Days 661-667! Another week checked off here in Costa Rica. The days are quickly flying by and soon enough I’ll be back in the US having some much needed family time. Not only was there lots of rain and volunteer work happening this week, but we had three new volunteers arrive at the end of the week! I’m excited to have some new faces at the hostel and for the hostel to finally be open as well. It’ll be a much welcomed change of pace once the guests start arriving!

It was the start of another week, here in Santa Teresa. I got up on Thursday, October 23rd, for my volunteering at 7am, which gave me more time to read before we started to work. I actually ended up with a lot of time to read because we didn’t have the right supplies to start working… so after eating breakfast, I relaxed till around 10am.

I wish I had known this ahead of time because apparently the morning surf was really good! Oh well!

The first task was to clean the walls of the kitchen. I’m not going to sugar coat it… this task sucked. Scrubbing off rust and grease from flimsy siding was not on my bingo card of things I’d be doing in Central America. Honestly, during this task I was heavily questioning if this volunteering was worth it. To be honest, I don’t believe it is. But, I have a flight out of San Jose in pretty much three weeks and I should only have about one more week of straight manual work.

I can stick it out. I worked on a farm in Australia for 3 months, this little bit of manual labor is nothing (but they were paying me in Australia and it was helping me extend my visa which made it essential to do).

That gross task out of the way, we moved on to opening up cracks in the concrete floor to have them resealed by a couple local concrete workers. Dennis, the hostel’s manager and part owner, cooked us up lunch. He made a chile con carne, it cost around 2200 colones (~$4) and was a welcome change to my usual rice and beans! I also was happy because no one wanted the leftovers, so I probably got enough food for three to four more meals! Definitely worth the money.

There were plenty of dishes to clean up and since I took the extra food, I felt like I should clean them up. Also it kept me from other laborious jobs for a little. But once I finished, I was back to clearing the concrete.

I quickly wrapped that up and then had a few errands to run. The first was pulling money out of the ATM, I was then going to walk straight to the laundromat, but I forgot something at the hostel. Devin, the surfer I met the other day, had brought me the shoe glue for my surfboard kicker that had come loose. And I wanted to return it to him today. I walked back to the hostel, grabbed it, and then made my way to Point Break, where he was staying, to drop off the glue at the front desk, and continued on my way to get my laundry.

On my way back, I stopped to get some more fruits and veggies. But before I could enter the store, I got chatted up by a local named Estaban. He worked at the surf shop next door and had a really funky looking surfboard sitting out front.

I got back to the hostel and immediately got ready to go out for a late surf. As I got to the beach, I ran into Devin! He had just wrapped up surfing and when he saw me going out, he decided to come out and join me.

It was an easier paddle out than the past few days and it was nice to have the company at the beginning of the session. We were chatting about what we both got up to today and surf culture. But eventually, after I caught a nice wave on my right side, I went further down the beach to try and catch waves on what I thought was a better break.

The waves today were very messy and it was hard to read. But that didn’t stop me from getting a handful of fun rides. I had plenty of paddle attempts that got me no where and a few rides that I popped up on but the wave just died out. I surfed for around 2 hours and finished up when the sun started to get low behind on the clouds making it darker and darker.

As I was paddling back in, I saw Adrian and Kyle paddling out! Just bumping into everyone today. It’s always a nice feeling to run into people I know in a town I’m not from.

I got back and showered, which afterwards I saw I had a few texts from Arthur, the surfboard shaper. Last week, I unfortunately had a run in with another surfer accidentally putting one of my fins through his board. I went over to pay Arthur and thanked him again for helping me out so quickly.

Tonight, for some reason, it was just me and the one long term guest we have at the hostel hanging around. We chatted a bit as I ate my leftovers for dinner, but then I had a little work to do before bed. I applied for a camp position back in the US for the summer and my flight from Chicago back to Managua got changed from landing at 2:40pm to 12:40am… not ideal. So I worked on sorting that out with Spirit Airline’s customer service… but after a long wait, it turned out they changed ALL of their flights to that time no matter the day of the week.

So, I just read and went to bed.

Friday, October 24th was the final volunteer day of the week, Saturday and Sunday were our new days off. I again read before the start of the volunteer day… and again, everyone showed up on the later side.

But right when Dennis showed up, he had us straight to work. In the main building’s dorm rooms there were black gummy marks on the floor. Today’s task was to scrape/sand them off. This was a fairly easy task and the first hour I spent it chatting on the phone with my friend Jason, who’s on his way to India!

That phone call made the time fly by and we were on to the next task… which was more sanding of floors. This time sanding concrete floors to try and remove similar gunky marks. This was much harder and I had to take the electric sander to it. By the time 1pm rolled around, it didn’t feel like I even put a dent into the cleaning. But the day was done!

It had been raining all day and storming the night prior too, so I decided to not go for a surf. Instead I went to the grocery store for some food essentials. They were sadly out of large tubs of peanut butter, which has become one of my favorite snacks. Maybe the next grocery trip they’ll have more.

I spent the rest of the day reading, playing guitar, and enjoying the sound of the rainstorm that lingered around all day.

When I woke up on Saturday, October 25th I took my time and continued on with my reading. I was reading the Martian now and finished it up today! I really enjoyed it. I felt like there were times it droned on with technical jargon, but the space nerd in me liked the realness of it all. I liked the movie and the book held up!

On to the next book… which was the 4th (3.5 technically) in the ACATAR series, A Court of Frost and Starlight.

It was another very rainy day, so after breakfast, I spent the day reading and playing guitar. The University of Kansas was also playing Kansas State in football today and I watched it on my laptop. This was the first year that KU was projected to win… and I felt like they really could. But they of course absolutely blew it. It was disappointing to say the least.

A good part about the day was a FaceTime with my friend Ryan! He was actually at the game volunteering at the concession stands. It had been a while since we chatted last so while he was driving home, we caught up on everything over the last month or two. And at the end of our wonderful FaceTime, we chatted about potentially traveling a little together in late December! I’m looking forward to it if it happens.

After lunch, I played some pool with the only guest here, Martin. After a handful of pool games, the rain had cleared and it looked like there might actually be a sunset! So we both took a walk to the beach to find a spot to watch it, chatting as we walked. Martin used to work in the salmon industry in Norway, but after getting laid off, he took a two year payout and has been enjoying Costa Rica pretty much ever since.

The sunset wasn’t as amazing as I’d hoped, since another storm was making its way towards us. But it made for an eerie and impressive sky nonetheless.

Martin went off to run some errands and I hung around a bit longer taking a chance that I might get rained on. But I made it back to the hostel just before the rain hit.

I still keep in touch with my friends Maya and Jakob, who are now in Peru and had an amazing time in Columbia. They also got some film developed and sent me digital copies of the pictures!

I had dinner and spent the rest of the night reading before hitting the hay.

Sunday, October 26th was yet another rainy day here in Santa Teresa. Instead of starting my morning reading, I spent it job hunting!

Job hunting?

Well two years on the road will definitely deplete the bank account! But we’re nowhere near done traveling yet. I’m looking for jobs for spring through summer in the US, hopefully in an area where I can keep on surfing while I save up some money.

I applied to all sorts of jobs, it felt like I was back in Australia. Hunting for any job I could. Not the most fun and a tiny bit stressful, but I’m giving myself wayyyy more time than I had when I landed in Australia. So hopefully that means I can land a job that is both enjoyable and makes money!

That took up my entire morning. I stepped away from the research and job applications to have a very nice FaceTime with my parents. I’m really excited, I get to spend a couple weeks with them over Thanksgiving! Prior to that, I’ll get to spend a week at with one of my siblings, which is something I’ve never actually done. So I’m looking forward to that as well!

We had a nice catch up and then I went off to make lunch. Afterwards, you guessed it, I went back to reading. I flew through the 4th ACATAR book, it wasn’t very long. And I have to say, it was really bad (in my opinion). It felt like I was watching a long, bad, drawn out Christmas episode of a tv show. But, with one more book left in the series and access to it for free with the Libby app and my kindle, I might as well read it.

But first, after being on my list for quite some time, it’s time to start the Lord of the Rings trilogy! Starting with the Fellowship of the Ring.

I went on a very rainy walk to the grocery store, picked up some groceries for dinner, and by the time I walked back to the hostel, the rain had stopped. But of course picked back up by the time I got my groceries in the fridge. I then turned on my laptop to watch the Packers play the Steelers.

I had dinner, played some pool with Martin, finished watching the packers game, and then called it a night. Tomorrow, it was back to volunteering.

My alarm went off at 7am and I rolled out of bed. It was the morning of Monday, October 27th, marking the start of the final week of the hostel being closed. I did my usual morning routine and dove further into reading The Fellowship of the Ring. I think I’m going to enjoy it, but I don’t see myself flying through it like the other books I’ve been reading recently.

Today’s work started with scraping up unnecessary cement. Recently a couple of external workers laid new cement in the main building of the hostel. There were a bunch of holes in the floor that needed repairing. But, they did a bad job of making the concrete laying clean and there was a bunch of excess around where the holes used to be. And since we were planning on painting the new concrete, we needed to make it look nicer.

This was actually one of the easier tasks I’ve had to do. It wasn’t super laborious and there was some attention to detail, which made it more enjoyable. I won’t say I enjoyed it or that it was fun, but it was better than it could’ve been.

Especially because the next task was going back to the studio rooms and sanding off the dirt again. I was an hour into this task when Dennis came to check on how things were going… it was fair to say I felt like I was wasting my time because not much progress had come from all the sweat I was perspiring.

He went and spoke with one of the other owners and it turned out they were on different pages. Flynn, the other owner, thought where it was at was fine. He just wanted the dirt that was easy to sand away to be done and that’s it. He said it would take too long otherwise and be a pain in the butt. And I was like, “exactly my thoughts man.”

I was glad that was cleared up, I was getting close to banging my head against a wall from how frustrating this task was! (Not really, but I was getting frustrated).

I still spent the rest of the volunteer work day on this task and also sanding down some fairly water damaged and moldy pieces of wood to be restained.

1pm rolled around and even though Surfline said the wave conditions were absolutely abysmal, I grabbed my surfboard and headed to the beach just incase. The waves were abysmal, but after staring at them for a bit I decided to try anyways. It was low tide with 9 knots of wind on shore… there was a reason no one else was surfing. The ocean was choppy and waves were coming out of nowhere. And the waves that did come were super steep, fast, and when I inevitably nosedived, I was held under for a while.

It was a quick surf session. But the waves looked promising the following morning so I decided I’d finally try a morning surf in Santa Teresa!

On my walk to the beach I accidentally stood up too quickly when ducking under a tree that had fallen across the path to the beach. I had scraped my back but didn’t know how badly until I got back to the hostel.

I ate lunch and then spent the remainder of the afternoon playing guitar in the treehouse. The sun started pouring into the treehouse and as it neared sunset, I decided to go to the beach and see if there’d actually be one today! There’s been a lot of rain lately so I didn’t have my expectations high.

This was the extent of today’s sunset as the sun passed into the cloud line right below it. But I ran into Estaban, who I met the other day by the fruit shop, who was out walking his dogs. We chatted a bit and I got my fix of dog pets. I headed back to the hostel where I found one of our local workers playing pool by himself.

We played a best of three of regular pool and then a best of three for 9-ball. I took the regular best of three 2-1 and he took the 9-ball 1-2. I also got to work on my Spanish while we played too since he doesn’t speak much English.

I cooked myself dinner and then spent a very quiet evening reading and relaxing. For some reason I was the only person at the hostel tonight! Kinda cool but also a little ominous being the only one.

As I settled into bed, the rain came pouring in and I was hopeful that it would be done by the time I woke up for an early surf dawn patrol.

Well, my hopes of waking up early and surfing were quickly diminished as I was woken up by one of the heaviest rainstorms I’ve experienced while traveling (I bet it was on par with some of the ones I experienced in SE Asia during monsoon season there). I woke up every couple hours to it only intensifying. So by 5am I changed my alarm from 6am to 7am. And even by the time I got up to get ready for volunteering it was still coming down.

The rain didn’t let up all day!

Unfortunately it appears the hurricane became a category 5 storm and ended up landing in Jamaica. Very very sad news.

Today’s work was painting! I’ve been looking forward to this task since we started. I honestly assumed most of the work while I was here was going to be painting, but I was very wrong. I started out taping off someone the walls and laying plastic sheets with tape on the stairwell and some of the floor.

We had one big wall to paint black and a lot of newly laid concrete to paint pink and purple. We worked till 2pm and during that time Dennis cooked us up goulash for lunch. Unfortunately not free but very cheap still (2200 colones) for a meal cooked by someone else.

I decided to keep working with Dennis and Sophie even after my 4 hours of regular volunteering. Since it was raining and I had nothing else to do (and I was enjoying painting), I asked if I could just transfer the hours to a different day. Dennis said yes but only for a day of reception work, which was okay by me.

We worked another 3-4 hours and then called it quits on layer one of painting!

The rain was still coming down after we finished. So I took a shower and laid in bed reading more of the hobbit. As dinner crept closer, I realized I forgot to buy groceries since I didn’t make myself lunch. I was out of my most essential ingredient, rice. So I put on my rain coat and went on a soppy walk to and from the grocery store.

I then cooked myself dinner and chatted with the only guest, Martin. For the rest of the night I read and then went to bed on the early side. I was hoping tomorrow would be less rainy because work would be starting later as we had the fumigation guys coming to kick all the different tropical bugs out of the hostel.

Well I wish I would’ve woken up early for a surf today! It was Wednesday, October 29th, the end of another week in Santa Teresa. I woke up at 5am to rain, but when I woke up at 7:30am the rain was done and the sun was trying to come out.

I still decided against surfing because I had a feeling the water was going to be gross post the massive storms we’ve been having.

Today’s work day was starting later than normal because the hostel was getting fumigated. I made myself breakfast and relaxed in my room reading and making a new bracelet out of the finishing rope I found the other day.

The fumigation was supposed to go from 9-10am. But as the morning went on, they still hadn’t arrived. The workers finally did around 10:30am and we had to leave our rooms. Originally, I was told I’d have to leave the hostel all together, but I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so we all hung around the pool table area for a bit until they worked their way over to us.

We hung around outside the front of the hostel for a bit and then once the smoke cleared up, we made our way back inside. It was time to finally start the volunteer day.

Today’s job was to tape and lay plastic sheets in the dorms of the main building and then start painting the walls. When I first arrived at the hostel, the first day of work I had was scrubbing the walls of these dorm rooms. The rust from the ceiling fans had stained the walls and we couldn’t scrub it out, so it was time to paint over them.

It took me a couple hours to do all the taping and then I got to painting the walls. Dennis, the manager, asked if I wanted to partake in lunch today. He was making a mushroom and noodle dish. I declined, but when I came down to the kitchen later, he told me there was a little bit left if I wanted to have it. I’ll almost never say no to free food! Can’t let it go to waste.

I got back to painting and ended up working an hour extra. I only painted one of the four rooms, but the room needs two coats anyways. So tomorrow I’ll start on the second one and paint the first one again while it drys

The weather was happy with how hard I’ve been working and the sun was still out for me! I quickly changed into my swimsuit, grabbed my surfboard, and headed to the beach. I was itching for a surf session even if the conditions weren’t looking ideal. When I arrived to the beach, there were a ton of surfers out for sunset. The waves were a bit messy but there were definitely catchable waves!

… I just wasn’t catching them.

I had a really tough hour session of missing wave after wave. I set myself up for a good one and finally thought I was going to catch one… but then a local dropped in on me even though I was at a more critical spot of the wave. Frustrating, but it happens.

There was one other wave I was super close to catching but maybe one or two paddles off. And then some big sets started rolling in and I was caught in a bad part of the breaking waves. After lots of time spent paddling back to the lineup, it was starting to get dark and I called it quits.

At the very least I was happy to be out paddling! It’s a good workout.

With pretty much only having a snack for lunch, I was hungry. But I decided to hold off on dinner and play guitar for an hour instead. This is when I met two of our new volunteers who arrived today, both from Germany.

We chatted for a little bit about their travels and the usual get to know each other travel topics. And then Dennis showed up with another hostel guitar… I hadn’t known we had two! So we jammed a little together before he went home for the day.

The other hostel guitar had a capo! Which I’ve been missing since I accidentally left mine at home. So I got to play a couple songs I haven’t been able to play recently because of not having a capo.

I made myself dinner and played a couple games of pool with the guest, Martin. Before heading to bed, the last new volunteer showed up who’s from Ireland. I’m excited to have some new faces around and for the hostel to start having guests! It’ll definitely change the vibe of the place.

Overall, it was another good week. Lots of rain, not a lot of surfing unfortunately, but at least the work was starting to become tolerable! I have two more days of “labor” work and then it’s reception time… and pretty much two more weeks before I head to San Jose to catch a flight back to the US.

We’ll see what I get up to over the next couple weeks! You’ll pretty much find out at the same time I do.

See you then!

– Elie

Oh! And eye update, my black eye is pretty much gone now! So that’s good news 🙂