Surfing Mal Pais

After a couple of days of playing around on a small board, I moved to a table; this giant 8'-8" board could keep everyone in our house safely afloat and it is perfect for this part of my surfing journey. I struggled to my feet on the table for a few surf sessions, getting there only because of the massive floatation device I was riding, but knew that I wasn't getting it quite right. My pop up was forced and clumsy and I knew this would never work on a respectable board. My next step was to take a lesson.

Richard, our surf instructor, is from Canada and has been living here for 20 years. According to Aaron, the guy who rented us our boards from the outside of a Jui Jitsu studio, he is the best teacher in the Mal Pais / Santa Teresa area. Although I have nothing to compare him to locally, he is the best teacher I have had. Before we even got into the water, he fixed my pop up and I knew it was going to be a great day. My mistake was in the way I was pushing my upper body off the board. Instead of pushing it up like a traditional gym pushup, I needed to push up and arch my back (similar to a cobra position in yoga) then jump up into a crouched stance on the board. The first time I tried it was an effortless jump to a standing position on the board and I spent an hour doing it over and over again in the white wash. Stage one of my surfing conquest is complete and I have a renewed energy and excitement for surfing. It's amazing how a small adjustment can change everything about a sport. Today I took my new skill into the big waves. Most of the 2 and a half hours I was out there was spent watching the waves trying to determine how to tell when a good one is coming (still unsure) and paddling my you-know-what off trying to catch a wave but missing it. However, on my way in, I paddled into the perfect spot on a giant wave, popped up perfectly and glided all the way to the shore. It was incredible and I can't wait to do it again.

I found a great place to stay after the Witwer's leave, Pacific Surf School. It's in Santa Teresa, which is the name of the beach town where we've been staying. Pacific Surf School is about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) north of Playa Carmen. The main intersection of town is at Playa Carmen and the Town of Mal Pais is a south and Santa Teresa is north. Mal Pais and Santa Teresa run together as if it's one town. Generally speaking, the waves at Playa Carmen are friendly and gentle, versus fast and steep at Santa Teresa. From my new house at Pacific Surf School, it will be a hike each day to get to Playa Carmen to surf, but the room, the pool, the ambiance and price is too great to pass up.

Another adventure...to Mal Pais Costa Rica

The saying ‘life is a journey, not a destination’ could not be more accurate. Traveling to and from international destinations offer some of my most interesting memories. To get to Mal Pais, Costa Rica I flew from San Diego to Atlanta then Atlanta to San Jose, Costa Rica, both flights being uneventful. My third and final leg of flying was on a small Costa Rican airline, Sansa. We were scheduled to fly for about 23 minutes (the trip taking 6 to 8 to 12 hours by land) on a small propeller plan from San Jose to Tambor. About 30 minutes before our scheduled departure, it started to storm. Thunder and lightning accompanied the torrential downpour. As soon as there was a small relief in the buckets of water raining down, we grabbed a partner and an umbrella and ran to the plane. On the way out, my umbrella mate asked if this was really safe. I responded with my only thought…. they wouldn’t let a plane full of tourists go down, that would be really bad for the economy. The flight itself was minimally turbulent and the terror of taking off in the middle of a tropical storm turned out to be unnecessary. The landing however, was insane. From my seat (one of 12 on the plane), I could only see a strip of sand where the ocean met the rain forest. I thought we were going to fly over the tree canopy and was shocked when we landed in the middle of the rainforest. The landing strip was a narrow space of cleared jungle with a thin layer of asphalt used to ease the plane in. There were about a half of a dozen people waiting at the landing strip, one of which was an employee of Sansa airlines who took me to my final destination, Mal Pais, in his small car that looked like it had been retrieved from the junkyard partially into the crushing operation. But it was dark, there were no buses and his orange vest made me fell like he was safety conscious. Mal Pais is wonderful. It is a small surf town with miles of beach breaks and yoga everywhere.

For more detailed travel information, see my article on the examiner website.