Costa Rica Pt. II

On one of my photo excursions I dropped my 55mm lens into a rock-pool on the beach, which led me to take a trip to San Jose after my stay in Santa Theresa to buy the cheap 50mm later on as an replacement. I fixed the 55mm one or one and a half years later when I sadly broke the A7RII in Barcelona trying to help someone who had lost their weed on the floor of a restaurant.

I also broke the drone a couple of days later, I think the humidity might have killed it, at least the gimbal wasn’t functioning correctly any more. I was too lazy to carry it around until I might find a place to fix it, so I dropped the whole thing into a trash-can in San Jose (the only place where I might have had it fixed). Everything from the remote, the drone, to the 3 batteries was probably still worth a good 500$ at the time. I left it so that some of the dudes looking through the trash-cans would find it, I hope it made someone’s day as they could figure out was it was and sell it for the right price.
Overall Santa Theresa was nice, but due to the fact that I wasn’t surfing at the time I couldn’t discover it’s true value, so I thought more of it as a couple of houses and expensive businesses on a beautiful long beach besides an either very dusty or very muddy road with overpriced accommodation and a whole lot of surfy hipsters hanging around without much to do.
After I had visited the beaches for a bit I decided it was time to go inland and see what the very hyped town of la Fortuna was all about, so after dealing with buying the new lens in San Jose, I took a bus there. Found some cheap accommodation and walked around the place for a couple of days. For me it turned out to be the absolute tourist trap, there was basically nothing to be done without joining a tour full of Americans. I quickly learned that it is absolutely necessary to rent a car in Costa Rica, as public transport is pretty weak and walking along roads with loads of traffic not knowing of they lead somewhere sweating like a pig just isn’t that great.

I enjoyed staying at the Tamarindo backpacker resort and practicing the surf, became friends with the staff and some other long term guests in the hotel, as I always do when I stay somewhere for a longer time, not really caring for the short term guests, but over time getting to know the people who stay around for longer.

I do remember a very blond German surfer couple that I connected and went surfing with for a couple of days. The setup basically consisted of Nicole the cute receptionist, and two Chilean ladies that I practiced my Spanish with. Looking for weed was pretty easy, just walk out of the hotel sit down and have a cigarette, wait for a bit (sometimes a bit more) and be offered the super expensive street deals. There were a few dudes around, but in the end I favoured one guy I named Cracky, he literally was the crackiest human being around. When he wasn’t too high he was actually quite nice to be around, but once people are too high and/or too drunk that they won’t remember the conversation or anything else the next day so I don’t feel like talking to them at all. Cracky got high a lot, and by that I mean on meath, actual crack or whatever he could find. He’d always walk around without a shirt and tiny running shorts, sometimes just lying in the ditch, sometimes loudly offering help for the Americans to park their cars. I bought him food sometimes.
Two weeks into my stay in Tamarindo I remembered, that besides being such a surfer now I still liked to take photos. So I decided to rent the tiniest car I could find and give the la Fortuna – Monteverde – Río Celeste loop another try. It worked out a lot better for the photos than operating by public transport and on foot. The radius I could reach was obviously a lot bigger and it was fun to drive around and even though the Vulcano was still covered in clouds, the hiking tracks still closed, the cloud forest had no clouds and the Rio Celeste was more of a muddy brown than anything bright blue I still got to see quite a bit of Costa Rica that I wouldn’t have discovered if it wasn’t for this cruise. One morning I discovered a heavy scratch on the hood of the rental which dampened the mood a little bit and had me worried about returning the vehicle. I blamed some drunk guy crashing his motorbike on his way back home from his Saturday night out, as there were glas-splinters all over the place as well as marks that could’ve well been fresh of a crashed motorbike. I might have parked to hastily in the parking lot of my first hostel. Luckily the dude from Adobe car rental didn’t care and asked for no additional payments which made my day as this could’ve been easily very expensive.

Thanks to “Cracky” the sketchiest dude in the whole town I also got pretty high. After buying a little bit of weed here and there it led to taking an unmarked taxi to the neighbouring town of villa real (I found that quite amusing, the real town as supposed to Tamarindo, definitely not a (the) real town, letting him walk away into the village with the 180$ I had to pay for the ounce of shitty seedy cafe  coloured weed and then wait at some random corner that he’d hopefully return.

Also the way back was always a bit scary as the amount of weed would’ve probably landed me deep in Costa Rican prison. Also being accompanied by the dudes and in possession was always a bit sketch as it must’ve been very obvious to any policeman what we’d been up to. To my surprise he always came back from his little trip through the village, I think he made such a good deal with the little ride out of town and paid so little for the weed that there was no need for him to sabotage our business relation. One time on the way back we stopped at a sports-goods store and he got himself soccer shoes and a ball. I had never seen him happier, he was always talking about football. There were some dark moments too, when he hung around so high out front the hotel that he was barely able to speak.
I was allowed to smoke in the hotel, right by the reception table, which was great, no stress going to the beach or hiding out in the side streets.
Unluckily for me I got quite high off the stuff and with it came the munchies every night which led to eating a ton of crappy foods which then led to a lot of inflammation in my body. At least that’s what I figured. I also rented a different board one day and that was hard(er) on my rib, the system it was using was called the “Rusty torsion spring”. I also remember asking explicitly not for a premium board, but they rented one to me thinking it was a normal one. I think this was the time when they started to put carbon all over the surfboards to make them more rigid, they definitely did a good job on that model, it felt like surfing on a metal plate. The surfing I did with it was significantly better than with the boards I had rented before but after a session or two it felt like I had broken my rib and just thinking about surfing hurt so bad, I had to stop. Surfing was also quite expensive, renting boards all the time wasn’t cheap as there ll be at least a little ding a week when you start surfing. Sometimes crashing boards with someone else or just smashing it to the ground while being in the washing machine. Those added up and easily doubled the weekly renting price.
As it turned out later not just for a couple of days, but what seemed for good. Still, I decided to wait around for a week or two, have daytime beers on the beach but nothing changed and my visa slowly started to run out and so it was time to travel on.