Surfers travel
for many reasons--to get away from crowds, local
waves, cold water, and overly-familiar surroundings;
to get to uncrowded reefs and points, consistent
and bigger waves, warm water and different cultures.
We travel to different surroundings--sights,
sounds, smells and surf--to empty our minds
of everything but surfing. Pure surfing.
Justifying a surf
trip is easy. Making it work--making it really
work--often is not. Before every trip most surfers
do some sort of research and planning to ensure
that time and money are maximized, which means
surfing
the greatest number of the best waves--maximizing
wave count.
Maximizing wave
count starts with knowing where the waves are,
followed closely by knowing how to not waste
time which could be spent surfing.
The biggest waste of time can be getting to
and from the breaks. Staying
at a surf camp pretty much solves that problem,
and it would be convenient if there was a surf
camp at every great break on the planet. But
there ain't. So an
important part of surf travel planning is finding
the accommodations that are closest to the breaks
you want to surf so you waste minimal time getting
to and from the surf. And that search is complicated
by amenity needs (are
you bringing a wife? kids? a does your bud require
air conditioning?) and budget. (Budget, of course,
is the greatest determinant of wave count. Rich
guys can surf anywhere, anytime, for as long
as they want.)
The biggest time
waster is not planning at all, thereby spending
your precious surf trip time driving from hotel
to hotel looking for the right accommodations
at the right price at the right break. Imagine
the typical frustration at home of four-guys-in-the-Trooper
checking all the local breaks while arguing
about going north or south while the wind turns
from off-shore to side-shore to on-shore and
the line-ups get crowded. Now multiply that
by the number of dollars your plane ticket costs.
That number becomes the aggravation factor you
will experience driving around Costa Rica looking
for the right hotel if you do not plan properly.
Then again, "planning"
usually goes like this: Buy a map, find the
surf spots, buy a travel guide, then try to
match up the hotels with the breaks. The cross-referencing
takes forever and really doesn't work very well
because the travel writers don't tell you which
hotels are near the surf breaks. My experience
has been that planning a surf trip can be frustrating.
So I figured that
I desperately needed one guide that showed me
where the tubes are and where to stay in order
to maximize my time in them. A Surfer's Guide.
Maybe you need one too.
I
have found that the best way to maximize one's
wave count is to stay somewhere from which you can watch the break.
Chasing surf, especially in unfamiliar territory,
is usually wasteful. By sitting and watching
a break so you can jump on it when the combination
of conditions is just right --tide, wind, crowd--you
get two benefits: First, you are not out looking,
you are there; and second, within a couple of
days you get to know the break well enough to
be pretty sure you are out looking for other
breaks at the right times. Since staying at
a hotel with surf right out front is ideal,
I've pointed those hotels out for you wherever
possible.
This book is not
much of a travel guide. And it's not another
eco-travel guide. There is nothing here on history,
climate, flora and fauna, government, economy,
sociology, arts or culture, except as related
to surfing. I suggest you pick up real travel
guides (see Appendix) at your local discount
bookstore as they will fill in the blanks left
by this book, that is, everything about Costa
Rica that doesn't have to do with surfing.
This book is a
surfer's guide to Costa Rica, Central America's
most wave-packed surf destination. It will help
you maximize your wave count in Costa Rica.
I wish I had it on my first trip to the "rich
coast." My wave count would have doubled, at
least.
Finally, a word
to those who inevitably will feel that this
book will ruin Costa Rica by revealing all of
their favorite, uncrowded, undiscovered breaks:
Untrue. While over 60 breaks are shown and described,
every one has already been published for public
consumption somewhere else. True, you would
have to search quite a bit to put together the
same list. And it's also true that in this guide
you will find suggestions as to where there
are spots yet to be "discovered." But the most
important truth is that every inch of the Costa
Rican coastline has been discovered. And you
can easily find excellent, totally uncrowded
waves.
