How Redundant Are You?
In 2006 I burned two months worth of photos to disc in a photo lab in Bangkok. It was a modern shop with technology that probably outstrips what I would have found at most places in North America. When I returned home, I put the discs in a safe place and downloaded all the images from memory cards to computer. …
Read More →The Quick and Dirty CR Data Roundup
Some stats from the trip: 70 full days in Costa Rica 60 surf days 25 sunsets watched from out in the water (approximate) 11 bars of surf wax used 1 time I was hit by another surfer 2 broken fins 5 days where I did not go in the ocean, mostly due to buses 922 km covered by bus 22 …
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On Surfing as a Metaphor for Life
In thirty minutes of being in the water today, I was washed back in towards shore six or seven times, without a single attempt at riding a wave. The wind was onshore, and the swell was choppy and relentless. No matter how hard I paddled, I couldn’t make any progress, and I just felt my arms getting weaker with each …
Read More →On How I Am A Weak And Spoiled Traveller
I like bus rides. I like sweating in a cramped seat next to a fat local guy with too much aftershave. I like trying to sleep on a long-haul night bus while a class of teenage girls giggles and shrieks with delerium. I even like sitting on the fold out seat with no backrest for 8 hours while the packed …
Read More →A Costa Rican Hippy
It was 1965 when a seventeen-year-old Costa Rican boy found himself in New York city for the first time. Not knowing what to do or where to go, he wandered through town, his footsteps coming to a halt before a dance club where pretty girls writhed and gyrated in large windows facing out towards the street. One of these girls …
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Slow Travel
My first big trip overseas was two months in Thailand. Somewhere in the middle of that, a series of scheduling issues, including a friend from China coming to meet up with me, led to my spending ten days in Bangkok. Several people have told me I’m crazy for spending that much time in such a big city, but the experience …
Read More →Tamarindo Tsunami – A Fiction
The recent flooding and stranding of hundreds of people in Macchu Pichu and Aguas Calientes, Peru, has wondering what Tamarindo would be like if it was hit by a natural disaster of epic proportions. What follows is a fictitious account of this alternate reality. When the first wave rolled in high off the horizon on that fateful morning, the surfers …
Read More →Doppelgängers and Las Drogas
I met Marc at the bus station in Liberia. He was of similar height and build, but with a broken noise, and lacking the longer hair that I’ve only recently adopted. We were both looking for the same Tamarindo bus, and along the way I learned that he was fresh off the plane in Costa Rica, originally from Ontario, had …
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My Pack: Costa Rica
As has become a bit of a custom, and because people have been asking, here’s what I’m packing while in Costa Rica for 2 and a half months. Bag one is an Arc’teryx Cierzo 35 L daypack. The bag is fairly light, expands to hold a fair bit, and still compresses down when only partially full. The shoulder and waist …
Read More →Clean Lines
7:45. Wake up. Pull on board shorts. Sunscreen on face. Pull damp rashguard over my head and tie it into the laces of my shorts. Board under arm. Lock room. Walk barefoot down rocky driveway, across the road, and through Witch’s Rock Surf Camp. I scan the beach and it’s quiet. The sun has been up for two full hours …
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