been that exiting except for the fact that the announcers that NBC managed to find were blatantly not very familiar with the game. Anyone who has seen the movie “Best in Show” may have some idea of what I’m talking about. The small talk ensued and commentary was borrowed from any major sport that you could think of. Subtlety was not their strong point, and we were very entertained. Canada ended up making a comeback after a costly mistake to remain undefeated in the tournament.
Today we went back into Jaco to get some groceries and do some shopping. I didn’t go out surfing this morning as the waves weren’t good and there was some pain in my shoulder yesterday, some tendinitis creeping back in, so I thought it would be best to give it a break. We had a nice lunch with some guanabana con leche, which I found out other people call soursop fruit, mixed with milk. It’s just about the best thing that you could ever drink. We then walked past the POPS store where I used to run a five dollar a day milkshake habit, and continued along to the beach. I pointed out the tall hill on the north side of the beach where Peter and I had climbed and almost died, getting lost in the razor-wire jungle. I bought a mesh tank top that should prove more fitting for the amount of sweat I’ve been producing, especially here off the peninsula where it actually rains once and a while. The difference in humidity becomes quite apparent, making the air conditioning very pleasant at night in our new room. I also managed to find some fake fish, or fishing lures as people might say, at the big grocery store. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to fish off the beach here in Hermosa as it’s a wildlife refuge, so all the fish that I won’t be catching will have to wait until we return to Mal Pais. We’re off to the beach for a while here soon, and maybe tomorrow I’ll go out for a surf session in the morning.
Tyler.
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