Dan Rodriguez. Surfer. #playwiththebest

"Surfing On The Break"

"Surfing On The Break"

Giant breaths are what you take
Surfing on the break
I hope I don’t wipe out
Surfing on the break
We could surf forever
Surfing on the break
We could live together
Surfing on, Surfing on the break

Surfing back from your house
Surfing on the break
Surfing back from your house
Surfing on the break
Feet they hardly touch the board
Surfing on the break
My wake don't hardly make no sound
Surfing on, Surfing on the break

Some may say
I'm wishing my days away
No way
And if it's the price I pay
Some say
Tomorrow's another day
You stay
I may as well play

Giant breaths are what you take
Surfing on the break
I hope I don’t wipe out
Surfing on the break
We could surf forever
Surfing on the break
We could be together
Surfing on, Surfing on the break

Some may say
I'm wishing my days away
No way
And if it's the price I pay
Some say
Tomorrow's another day
You stay
I may as well play

Keep it up, keep it up

(to the music of the Police Walking on the Moon)

My new blog site -

http://surfingshreddie.wordpress.com/

Summer begins? Well I hope it does soon!

This morning I stepped out from my new apartment in downtown Vancouver and swore it was November.  In fact, the song ‘November Rain’ has seemingly been playing in my head all day.  So, as you can imagine, it has been cold and wet.

My favorite cliff - starts at a 90 degree drop, then levels out to about 60 degrees

Snow Board and golf in the same day

 

So much snow

 May went by beautifully up in whistler, and I managed to hit the powder on multiple occasions.  In the third week of May, we got over a foot of powder.  Seriously!  I managed to convince the lift operator at 7^th Heaven to let me and a couple of Aussies go up early, and we had a full 3 runs to ourselves.  Then I managed to find deep powder for the next 3 hours before needing to break for food at Horseman’s Hut.

Check out all that pow pow

 

Even the last few days of the regular season which ended May 30 were spectacular.  This was the second heaviest snow fall on record for the Whistler and Blackcomb, and we milked it!  And the funny things is, the very next weekend we went camping and fishing up north of Pemberton past Duffy Lake.  Bloody cold at night but we built the mother of all bonfires, and kept warm with hot toddies.

Duggan fishing at the mouth of the Birkenhead at Lilloet Lake

ast week I had an MRI.  UGH.  Turns out my wipeout in March tore major ligaments in my shoulder and I will need surgery.  So I guess this ongoing pain makes sense.  And I thought it was just a bruise.

Apres at the Longhorn

Ken, Tony and me after a perfect Dim Sum experience

Just got myself a place downtown close to the office as (a) the weekly commute was killing me (b) the constant living out of a suitcase in various hotels all week was awful and (c) the weight gain was bad.  (eating room service for 2 months?  Not a good thing for your waist line)

The new pad's kitchen

I found Flor de Cana!

Tamarindo to Whistler – Three months later

Patrick 'shredding the pow pow'

It’s hard to believe that it has only been three months since I left the warm waters of Costa Rica for the harsh cold of Whistler.  When I left Tamarindo, the temperature was 35c.  In the middle of February, the temperature outside my house in Creekside was -25c.  That’s a 60 degree temperature difference.  Ugh!

Since coming here, I have picked up snowboarding pretty well, and for a beginner, am holding my own on the blue runs to the point of being comfortable through the trees.  I have done a few black runs, in fact, to get home; I need to traverse one almost every day.  Runs are colored by difficulty for those of you who don’t board/ski – green is the easiest, then blue then black.  Then double black!

So far I have only had a couple of major wipeouts.  On day 4 on a board, I almost broke my ankle and tore up my knee pretty badly.  In fact, the first aid guys on the mountain who took me off the hill on a snowmobile thought it was a career ender.  Whatever.  The very next day I went swimming, and by mid week was boxing and lifting weights with my legs.  One week later I was on the hill.  

My other nasty wipeout was when I attempted to hit a straight-away section of flatter terrain at high speed; probably about 50 km.  A blind skier came out of nowhere and my attempt to avoid him resulted in a spectacular single person (me) collision with hard packed snow.  I guess he didn’t see me coming…

Anyways, for a couple of days I couldn’t lift my arm at all, but now it is somewhat better and it only hurts like a son-of-a-bitch to lift it over my head.  Oh, I was boarding a week later.

So I like snowboarding a lot!  Just not the wipeouts.

Après at Dusty's with the Kokanee Girls

Whistler is much like Tamarindo in many respects.  The town is small, full of ex-pats, tourists abound and people are generally in good spirits.  Never have I encountered so many Australians in my life though, unless you count my trip to Australia of course.  There are also a lot of Kiwi’s, Brits, Japanese, South Africans and even one guy from Ireland named Padrigh.  Oh, yea.  There are Canadians here too.

Weekends here remind me of weekends in Tamarindo.  All of the tourists show up, the chairlifts are busier and people are generally ruder.  “You live here?” They will ask.  “Oh.  Well without us, you wouldn’t have a job.”  That seems to be the attitude.  And much like Tamarindo, I just don’t go boarding on weekends, or I stick to obscure runs that are gnarly and not gringo-friendly.    

My house is to the right in the trees - about 50 m from the hill

 Being a local has its advantages anywhere I guess.  Being a local here means anywhere from 10% to 20% of shopping, restaurants and up to 50% on services such as massage and snowboard tuning.  I really wish Tamarindo businesses did that for locals; they just didn’t really get it minus a few places such as WRSC, Banana, CR Surf and Kelly’s.  It helps keep things local, and helps the economy, especially during the slow season.

One of the biggest differences for me so far has been the speed of the internet, and consistency of my BlackBerry’s signal.  As many of you know, my job is being on the phone, and my VoIP phone just didn’t have the strength of a signal in Costa Rica.  I believe that as a direct result of having a solid infrastructure, that my business has improved immensely.  And even though I live up a hill like I did in Tamarindo, it is paved and when it snows, we have plows hitting it nonstop.  But those roads in Costa Rica are part of the Pura Vida attraction, so it’s all good.

Now one thing that has been different is the price of things.  People, things are expensive in Tamagringo!  My monthly grocery bill has dropped by at least 50%, and my utilities are about 25% of what I paid before.  Gas is cheaper, especially on the Indian reserve in Pemberton, and when I took my car in to get it fixed, it took 2 hours and was done properly.   Costa Rica really needs to get its import taxes under control.  As a stalwart conservative, less taxation creates more available capital to grow the economy.

reacquainting with old friends - Andrew Wong, Owner Wildrice restaurant vancouver

I miss Tamarindo though immensely, especially the friends that were made and the surfing buddies that I would see daily on the break.  Surfing has been ‘replaced’ for now by boarding, and now that summer is only a couple of months away, I will be mountain biking, mountain climbing and of course, fly-fishing the rivers and streams for trout.  

So, there’s my three month report.

Me and my CrackBerry working away

Tamarindo - The fleecing of Gringos

The fleecing of Gringos

This is my last post from Tamarindo, Costa Rica for the next while as I decided to move to Whistler, British Columbia for the next year.  I am planning to come back here both in the short term and long term.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t pull any punches and call it the way it is.  While the surfing here is second to none, sometimes I feel like a second class person.  It’s because of the gringo tax.  Here are some examples.

Alamo car rental – prices rose 100% from September to December’s high season “because of the tourists.”  So my SUV rental went from $50 a day to $100.  Okay fine.  Supply and demand.  But come on?  I live here.

Economy Car rental – they tried to charge me extra insurance even though the website clearly stated one price of $10 a day, they wanted $30 a day.  I was told insurance on all cars is mandatory in Costa Rica.  Bullshit.  My Jeep doesn’t have insurance nor is it legally required to have insurance.  I got on the phone with the owner, told him to fuck himself and ended up not paying the ‘insurance’.

Shopping – a blond friend of mine walked into a small grocery store near Avellanas.  Two beers and two bags of chips cost $8.00.  WTF???  I walked in the next day and purchased the same items.  It cost me and my darker skin $4.00.

Water – When the government took over the water service here last year, my bill went from $5 a month to close to $100.  Seems I was not alone.  A lot of bitching, phone calling and dropping in unannounced at their offices and it is back down to $16.  No reason nor explanation ever given.  And no refund.

Electrical bill – When we moved to Tamarindo, our electrical bill was about $100 a month.  Now it is over $300.  That’s right.  In four years it has gone up that much.  That’s about the average salary for a Tico.  Do you think they look at where I live and give me a ‘special rate’?  You bet they do.

It is what it is.  Don’t even get me started on the road to Langosta!  Or how when you take your car in to be serviced they swap out your new car battery and replace it with an old one!

Tamarindo 2010 - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Good

 Witch’s Rock Surf Camp making their property open and making the beachfront more accessible - Joe and Holly have put a lot of effort into building a sustainable business that looks good too.  Did you know that most of the used deep fat oil from many local establishments is converted into diesel by WRSC?

Kelly’s making the entrance of Tamarindo look good with his storefronts – it looks great.  Maybe they rest of Tam can keep up with Kelly'’s example.

Water clean – the ocean has been clean and free of pollution this year.  I love swimming in Tamarindo again!

Gil’s getting his own place – damn great burritos and a good locals’ hang out without getting gouged.

Cassie’s recycling still going strong – in a country where people litter, it’s great to see recycling going strong here.

Road to my house – amazingly enough, they graded the hill to my house

Sandbar out front returned – makes for some wicked waves again

Bad 

Neighbors bickering – there is no community spirit here.  Not at all.  Businesses fight, people accuse others of developing on public property, there is no chamber of commerce, some chick complains about dog shit on the beach while her hotel uses a septic field that is literally 10 feet from the beach, and it goes on.

Internet slow – like brutally slow.  My VoIP won’t even work now.  They don’t understand that more people online equates to less bandwidth.  Seriously.  I told them that and they said it wasn’t how the internet worked.

AYA and their takeover – water never works and smells like bleach.  And last year they tried to gringo tax us all with my bill going from $15 to $100 in one month.  It’s back down to $18 now.

Langosta road and ex president lying  -the road still isn’t done even after locals shelled out thousands to ex Prez Arias who promised a paved road.  

No lifeguards and an irresponsible hotels like Diria (lots of employees seemingly doing God knows what when I order food, but they can’t afford a lifeguard?)

Passitiempo still closed – those new owners came in thinking they knew all that and a bag of chips.  Hint for anyone buying a business.  Don’t fire the employees and bring your nephews from LA in to run it.

Babylon closed – Thursday nights are missed.

Ugly

SUP’s in the line up – In the USA they are classified as boats and not allowed on the breaks or in swimming areas.  If you want to SUP, go and do it Laird Hamilton style in 16 foot waves instead of hogging the rivermouth

Fires – we lost some great businesses and hangout places due to fires that could have been put out had there been a fire station here.  Taxes come into Tamarindo and are spent in San Jose

Helicopter – that mother fucker of a helicopter pilot who insists at flying dangerously close to the water and beaches.  FAA rules allow for a minimum or 500 feet over beaches and populated areas.  Fucking idiot fucking dumbasses with no respect for the planet.

Robberies and useless police – the police here remain as useful as tits on a bull.  Missing people, robberies, and an infestation of criminal activity has gone unchecked.  Right now we have a missing friend under suspicious circumstances.  Where are the police?  Probably drinking or setting up roadblocks to take bribes from the tourists.

Nicaragua – Friend or Foe?

I just got back from my third trip to Nicaragua this year, and was caught in the middle of a debate by locals and expats about the border ‘war’ with Costa Rica.  Having grown up during the era of Ollie North, communism and Time magazine, I always figured that the president of Nicaragua, Ortega was nothing more than a despot ruling under the guise of socialism.  Well, I still feel that way.  But not about the people.

I have learned that the average Nicaraguan (Nico) is friendly, hard working and will treat you with same respect that you show them. On the surf breaks, there was ZERO territorialism, and in fact, I found myself hanging right in the middle of the pack at Playa Ramanso and Play Yankee with some really great locals who I watched encourage some of the beginners who had ventured out into deeper waters.  I cannot even imagine this happening at Dana Point or even one of my local breaks like Playa Grande.

Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America, has widespread underemployment and poverty. GDP fell by almost 3% in 2009, due to decreased export demand in the US and Central American markets, lower commodity prices for key agricultural exports, and low remittance growth - remittances are equivalent to almost 15% of GDP.  

Per capita annual income is $2600 or $217 a month.  They suffered a major disruptive civil war and these people are literally starving, yet they seem to be happy with what they have.  Maybe that’s a lesson we can all learn.

We stayed in San Juan del Sur again at the Hotel Villa Isabella which is run by Mike and Jane.  They also run the volunteer library there, and seem very involved in the community.  The usual suspects were visited including Iguana Bar and the Crazy Crab, and a couple of restaurants that served $10 lobster dinners.  And instead of Playa Maderas, we surfed the southern beaches this time,  Ramanso and Yankee, which were way chill and less crowded.  

Next time you come down to Tamarindo, set aside a few days to go to Nicaragua too.  The country needs your dollars, and I bet you will have a great time!

Costa Rica and the impossibility of doing business

For all of you who think that living in a surfing paradise is easy.

This past week was especially difficult for us who depend on simple things like water, electricity, roads and internet.    The weather has been sunny all week, and the only saving grace is that I have a Blackberry on the Costa Rican 3G Network.  Although, the actual speed of the 3G here reminds me of AOL dial-up circa 1998.

I think that Friday really summed things up with an email from AYA, the government run water monopoly who at least had the courtesy to send out an email for those of us who opted in.  It was as follows:

DEAR CUSTOMERS, We have problems in transportation lines and the network of water supply. This is because the repairs to the streets of Tamarindo, which take place at this time. For this reason and to repair existing damages will be suspended water service.  We have no definitive time to finish our repairs. We can not estimate a time to return to provide water service. We apologize for the inconveniences it may cause you.

Thank God we have a two huge water tanks buried under the garden, which means we can enjoy long showers and washing our cars for at least two weeks while the rest of Tamarindo bathes in the Pacific.

We lost power a few times this week.  It’s kind of expected in the rainy season, but during the sunniest weather we have had in months?  Perhaps the government subsidized monopoly  gave it’s employees a day off at the beach?  In reality, tourism season has started and the air conditioners probably drew too much load off the grid and the electricity company was unprepared.  It’s not like we have had tourists here before, right?

And on that note, the main highway called the Inter American Norte has been shut down for parts of last week.  This is the only route for commerce to move from the ports or from our neighbors to the north.  I guess that closures like this account for such a low GDP as you need to be able to transport good to sell them at market.  Funny concept I know.

And finally, the internet.  Also run by a government monopoly, we have had problems at the house for the past two months and have had countless technicians visit and try to determine the problem.  They tell me that for some strange reason there is not enough bandwidth coming up the hill to my house.  They can’t seem to figure it out, even after having 6 workers here on Wednesday for 5 hours.

I told them the problem.  Someone has parked a server in town and is eating up all the bandwidth so they need to (a) find the server and put him on a dedicated server or (b) increase throughput on the cable lines.

They assured me that I knew not what I was talking about and that it didn’t matter how many people were on the internet at the same time because bandwidth can’t get used up and slow up download/upload speed.

No, I am not kidding.

And then on Thursday, most of the country lost internet for about 40 hours.  No explanation.  No apology.  And no discount on the bill for sure.

25% of the people in the country who are employed work for the government or a monopoly, and this has led to an attitude of ineptness among the same.  They get paid no matter what and have a union that is so strong that the President would not have been elected without their support.  Next month,  all employees of Costa Rica must be paid a full month’s wages as a bonus as mandated by law.  Plus, they all get about 2 weeks off.

Is it no wonder that the country is close to being bankrupt?

I guess my overall point is to let people who think that they can carry out a remote business like I do, is that it is next to impossible.   I have to start a company in the New Year, and if this country had a dependable infrastructure, I could stay here and employee Costa Ricans.  As it turns out, I am moving to Canada where they have competition and people who care about your effectiveness to create wealth and contribute to the country’s GNP.