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Plowing through Central America

By admin | January 8, 2008

Jota Jota in the barrel

Dr. Douglas signing in from Panama City.  There has been a serious dearth of Blog entries due to technical difficulties.  And by technical difficulties, I mean that two of our computers were ruined by the rain and floods of Captain Ron’s El Caribe. 

Last Blog we left you with, we were in Nicaragua where we headed off to Masaya to hang out at the expansive market and spend some time with our Nica cougar named Cynthia.  The market in Masaya is the best spread of goods we have seen in the past four months.  They have everything from Nicaraguan hard wood rocking chairs for $20 to beautiful hand crafted cedar guitars for $100.   Bill picked up some D. Wade jerseys for $6, I grabbed a pair of sick alligator skin loafers, Eric bought his brother an old man rocker and Kevin purchased some antibiotics and a knife.  After our shopping spree, we spent a day chillaxing at Laguna de Apollo with Cynthia the Coug and her two sons, Eduardo and Downald.  We had pool side bottle service at the edge of the lake, went kayaking and then headed to Cynthia’s house for grub and local culture.  She fed us an amazing dinner and we hit the road for Popoyo for more surf.

We arrived at JJ’s Popoyo surf lodge the next afternoon and paddled out into overhead, reeling offshore barrels with only 10 guys in the line up.  I watched guys pull into barrels that could fit the fat man himself.  We hung out with Dawn (works at Popoyo Surf Lodge) and JJ for a few days.  In the evening, we went with Dawn and headed over to the local church to read “All the Way to the Ocean” to the local children of the town.  I got up on the pastor’s microphone and had kids volunteer to read the book aloud.  Eric, Bill and Kevin helped groups of kids follow along as we read on the book using the microphone.  The book teaches the kids about keeping trash off the streets and out of the storm drains.  It shows the kids that trash from the ground ends up in the rivers and eventually flows to the ocean, which pollutes and kills the marine species.  The book really hit home with the kids because they live right on the ocean and most of their families have some connection to the fishing industry.   They loved the books!

After the reading, we had a Q&A session with the kids and taught them how important the environment is to our long term sustainability.  We left the pastor a couple of books for his library.  Dawn then brought out materials for the kids to draw pictures.   The kids drew pictures of the environment and a few of them drew pictures of the Feral Green team with our thick Burt Reynolds-like mustachios.  One young girl fell in love with Eric and drew a portrait of him, with a huge mustache and a heart over it.  I think he is going to head back there in search of her older hermana. 

We spent a few more days scoring amazing surf at Popoyo and other breaks in the area.  JJ, the owner of the surf lodge took us out to Playa Colorado, where we got 8-10 foot, gut wrenching beach barrels.  I snapped a fin and took on more water than Grizzly Adams’ beard in a hurricane.  We also surfed Avellanas, Lance’s Right and the reef at Popoyo.  Eric Paine had to take off for a wedding in the states and we had to pick up Eric “Basedow” Jenson from the Managua Airport. We drove out of Popoyo with our shoulders aching and our minds on the barrels we had just scored.  We dropped Bring the Paine off at the airport with a backpack and rocking chair and headed over to the Pharaoh Casino across the street.  Bill, Kevin and I spent the entire night playing video poker and drinking free refreshments.  At the end of the night, I think we each lost about $18, but had a worthy number of drinks and 2 full meals.  We slept in the camper in the casino parking and told the guard to wake us up at 8AM to pick Jenso up from the airport.  The guard banged on our tent at 8, we went across the street and grabbed Jenson, donned in his typical gangster jersey and velvet pants.  

We left mangy Managua and spent the next few days hanging out at Popoyo.  We surfed at 7AM and at 2PM every day.  The winds were howling off shore and the swell was still pulsing in from the Antarctic.  Jenson spent his time fully immersing himself in Spanish, doing push-ups on the beach and dominating the kitchen at JJ’s.  Bill, Kevin and I surfed, ate and slept.  There was not much else to do.  One day in the water, Bill recognized a pair of bright green TAVIK (our sponsor) shorts on a surfer.  After some small talk, we learned the guy’s name was Dingo and he was friends with Eric Paulson, the owner of TAVIK.  Dingo is a shaper from Huntington and is now living in Playa Grande in Costa Rica. He was in Popoyo with his buddy, Stu Stu Studio, a surfer from the British Virgin Islands.  They needed a ride back to Costa Rica from Popoyo and we were heading out the next day.  It was meant to be.  We surfed the following morning, grabbed Dingo and Stu and headed out of Nicaragua into the land of Ticos (Costa Rica). 

On the drive over, we learned about Playa Grande (Dingo and Stu’s home) and all of its nuances.  Stu, who used to work on Paul Allen’s yacht told us about Kike, the owner of the main restaurant next to Stu’s house in Playa Grande.  Kike’s English vernacular consists of two phrases “no problems, only solutions” and “phone sex”.   No matter what you ask him in English, he replies with one of the foregoing sayings.  He has no clue what either of them mean.  For instance, if you were to say “Hey Kike – Where is the bathroom”, he would reply “OK – Phonesex, no problems, only solutions” with a heavy Spanish accent.  Makes a lot of sense…

We arrived to Playa Grande after dark and Kike was nice enough to let us park our truck in his restaurant parking lot.  We all ate at his place and then headed next door to Stu Stu Studio’s house, where Dingo was posting up on the floor.  We drank beers and jammed on the guitar until late in the night.  The next day, we surfed and spent the rest of our free time educating everyone on our vegetable oil conversion and searching for used oil to put into our truck.  On the 14th of November, we dropped Kevin off at the bus station for the start of his girlfriend week.  We had one more night in Grande and it happened to be a little thing called Ladies’ Night.  Just about every town in Costa Rica and Panama has a Ladies’ night.  It consists of girls drinking for free and guys trying to talk girls into getting them as many free drinks as possible.  It is to Costa Rica, what Friday and Saturday nights are to the Weekend Warriors, Thursday night to college kids, Tuesday night for Tacos and Sunday for the fun day.

We started our Ladies’ night at PGI, a new hotel in town.  We hung out with the owner and convinced him to convert his truck to veg.  He actually named a drink on the menu, “The Bio-Diesel”, in our honor.  We imbibed a few at PGI and then headed out to Ladies’ Night.  We drove on sketchy dirt roads for half an hour and finally ended up at an oasis in the dark that was pumping music right on the beach.  Disco lights were flashing, people screaming and a full blown dance party erupting on the desolate beach.  We parked the cars and joined the madness.  One drink turned into three or four and the next thing I knew, I was back in Playa Grande, waking up next to Bill in the tent.  Jenso spent the night fully immersing himself in the greasy Rican culture and we didn’t see him until about 10AM the next day. 

Jenso, Bill and I piled in the truck and took off for San Jose to pick up Taylor and Alex.  The girls were coming to visit for about 8 days and we were all really excited to see them (except for Jenson).  On the way to Alajuela (the airport town), we got pulled over by the police on a narrow mountain road.  They pulled us out of the car and cited us for no running lights, having a driver who was not on the entry visa, not having our passports and for Bill not wearing his seatbelt.  In total, they wanted to fine us $800.  We explained that we were volunteers on a surf trip, but they held firm and demanded due compensation.  We balked and told them we did not have that much flow.  We ended up having a standoff with them and literally stood across from them, not talking for about 15 minutes.  Finally, the cops backed down and told us that they would let us off with a warning if we gave them one of our Spanish children’s books for their kids.  We smiled and told them gladly.  We hopped back into the rig and arrived in Alajuela long after dark. 

We parked the truck at the Fiesta Casino and went in to try our luck at a little game called Craps.  Jenson, Bill and I spent the next 5 hours gambling and meeting the locals at the tables.  We ended up catching our zzz’s in Fiesta Casino parking lot that night.  The next day, we spent our free time eating McDonald’s and running errands.  We picked up Taylor at the airport the next day at 2PM.  She bobbed out of the airport terminal, looking like a million bucks and wearing cowboy boots and a big smile on her face.  Her and I took the truck up to Monte Verde to get a glimpse at the rain forest.  Jenso and Bill stuck around Alajuela for another night at the Fiesta Casino.  They ended up at a local bar and then found themselves sleeping in the camper at Fiesta Casino once again.  The next day Bill picked up Alex (the foot in his football) at the airport and they headed off for the beach. 

The next week was girlfriend week, rife with sweet nothings and ouch ouch you are on my hair.  Kevin headed down to the Oso Peninsula for some off-roading with Mimi. Bill and I headed to MalPais / Santa Teresa and stayed at a house on the beach with Taylor and Alex for a week.  We had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner, complete with chicken (there are no turkeys in Costa), mashed potatoes, guacamole, caprese salad and copious bottles of wine.  After an amazing week with our better halves, we dropped the girls at the airport, waved the white hankies out the window and had another tough goodbye. 

While the truck was parked in Alajuela dropping the girls off, our lock was punched in and we were robbed.  In less than 5 minutes, in the middle of the day, someone made off with my camera, Bill’s Ipod and a few other valuables.  Bill and I spent the next day at the police station writing up a police report, only to have our claim denied by our insurance company.  Bill and I took off the next day for a mountain resort called Tilajari, which is located by the Arenal Volcano in the middle of Costa Rica.  We had emailed Tilajari earlier in the trip and they had been saving their used vegetable oil for over a month.  We showed up in our rig with the Darkness blaring and a cool look in our eyes.  The owners liked our style and treated us like royalty.  They hooked us up with about 20 gallons of used veg and we showed them how our conversion worked.  They were amazed at the simplicity and benefits to both the environment and their pocket books.  They are going to try to convert all of the vehicles at the resort to run on veg oil .They fed us a few delectable meals and then we hit the road to reunite with Eric and Kevin in Tamarindo, which is located on the Northwest Costa of Rica.  

After a day of driving, we found the boys waiting for us at Pizza Hut.  Eric’s mustache was thicker than Borat’s accent, Kevin had a Grizzly Adams beard and everyone had a smile on their face after seeing their girlfriends.  We headed back to Playa Grande and met up with Stu Stu Studio and Dingo.  The boys were happy to see us.  We hung out at Kike’s for some food and then ended up going to Ladie’s Night one more time.  Eric and I literally murdered the dance floor with our dance moves.  I think people were ready to shell out for lessons, but we had to deny them after we lost control of our motor skills due to something in the drinks at the bar.  We spent a couple of days in Grande, surfing and looking for vegetable oil for the truck, then met a group of girls who were teaching surf lessons in Grande.  One of them was a nineteen year old Aussie girl named Stacey Stace Stace Stace.  She had an around the world ticket and was traveling for a year.  She was ready to move on from Grande and wanted to hitch a ride with us.  We said absolutely! 

We headed south from Grande to a beautiful black sand beach called Marbella, for some camping, surfing and desolation.  The winds were blowing offshore and we were the only ones in sight for as far as the naked eye could see.  We surfed by day and had bonfires at night.  We heard it was a sharky spot, but wrote it off as mearly dirty local rumors.  Well, rumor turned into reality the next day when Eric and I were spear fishing at an outer reef that was almost a half mile out.  We saw schools of tuna, a parrot fish, a morray eel with elephantitis, conch shells, oysters and countless other living creatures under the sea.  Eric was heading back to shore and I was poking around the reef with my Hawaiian sling.  I looked to my left and a large grey and white shark appeared from the dark below my feet.  I froze, with my spear in hand.  The shark, which was about as big as I was, swam by me without a care in the world and disappeared on the other side of the reef.  I high tailed it back to shore, scoring some oysters and conch along the way. 

After a couple days of camping at Marbella, we headed south for Playa Hermosa.  Eric’s buddies Brett and Miguel own a house right by the beach (boyyyyyyyyyy) in Hermosa Palms.  They were generous enough to let us clean up our act there for a couple of weeks.  The house was unbelievable.  Hot showers, cold air conditioning, flat screen TV’s, granite counter tops, and three spacious bedrooms.  There was a community pool and amazing surfing right out front for us.  We settled into what would turn out to be an amazing few weeks of surf, vegetable oil and endless night life.  More to follow…

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