Surfing Nosara

Sunday, June 8 – “Domestic Violence”

I’ve concluded that I have a seriously dysfunctional relationship with the ocean. I get slapped around, beat up, and bruised and yet, I still come back for more. Venturing on my own, I went out around 6:30AM. My buddy Luigi was already up and was able to point out things in the ocean like what to notice when waves break and how waves change during high tide from low tide. That early in the morning, it was high tide. The waves were very heavy. I knew I would look like a fool out there but I’ve already resigned myself to this notion so out I went. The water was rough. All I could hope for was to use the time to practice my paddling.

By afternoon, my friend Jessica had arrived. She told me before she came that she was recovering from tonsillitis and didn’t want to go into the water right away. Knowing her better than that, I took her out to the ocean shortly after she put her bags down and it wasn’t long before she said, “okay, let’s get changed.” Man, it was like stealing candy from a child. We had a great session just playing around in the whitewater. At one point, we got up simultaneously and rode in together. We were giggling like little school girls. Ah, good times!

For dinner, we ended up joining a few friends at Giardino Tropicale, a local pizza/pasta joint: one local and a couple of Americans. Great stories were exchanged and I had a blast. Jessenia, the Tica, said she even saw a shark in the water in her afternoon session! We were all at different points in our surfing: I was a beginner, the local was a superstar, one of the Americans just rekindled his surfing once his children found a derelict surfboard in the attic, and the other American was a private jet pilot who hailed from Malibu. Despite these differences, there was never a lull in the conversation. We were just a bunch of people who loved the ocean.