To surf and love Costa Rica

Adrian Kiger found a spiritual connection with the ocean when surfing in beautiful Costa Rica

When I first heard about about Costa Rica, the "rich coast" of Latin America, my brother was moving there to live and work on an organic farm for one year. A student of agricultural economics at University of Massachusetts, he had been employed by a community-based development initiative for environmental causes in Costa Rica called Asociasión ANAI.  I was living in Milan, Italy at the time and Costa Rica, the size of my home state of West Virginia, located above Panama and below Nicaragua, seemed worlds away from the old-world architecture and European sophistication that I was experiencing far away.

The members of my family began to travel to Costa Rica to visit my brother, and I kept hearing phrases like "tropical paradise," and "so incredible lush" tossed around when they returned. During the same time, a girlfriend of mine who had spent a week on an educational tour of Costa Rica had come to visit me in Milan. She professed that Costa Rica had been "the most beautiful place that I have ever seen in my entire life, amazing. You have to see it with your own eyes." I wondered, what was this Shangri-La? Why do so many people close to me find themselves drawn to this place? Costa Rica was then put on the back-burner of my mind as a place I was destined to see in the future.

Fast forward: four years later. I am living back in the States and planning a two week trip to visit my new American boyfriend who just happens to own an organic fruit farm on the Pacific Coastline of Costa Rica.  We did not meet on the internet (as many hungry for an interesting mate have asked) but through friends. Not only is organic farming one of his passions, but surfing the country's pristine beaches is as well.

So, here is my chance to be a real life "Gidget!"  I had dreamt of being her in some incarnation since childhood. Gidget was the surfer-girl star of the now iconic American television show from the 1960's in which Sally Field starred as the groovy, goofy, pig-tailed girl-next-door of the Southern California surfing community.  Gidget's second home was the beach and she wore her vividly colored bikinis with obvious glee.  I watched the reruns as a child and was in awe of her sunny, spirited lifestyle.  I was suburb-bound girl whose days in the sun meant the local pools, and the life that Gidget represented was a paradise in California Technicolor for me. 

My plane landed in San Jose, the capital city of Costa Rica, at Juansantamaria International airport. The majority of Costa Rica's visitors arrive here, although the number of flights landing in Liberia's Daniel Oduber International is increasing. I already felt lifted just waiting in the customs line.  Beyond the gates of the agents there were nothing but bright sunshine, mountains, and palm trees glistening though the windows.  Advertisements on the walls were not, as in Italy, for perfumes or expensive sunglasses worn by air-brushed beauties, but for adventures in rainforests, deep-sea explorations, and rip-cord excursions.  Tropical birds and green life were the focal point of each one. The word ECOTOUTRISM finally becomes not only an adjective meaning commerce but representational of a lifestyle that I was about to discover.

Rick, surfer boyfriend extraordinaire scoops me up amidst the arrival chaos outside of the airport and we cruise down the Costa Nera, an inter-continental highway that spans the center of the country, in which San Jose lies, and on through to Costa Rica's Pacific coastline.  I traveled in wonder of the landscape and yes, the word lush was the first word in a long list of adjectives that could've described the vistas before me.  Prolific peaks and valleys around every turn and beyond every mountainside we traversed. Abundance, an absolute abundance of natural perfection.

Prior to my trip I had read about Costa Rica's wealth of flora and fauna, much of which is protected within the more than 190 biological reserves, national parks and wildlife refuges throughout the country, but the most astounding aspect of my initial drive is seeing up close how the natural wealth is not just protected in some parts, but thriving out in the open, the wild, accessible to the observer's eye just by simply being there.

The unpredictable traffic on the two lane road hold us up a few times and gives new meaning to the "slow trucks on a country road" factor of life here.  I remember that Latin countries in general were not built to run for the sole purpose of efficiency. As an American tourist I embrace, I embrace, and go with the flow, and feel very much, at home.  Colorfully painted bungalows are dirty with a similar grit that I've seen in Mexico and Puerto Rico previously, and many of the roadside housed we passed  were selling fresh mangoes, papayas, watermelon, oranges, and pineapples. Elderly "ticas" (Costa Rican women, "Ticos" the diminutive term for men) are shuffling around outside their homes in housecoats made out of cotton prints at which I revel.

On the initial ride with Rick, I keep the windows open and feel, smell the new air and vibration, gaze at the green lushness of everything abundant.  The warm, fresh air felt so foreign coming from winter in the States. The foreignness was like something that feels so different, yet connects with your soul, soothing it to the point of making everything seem comfortable and inviting somehow.  This is the magic of traveling to a new destination, one that had been calling you for some time.

We surf.  Gidget's first day: Rick had the perfect beginner's board for me.  The board itself was so long and heavy, nine whole feet of waxed fiberglass.  The pushups I had done and the preparatory power walks I had taken prior to coming had not readied me for how uncomfortable the board would feel above my arms and shoulders. I mean, ouch! For practicality's sake, I rested the board on my head while I headed towards the ocean, instead of trying to keep it under my arm, it was just too wide.  Like Jamaican women who carry baskets on their heads while gallantly maintaining balance, I imagined myself to be some incarnation of an island lady and walked towards the surf, swaying to and fro under the weight of my new partner in crime.  We were sure to be friends.

I knew in my gut that surfing was something I had to just try and try and try and try over and over again in order to finally achieve the goal of standing up on the board and ride the wave as far as my balance would let it take me.  Besides, I had been raised with very athletic brothers who, as children, had defeated me in every sport know to man (imagine playing the outfield on the same little league baseball team that your brother rocked as 1st baseman!) with the exception of water-skiing.  I was a gifted gal when it came to water, so I approached the waves at Playa Esterillos with gusto, attempted to stand and fell, over and over again. I smacked my face in the numerous oncoming waves, swallowed gallons of salt water, entertained experienced surfers with my comic  tumbles, took respites on the sidelines of the sandy beaches and then went back for more.  Over and over I paddled into a wave, used my arms to pop up and attempt to stand with my  feet placed one ahead of the other, left in front of right centered, in order to achieve perfect balance on the board, and ultimately remain upright on it while the wave carried me forward with its gusto.

Rick was not only a great surfing inspiration (I mean if he could do it then so could I!), but he was also very verbally encouraging to me. At the sight of an oncoming wave he would say, Go girl! You've got it! It's all yours! Take it! Paddle, paddle, paddle! I would have wafted out to see many times (the tide is so strong) and just gazed at the sunset defeated had he not been there rooting me on the whole time. I am proud to say that I actually stood up on the long board the first day and rode a wave for at least a second or two! I just loved it. I knew that I would. Gidget and I were soul mates after all.

The surroundings were so beautiful, palm trees lining the shore, that when I straddled the board (another unfamiliar balancing act) and waited for the next opportune wave, I was so grateful just to be there and to be exhausted, be exhilarated, be frustrated, be inspired by what all the other surfers could achieve with ease. Riding waves with grace, hunger and fervor, I watched them in awe. These surfers had at one point been just like me, beginners attempting to achieve synchronicity with the natural rhythms of the ocean.

There is one moment that I will remember most about my surfing experience , one that recalls itself when I think of Costa Rica or when I close my eyes and wish to be taken to another place. It was at dusk during one of my first days at surf in the ocean. Along with the pack of surfers; young, old, men, women, natives, visitors, and ex-pats alike sitting atop our boards as the waves rolled underneath of us, we collectively waited for the next biggie. Facing the horizon, I glanced to my right, in front of the sandy beach and palm trees aligning it, I saw the sun after a day of shinning so brightly, begin to drop down towards the shoreline. Drenched with water and half-naked in our board shorts and bikinis, we all sat together out there in the ocean silently, peacefully. Although just a babe in the woods of waves, I began to understand the spiritual connection that surfers have with the ocean and how the adrenaline rush of riding with, actually being inside of a wave for if only a few, brief moments was something that can profoundly inspire the soul of an adventurous person. It was not about conquering; it was about being one with...one with the natural world and yourself within it, a kind of nirvana.

I am not embellishing when I say that to come to Costa Rica is to return to a truly natural state of being. You can discover a person who had always lived inside of you and in the right environment, is suddenly invited to come out and play. There is a phrase that Ticos like to use casually and often in Costa Rica called "Pura Vida," Pure Life. This can mean many things to many people who live within the country, and different ones to those who visit.  It can mean that to be in Costa Rica you are close to the natural world, observing, appreciating the living plants and animals that live there or eating the natural foods grown on its terrain.

Surfing gave to me a specific meaning of Pura Vida…and that was experiencing the utmost joy in the natural world. We are just visitors on this planet, wherever we go, even in the waves you can experience the challenges and rewards that nature provides to the curious, and you can emerge from the ocean changed, stronger, more centered, more alive, more in tune with what was here long before we were.  

Adrian Kiger was at the time of writing Realtor for international students in Morgantown, West Virginia. She now lives in California.