That was me the other day as Mary Beth and I took our first surf lesson with the Green Iguana Surf Camp in Dominical, Costa Rica. Unfortunately our instructor wasn’t a hot surfer chick a la Lori Petty in Point Break, but rather a California ex-pat named Vance whose body was covered in red welts from being shot with a BB-gun the night before. His explanation: "Just another Saturday night partying at the bar."
I had taken one surf lesson before a couple of years ago when I was in Indonesia, but I felt I hadn’t learned much. The little Indonesian guy that took me out didn’t give me a lot of instruction before strapping a board to me and sending me out. Essentially the lesson was him miming what I should do on the board and then yelling at me to paddle for the rest of the day. Because of the low level of instruction then, I told the Green Iguana folks that I had no experience when we signed up.
With Vance our lesson was much better. He even drew diagrams in the sand of what the waves were doing and what rip tides are (apparently there are lots on the Pacific Coast). Once we were in the water I was pretty quickly getting up on the board in the white water. Mary Beth had a little trouble but was catching on later in the two-hour lesson. Of course what we were doing that day isn’t even close to real surfing, where you catch a breaking wave and do turns and stuff, but it was the first step.
We’ve already booked a second lesson, but a stomach bug has sidelined the two of us for a couple of days. We had originally planned on being in Dominical for a little less than a week, but we’re going on our ninth day now. Because Costa Rica is expensive we plan to move quickly through the country to the cheaper lands of Nicaragua, but because learning to surf is one of my major goals for this trip we’ll probably stay until we feel comfortable with our surfing skills to try catching waves at other breaks along the Pacific coast in other countries.
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