It’s a lazy Friday afternoon now and the pay phones are on the fritz, so there is no way of finding out if the world still exists outside this village. I have seen buses come in from Sona, the nearest big town, so one can only assume Skynet hasn’t been activated.
I am on the hotel patio watching the shop so to say. Michelle is in Panama City, and Mike is down at his bar doing some welding. Somehow I managed to be in charge for a while because Mike’s 8 year old kid Zack had to show the furniture guys where to go to deliver the new bar furnishings. Kinda funny really, but also very chill. It’s not like there are waves right now, so I get to greet people including a couple of girls from Belgium who were looking for a place to stay.
You meet the world on these trips. So far on this trip have met people from the following countries – Canada, USA, France, Belgium, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Costa Rica, the UK and Ireland. In fact, the Irish couple knew exactly the town my parents live in near Cork.
Random observation – I just noticed that there is a chicken beside me pecking at the dirt in the planter beside me. I have decided to name her ”Pollo Frito“. It must be dinner time.
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I just came back from dinner with Schmoo (owns the Dive Bar), Brian (from Colorado), Claire (Dive master from the UK), Heather and Michael (Canucks who own fluid kayak tours). And I sat beside the three Panamanian girls with whom I shared a break with today for three hours. It was just the four of us on Punta Bravo this morning and I got to know them quite well, even with my half-assed attempts at speaking Spanish. Funny…it turns out that one of the girls with whom I was sharing waves was the female surf champion of Central America named Pancha. She and I actually took the same wave a dozen times with one of yelling dereche or izequere (right or left), so we could hit the same break. I had no idea until tonight when she & I were talking about surfing Central America and her friend asked me if I knew who she was. Naturally, I said no…“do you know who I am?“ Haha, surfers are so cool. Imagine sitting next to Michael Jordan and not knowing who he was, like that would ever happen. Surfers, pro or amateur all share a commonality of love for the ocean, respect for fellow surfers and cold beer. And damned we are a good looking tribe!
This morning I surfed the famous reef break and managed to get some pretty good waves before destroying my board on a rock. Destroy is a relative term…the board can be repaired, but it won’t be the same…so in my book, it’s done. Pretty stupid how I did it too. I had to duck dive under an inbound wave and I pushed too deep and hit the bottom. When you surf in water that’s between 2 to 8 feet deep in places, things like this tend to happen on a regular basis…hence the business of ‘Ding Repair’.
Oh, and on one wave this morning, I was cruising down a long left when I surfed right over a 6 foot reef shark. It was probably only about 3 feet long, but the crystal clear waters have a way of distorting the size of things…plus it sounds better to say it was a 6 foot shark.
If life is about having fun, and surfing is fun, then does surfing equal life? Someone asked me why I learned how to surf and why it has become my passion. Two reasons. One, you can’t play rugby past the age of 30 without really fucking up your knees. Two, the movie Point Break. Sounds cheesy right? Watch Point Break, and then go out and paddle into the surf. It will change your life. And your life will become way more fun.
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It’s 4pm and I am chocking back the tears after looking at my surfboard. The ding sucks, and I still have another 2 days of surfing. My friend Gucci from Argentina owns a couple of surf stores in Tamarindo, and his guys will be able to make it like new. But it’s done. Not only have I become a wave snob, but now I am willing to toss out a $1000 board if it isn’t perfect. It’s probably no different that shredding a snow board on rocks, and realizing that carving will be a little more difficult. (Mental note, work extra hard next month and buy 2 boards!)
By the way…sketch. The developers never showed so I hiked into the project myself in the 40 plus temperature. Stupid move because I am no dehydrated and feeling the heat prickles. So, I am back in my cabina cooling down, drinking water and eating some trail mix.
The property was beautiful, but nothing is happening right now and they don’t even have power in from the biggest town nearby some hour’s drive. Sketch. So it looks as if I am going to pass on this until they at least get some of the infrastructure down pat.
There also seems to be quite a few problems between the locals and the expats over development, water rights and so forth. No different from anywhere else in the world I guess.
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”My second home is a third world cantina.“ I love that bumper sticker. It’s Friday the 20th and I am here waiting for the surf. Big shock.
Last night when I came home, there was a Scorpion the size of a lobster on my screen door. This was after a pretty uneventful night except for having to leave the pizza joint because I was being harassed by an Italian girl who was decidedly a little too friendly. Funny thing is that she is here in Panama on vacation and lives in…you guessed it, Tamarindo.
And talk about small world, the waitress at the restaurant that I ended up having a few post-pizza beers at is from Canada.
This morning Mike, the owner of the hotel in which I am staying, showed me a brochure of the development project that I had been looking for which stated that construction was due to begin in a few months. The brochure was dated March 2007. Nice. When I see the realtor in Panama City this weekend I think I might go all old school on his ass. There is nothing more that I hate than being scammed, or at least that they tried to scam me. Yea, I am going to old school.One thing that being involved in the gambling business taught me is that you can’t turn the other cheek when people try to rob you. You have to stand up for yourself and let people know that it’s not cool to mess with you. I know this sounds all gangsta, but there are so many assholes on this planet that will sell their mother for a dollar. In fact, I was told of a woman here in town that is pimping her 14 year old daughter and ‘prepped’ her as a pre-teen by making her watch porn all the time. Sick. And we are in a town of maybe 250 people in a very catholic country. What is wrong with humanity?
Anyways, I need to go surf and get rid of this negative energy that is surrounding me. There are lots of good people on earth, and all surfers share a commonality of respect for the environment and each other. Surfing is awesome.
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Okay, I feel better now after getting some waves with the locals at Punta Brava, which translated means, Brave Point. They might want to rename it Punta Loco because if you wipe out and go head first, then you’ll be chum for the parrot fish that reside about 3 feet below you.
I felt like writing since there isn’t much to do in between tides while waiting for the surfing conditions to be optimal.
I am in a sleepy little fishing village called Santa Catalina on the south west coast of Panama. There are no phones, no internet, no mobile phone signal and I am worried power is going to be disrupted at any moment.
However, I did learn to use a phone card today.
The town is also home to some of the best surfing in Central America with reef breaks and two estuary breaks within walking distance.
How did I get here?
Seven days ago I was studying the weather satellite imagery when I noticed a storm in the southern Pacific Ocean stretching from the south tip of South America to almost the northern tip of New Zealand. That meant one thing…waves would be hitting Central America in seven days.
I logged onto Copa Air and booked a flight out the following Friday to coincide with hitting the swell on Saturday night in Playa Venao. Then the plan was to go to Santa Catalina for the next storm surge a few days later. So, after a day’s drive from Playa Venao where this morning I surfed the dawn patrol, here I am waiting for the sunset high tide.
Have I done this sort of thing before? Yea…it’s becoming a bad habit ever since I left Vancouver.
One of the other things I am doing on this trip is scoping out places to take people on surf tours. My friend Joe owns a big hotel/surf school in Tamarindo, and he wants to do more tours outside of Costa Rica, so it made sense for me to snap lots of pics and hang with the locals to find the best breaks…the ‘secret locals-only’ spots.
WORLD fish production hit 143.6m tonnes in 2006, the highest since records began in 1950, according to a new biannual report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. Just over 110m tonnes was eaten by people, with the rest used as animal feed or for other commercial uses. Some 47% of fish on dinner plates is now farmed, and this is likely to increase as the amount caught in the wild levels off. The catch in 2006 from marine and inland waters fell to 92m tonnes from 94.2m the previous year. China is the world's biggest producer in both categories, landing 17.1m tonnes of fish from its waters, and farming 34.4m tonnes.
Anyways, the waves have been very good, although the wind has been strong during the day. We are heading out in a bit.
Keep surfing!
