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Feral Green Enters Panama

By admin | January 25, 2008

sany0005.JPGThe The following Blog update was written by our Newport buddy Kirk O’Brien, who came to visit Feral Green in Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica at the beginning of December and stayed with us until January 1st, 2008.  Enjoy

Captain Kirk signing on:

I arrived in Costa Rica a bit anxious upon reading the previous blogs: how would I make the transition from my plush Newport lifestyle to bare bones, Lord of the Flies status??  From air conditioning, 9 to 5 living, and a flat screen to one dirty camper with 4 dirtier guys??  There was no need to fret, though, as I found the crew posted up in a lavish Playa Hermosa house (Costa Rica).  (FRAUD ALERT!! – This house is not Feral)  This house could have been on Cribs — apparently it had been lent to them for a week through a friend, whatever.  We responded to their good fortune by storming the local bar like an unstoppable rebel force.  We danced with the native women, pilfered their drinks, infuriated the local men, and spoke Spanish gibberish to anyone who would listen.  A great time was had by all except… 
 
Hurricane Robbins, who swept through the town, got lost and took a 10 mile walk home alone in the dark.  He returned at 4AM, covered in mosquito bites and looked like less than a million pesos.  The next day, I awoke to help Sean, Bill, and Kevin filter over 100 gallons of vegetable oil to fuel the bio-diesel truck/camper/dominating beast of a machine.  They had spent a week collecting veg oil in the town and educating the townfolk on the advantages of converting one’s vehicle to function on vegetable oil.  Restaurants responded positively and gave them enough veg to get to Panama.   Sean and I were a natural filtering team.  The Dre and Snoop of vegetable oil – With our Veg Oil, we got 28.6 mpg compared to Bill & Kevin’s meager 17.6. 

After filling up we headed off for our next destination: the Caribbean coast – Also known as El Caribe.  We were all pretty excited because none of us had been to that side and it promised a significantly different culture than the Pacific.  Somehow along the way, we managed to drop our transmission on a steep Rican backroad.  No worries:  these guys are pretty resourceful and we got the truck towed to the Alajuela town Mechanico to deal with the truck and get the transmission rebuilt.  We decided to take a  bus over to El Caribe to score some tasty waves.   I should mention that in between we made one of our many stops at the Fiesta Casino.  Details are hazy, but I do remember us leaving with no money, a disgruntled pit boss, and two local chicks threatening the life of E. Paine.  Pretty much all stops at Fiesta Casino end this way.
 
Puerto Viejo (the surf town in El Caribe) was indeed different, but still mostly tainted by the thousands of Americans/Aussies that had stomped through there.  Think Bob Marley painted on fake Casio watches, a poor man’s Jamaica.  The people were kind (aside from a local shop owner that wanted to murder Eric with a trident) but forgot to inform us that our $8/night hostel was prone to rapid flooding from the rain.  Such is the laid back, hands-off attitude over there.  Our laptop sustained some damage but our spirit did not.  One day we scored Salsa Brava, the best (but often fickle) surf spot on that side of the country.  It was very uplifting to finally get some good waves after the misfortune we encountered.  Bill scored a huge in and out barrel and showed the locals that those rocky mountains are’nt so rocky.  When the surf died down, we back-tracked to go pick up the truck, loaded up the swift tunes of Andre Nickatina, and crossed over to beautiful Panama.

By this point I had learned all the important ground rules of Feral Green: never carry enough to lend, everything can be bartered, and all important decisions should be determined through Rock, Papers, Scissors.  If only the UN worked this flawlessly.  Bill ‘Braski’ Boyd always earns prime sleeping arrangements, as he’s won 763 consecutive matches of RPS.  Best damn salesman in the office.  After unsuccessfully trying to barter Sean at the border for 2 pineapples and a dried mango, we posted up in a small port town so that we could take the ferry over to Bocas del Toro the next morning.  Bocas is a chain of islands off the north Caribbean coast of Panama that provides amazing scenery, great snorkeling and other adventurous activities, and, if you’re lucky, world class surf.  Pretty much everything that Van Halen had promised in his renown song - Panamaaaaaaaaaaa. 
Some poor, unknowing longshoreman tried to keep us off the ferry; clearly he had never seen ‘Eric, bring the Paine’ before — we were on the islands within an hour and a half.  We checked the reports in hopes of some swell but got somewhat mediocre surf at a beachbreak for the first couple of days.  Then our luck changed drastically.  First, Eric managed to barter his plain black t-shirt for a sweet, 1985 retro, teal, not enough adjectives to describe, Air Jordan cutoff from a rotund, local youngster named Clifford (pronounced Kleee for).  A mutual exchange of goods switched hands, but most importantly, a lifelong friendship blossomed (refer to the video footage).  Then, we came across a friendly Hawaiian-born local surf guru, henceforth known as Scott Jurgenson.  Excited to hear about their environmentally friendly trip, he told us about his local sustainable development.  Also, that he’d be happy to take us in his boat and explore for some good surf if we filled up his tank of gas.  We promised to meet Scott early in the morning, but still couldn’t resist hitting the town at night.  $.50 beers and a load of rambunctious tourists were too much to turn down.  One bar had a ‘Pink Pajama’ party, so naturally, we responded by gearing up with tattoo sleeves, headbands, bling, and colored Zinka.  This was needed to combat a bunch of Scandinavian dudes in pink speedos.  Bill Braski wore his sweet handlebar with pride, as Sean donned his….(well, I don’t know what you would call Sean’s moustache at that point, but it was terrible – in a good way). 
 
The next morning we awoke in a haze to the sound of Scott Jurgenson pounding on our camper — I assure you there is no scarier alarm.  We managed to get our lives together and Scott took us on a half an hour boat ride to Batimento.  He predicted the wind and swell would be ideal for a certain spot and he was correct: we pulled up to Playa Larga, a long beach full of offshore peaks with nobody else in sight.  We were surrounded by lush green canopy, the 5 of us were the only ones out, and the water was crystal clear (you could see coconuts and stingrays on the bottom) — one of the coolest sessions I’ve ever had.  After some really fun waves the wind shifted and Scott warned us that we should get back to the boat because we’d hit some treacherous weather on the ride back.  Again he was correct.  As the boat was getting tossed around in the open ocean sheets of rain sliced us like pins and needles.  That was the one downer of Bocos, it never stopped raining there!  Well that, and the Chinese mafia controls the town – at least the super markets and the hotels.  With dying swell and Brian coming into town soon, we thought it was best to head to Santa Catalina , a small surf town on the Pacific side.  Unfortunately, the ferries leaving Bocas were limited by the weekend and Christmas holiday and we got held up.  So we stayed and got wet, before finally making it into Santa Catalina.

Santa Catalina was a tiny town; you would never go there aside from surfing or diving.  I felt like we knew the entire town within the first day.  It was strange that such a highly regarded surf spot was so undeveloped — you would never see this in Costa Rica.  The highlight of our arrival was trying to track down Brian by asking the locals if they had seen a huge white albino storming the premises.  Fortunately Brian had secured us an amazing pad in town.  We soon became known in the town – this was not a place in which 4 white guys + Sean could romp through town and go unnoticed.  Liar’s dice inevitably turned into wrestling, hotel domestic disputes, and violently swinging Brian in the hammock.  Also, we arrived on X-mas, which is celebrated a bit differently down there.  And by different I mean all the locals, ages of 10 – 80 getting completely blacked out at the local Tienda. 
Because we had not been surfing for a couple days, Sean, Eric, and I got adventurous the next day and trekked to a break called Punta Brava, which included a marathon walk over jagged lava rock.  This was one of those hasty, regretful decisions, like going out to the Alley at 1 am just because you haven’t been out in a couple of nights.  And it ended similarly: 2 ripped sandals, 3 broken hearts, and no scoring.  Not even a ham and cheese conclusion to satisfy us. Punta Santa Catalina was much better, you could definitely see the potential of the place, but we didn’t get it at the best time — akin, maybe, to a good but not great day at Malibu.  After a couple days of so-so surf, we decided to tackle bigger things.  Panama City was our next victim. 

Panama City is supposedly described as the only worthwhile big city in Central America .  Maybe not a ringing endorsement for the town’s tourism, but still, certainly enough for us to get into, right?   The city’s skyline certainly looked promising, with huge sky rises positioned narrowly along the water.  Fortunately we were able to park the truck at the Central De Bomberos (the local fire station) by convincing the firemen that we were there to do good, not harm.  With us arriving just a few days before New Year’s, many of the accommodations were full.  We had to stay in a hotel that was clearly rented out by the hour – Eric and Sean definitely got some funny looks when they booked that place together.  There wasn’t much culture to speak of in the city, but great shopping prevailed.  We bargained our way to some great deals on hammocks, Panama hats, and bling.  I am convinced that nobody can negotiate a better deal than Bill and Sean – if you’re reading this never sell them anything. 

Double-Down Hudson arrived to shut off the lights at the nearby Fiesta Casino – the only such player in history to ever victoriously walk away from Fiesta.  We watched a huge cruise ship navigate through the Panama Canal unscathed.  Unfortunately, it was full of cruise people.  By that time we were set for New Year’s.  Eric bailed to meet up with his family and the rest of us celebrated with a big dinner at an Argentinean Steakhouse in the happening part of town.  With the help of some smuggled rum the conversation turned into a predictions for 2008 forum.  I’ll spare the details in case my mother decides to read this, but by the end of dinner we were fired up and ready to go.  Unfortunately, nobody else in town was.  The streets were pretty desolate, aside from some other tourists and Peace Corps.  I remember asking someone what time it was that night, and they said ’12:30 or so’.  No count down or anything.  A city of 1.5 million, where was everybody?  Apparently they party with their families through midnight, and then hit the town.  Around 1 AM or so things picked up and we had a fun night, just different than we imagined.
 
Exhausted by the next day, I was sad to leave the soldiers but ready to go home.  A great trip, but I can’t imagine how those guys will feel when they get back — even from my brief stay, I still feel a little out of sorts being back home, like Morgan Freeman at the end of Shawshank.  “I can’t pee wherever I want?  I have more options than rice and beans!  Have to wear a shirt?”  On 2nd thought: to be safe, stay away from Eric, Sean and Bill for a good month after they return….Kirk-O, out

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