April 4^th – We caught a plane in Miami, Sarah’s folks let us crash at their place the night before, and pops gave us a ride to the airport (thanks for hooking that up). The flight left at 8 AM and I’m not too stoked to fly, but not too much turbulence, and actually I feel real safe flying Lasca, cause who would want to hijack Ticans??? They are super chill folks who are down with everyone. Got into San Jose at 9:30 and cleared customs easy, picked up the rental car, a Kia Sorento. Rental cars suck most of the time, but this thing was horrible, and we definitely didn’t help it out any.. more on that later. Got lost in San Jose right away, my bro Adu, who is moving down with us is notorius for getting lost, but it didn’t take too long. Found our way to Calle Uno, which was the only named rode we drove on and started our adventure. The drive to Nosara isn’t bad, its like 4 hours and most is paved. For how chill a people Ticans are, they don’t have much in the way of driving skills yet. They pass on blind corners, go three deep on sketchy two lane roads, and have quite an ambivalence towards lines and signs. The last hour to Nosara is not paved, and still reminds me of my first trips to Costa in high school. Actually I think that driving on the unpaved roads is safer, as people drive slower and pay more attention. Arriving in Nosara was cool, the town reminds me of a super small Laguna Beach just not ruined by people. There is one strip that contains most of the business and the office we will be working at is at the end of the road, just 1km to Playa Guiones, right down the hill. The first thing we did was check out the office and meet Chip the owner of Caldwell Banker Del Mar and our future boss. Chip has lived in Nosara for 4 years and has the place wired, so when the first thing he said was “The surf’s pumping!” we were stoked. Session 1 was epic by Auggie standards, evening glass after 15 hours of travel. Overhead sets and ripable waves. It took me 45 minutes to figure out how deep you can take off at Guiones… real deep. The wave is powerful, but real forgiving. For grub we went a couple hundred meters down the road to Ponchos, which has the best guac I have ever eaten. They make it from scratch for every order, including the tortilla chips.

Sarah, and I decided that we had to make two decisions about the move, lifestyle and professional. Well, after 4 hours in Nosara, there wasn’t much question in regards to the lifestyle decision… definitely a go.