Days 668-674! It’s finally time to wrap up labor work and start up reception work! This week the hostel finally opened back up, which means lots of new faces are going to start coming and going from the hostel. I got some nice surf sessions in this week and started the process of selling my surfboard. There were also some huge wave days that I sat on the sideline and watched… I also went on a date?! Hope you enjoy this week’s adventures!

Has the month of October flown by! Thursday, October 30th kicks off this week. I woke up bright and early for my first morning surf session, here in Santa Teresa. I’ve definitely been a bit lazy with my mornings since I’ve been having to do manual labor… and also it’s been raining most mornings too.

But I finally forced myself up at 6am and it wasn’t raining! In fact, the sun was already up. I groggily made my way to the beach and was a bit chilly as I got ready to enter the water. But once I got moving, duck diving, and waves were crashing over me I was awake and warming up.

The water wasn’t as crowded as I had expected, but there were still a handful of surfers out and some friendly faces (nobody that I knew). I chatted with a Brazilian guy in the lineup for a little, he was super good at surfing. Pretty much everyone had a smile on their face as fun waves came rolling in for all of us to catch.

The waves weren’t the cleanest today, sets were popping up everywhere with no rhyme or reason. But the waves were nice and fun! I caught a handful of fun rides and one of them was easily the best wave I’ve caught in Santa Teresa! It was a super clean paddle in and take off on the wave and then I even made a couple slow turns on it too. The wave was also a decent size as well which added to the fun!

I spent just shy of two hours paddling around and got back to the hostel around 8am. Pretty much perfect timing on my part as I had time to shower and eat before starting my volunteering.

I spent my entire volunteering shift painting the dorms of the main building. Based on how the first room looked, we decided the rooms only needed one coat of paint! Which meant less work for me and also that I did a solid job. I had three more rooms to go and spent it getting covered in paint and very sweaty.

I got two more rooms done and set the final one up for the following day of work. Tomorrow shoulddddd be my last day of the labor volunteer work, after that it’ll be reception work.

Dennis made us all lunch again for 2300 colones. He made a very delicious chicken pasta salad. I was stuffed after lunch and to finish out my work day, I helped clean the dishes. Which in turn meant I was able to snag the leftovers for later meals, definitely making the meal worth the money!

I was ready for a much needed swim in the ocean after wrapping up volunteering. I made my way to the beach and ran into Martin, our one guest, walking towards the southern part of the beach. I actually hadn’t been down that way yet, since the surfing is north of the hostel, so I joined him! It turned out that just around the bend that I hadn’t ventured around, there was a small secluded beach that had a protected part of the ocean where it made for a pleasant swim! The rest of the beach is full of choppy waves and rip currents making it a bit tougher to relax and swim around.

We chatted for a bit and eventually he headed out. I hung around for a bit longer, collecting some nice shells for some more bracelet making, and then headed towards the surf part of the beach to sit in the shade and see if anyone was surfing during low tide. Only surf lessons were happening in the white wash, but I still enjoyed relaxing next to the ocean and soaking up the sun.

I made my way back to the hostel, showered, and then plopped down onto my bed to cool off. Eventually I went up into the tree house and strummed on the guitar while the sun set. I’ve been writing a number of new songs, I’m looking forward to ironing them out and hopefully eventually getting them recorded! At the very least start playing them for people.

The sun set and I switched from guitar playing, to reading. I then went on a little grocery run and put away all the dishes I had cleaned up after lunch. I went back to reading a bit more and then it was time to make dinner! I made myself a hearty meal of my regular gallo pinto, with eggs, vegetables, a couple small quesadillas, and to spice it up, a side of pasta salad. I thoroughly enjoyed!

It was back to reading before heading to bed. I hadn’t decided yet if I was going to go for a morning surf again or not. There’s a huge swell coming in this weekend and I wasn’t 100% certain I was going to feel confident in the waves in the morning. But if I was going to go, tomorrow morning would be my last day of surfing for a few days. The swell didn’t look to be forecasted to die down until Tuesday at the earliest…

I woke up at 6am on Friday, October 31st (Happy Halloween) and stared out the window for a good couple of minutes hemming and hawing if was going to go for a surf. I was tired and I knew the swell was going to be a bit bigger… but I decided I’d go and if it was too big I’d come back and sleep a little more.

I made my way to the beach and decided the waves looked like an okay size for me. Sadly, this didn’t lead to the most fun surf session. Once I paddled out, I pretty much never stopped paddling for the next hour. The rip current out from the beach was super strong, to the point if I stopped paddling I’d be pulled out of position immediately. On top of that, the waves weren’t forming well so they weren’t aiding me in paddling back in.

I attempted to catch a couple waves, but ultimately was never in the right spot. I tried very hard to get out of the rip and towards a nicer looking set to the south. But I gave up after a while to try the other direction. Sure enough that worked, and I got to an area with breaking waves. But by this time I was tired and I felt like I should head back to get ready for volunteering. Thankfully, I was able to catch the white wash back to the shore.

I was a bit disappointed because there were some nice waves to be caught. I just didn’t get any. But I was still very pleased with myself for getting out and trying.

I got back to the hostel and got ready for the morning of work. Today’s task was finishing up the painting! I was pretty close, I had one more room left to do. Over the next few hours, I finished up the painting in that room and in a few spots of the other rooms I couldn’t reach without the ladder (being used by another part of the renovations). I guess me finishing the rooms today was ahead of schedule, only two rooms of the four were meant to open up. So Dennis, the manager, was happy about that.

There was some other small places to paint in the studios. But when I got to painting I realized the paint they bought wasn’t the same.

So I was told to pause on that till later. I then cleaned off some of the moss that had built up on the outside the studio.

After that, I had about an hour left but they weren’t getting the paint till later. There weren’t any other tasks, so we agreed on going to relax for a bit until they got the paint. I made myself lunch, read more of the hobbit and dropped off my laundry at the laundromat.

The paint came just before 4pm and I spent 30 minutes painting the areas I needed to. After wrapping up, I walked back to the laundromat. The rest of the night consisted of my usual guitar playing and reading. There were Halloween events going on in town, but I was exhausted from the long physical day and went to bed instead.

It was my day off on Saturday, November 1st! I still can’t believe October flew by so fast. Honestly this entire year fells like it’s flown by. To think I was in Australia just 6 months ago…

I woke up at 7:30am still, but I felt motivated! I dove into looking into US healthcare for the next year, enrollment just opened up. Since I’m thinking about working in the US for the spring/summer season, I’ll definitely be needing it! Unfortunately, the governments website wasn’t working at the hostel. My guess was the wifi wasn’t secure enough for it. So I’d try again first thing when I entered the US.

I then went on to looking into more jobs in the US. I found a number of surf instructor, surf camp, and retail surf jobs to apply for. In between searches and applications I did some crafts. I found these shells a couple days ago when I was at the beach with Martin. I think these turned out quite nicely!

At one point, one of the hostel maintenance guys came and asked me to help the two other maintenance guys carry something. The something turned out to be a very large and heavy broken fridge. Nothing the four of us couldn’t handle. I spent the entire morning job hunting and when I wrapped up, I saw Chelsea FC was playing. I found a stream to watch but it kept buffering so I switched to reading until I had lunch.

While I was eating, the manager, Dennis, opened up our front doors and the hostel was finally officially open! We had a couple guests coming today and the bar would be open for whoever wanted to come by for a drink and play pool. Which also meant the regular local pool players would be back every night.

Another game was on after lunch, The University of Kansas was playing Oklahoma State University in football! This was a much more fun game to watch than last week’s and we trounced OSU.

I played some pool with a local, Cesar, and after a few games I went back to reading. I eventually saw that it was close to sunset. Since I hadn’t left the hostel all day, I decided to go to the beach and check out if there was anything happening. I’m glad I did because not only were the large waves impressive to watch, but the sunset was gorgeous!

There were about 5 or 6 surfers braving the large waves. I saw a couple gnarly wipeouts, I also saw some very impressive waves being caught too! With the stunning sunset backdrop, it made for a nice, calming, end of the day.

While I sat with my thoughts, some song lyrics came to me. I quickly jotted them down and took a voice memo on my phone. When I eventually walked back to the hostel, I continued working on the song and got it to a point I was happy with! I’m looking forward to working on it more, I think it was starting to sound pretty cool (if I do say so myself).

I read a bit more and then made myself dinner. Martin cooked up his soon after and we sat and chatted while we ate. I ended up reading until I called it a night.

For some reason I woke up bright and early on Sunday, November 2nd. I didn’t have any work to do today and the waves were still too big and strong to surf… but around 6:30am I was up.

After eating breakfast, I read for a while. The sun was up and I saw high tide was soon so I went on a walk to the beach to enjoy the weather and watch the big waves. I walked past my usual surf spot and to the second lifeguard tower on the beach. Here, there were at least a dozen surfers crazy enough to be surfing the easily 3-4ft waves (measured from the back, not sure why this is how they measure waves, but that’s around 6-8ft on the face of the wave).

I saw some really incredible wave riding and I also saw some very gnarly wipeouts. At one point, a surfer lost their board and it washed up to shore. A lady moved it but not far enough from the water, so I hopped up and brought it further up the beach. I watched the surfer as he tried to body surf his way back to shore and once he did I brought the board to him.

A part of me was itching to surf and bummed I wasn’t skilled enough to ride such powerful waves… but I also knew that it was very wise of me to not be in the water surfing this weekend. The ocean was so strong that every time a person went for a regular swim, the lifeguard would come running down and tell them to get out and not go past their waist deep.

Someone had built a bench out of drift wood under the shade of a tree. I sat here for around 2 hours just watching surfers, people walking on the beach, and listening to music! It was a nice way to spend the morning.

On my walk back to the hostel, I saw a colony of ants marching along the path with a bunch of leafs. This reminded me of when I visited Central America when I was very young on a cruise with my extended family. We did a jungle excursion and saw a very similar scene but on the jungle trees. Every time I see ants carrying leaves bigger than them, it reminds me of this good memory.

I showered and then played one of our maintenance guys, Juan, in pool. He’s been egging me on to play him and bet beers on the game and I finally said let’s do it. Basically, whoever lost had to buy the other person a beer, one per game. We ended up playing 5 games of 9-ball pool….

He won 4 of them and I won 1. So I owed him 3 beers (they’re only a dollar at the store). We played a couple regular games of pool for fun and then it was time for lunch. But as we were playing, a torrential downpour came through ending our little streak of good weather we’d been having here in Santa Teresa. It ended up raining for the rest of the day too.

After lunch, I played guitar, working more on the song I started writing the day before. I also read pretty much until dinner. After dinner I called my parents on their drive home and we had our weekly phone call. In just a few weeks I’ll be able to see them in person! Which I’m very much looking forward to.

I finished up my night with… you guessed it, reading! I’m making good progress on the Fellowship of the Ring! Which is good, because I have 3 other books ready for me on Libby. Tomorrow looked like there’d be good waves at 9am, so I called it a night on the early-ish side to get ready for them.

I also got my work schedule for the week and tomorrow was going to be my first night shift of reception work.

My alarm went off at 7am on Monday, November 3rd. I had forgotten to turn it off so unfortunately no sleeping in for me. But I didn’t have any plans for the morning so I made breakfast and read until 9am rolled around. Then I headed out for my first surf since the big swell!

Surfline said the wind would be still offshore at 9am and that was mid to high tide. So I thought it would be a fun time, also the power of the waves had dropped half of what it was on Sunday, so I was optimistic I’d be able to surf.

The wind was definitely not offshore when I arrived, but it wasn’t very aggressive either. There were a handful of surfers already out and the waves looked like I would have a good time. I scanned the beach for a good spot to paddle out and made my way into the surf. The paddle out was actually fairly easy! And I soon caught my first wave and paddled back out. I was stoked to have finally caught a wave after a 3 day drought.

I caught one more nice one and paddled back to the lineup. Some big sets were coming through periodically and for the most part I was in a good spot for them to avoid or catch. But one point I wasn’t and got pushed back in a bit. I then had to paddle back out, but I had drifted to a hard part of the set and was struggling to paddle back to the lineup. I felt like I paddled at least 15-20 minutes and did more duck dives than I could count. I finally called it quits and caught the white wash back to shore.

This is when I met Sam, one of the volunteer life guards! He was walking down the beach and happened to pass by when I had gotten out. He’s from England and has been in Santa Teresa for a couple months volunteering as a lifeguard. We chatted about our travels and it turned out we were both in Australia at the same time! We chatted a bit about the surf and then he went on working.

I rested my shoulders and kept looking at the ocean. I was hemming and hawing about going back in or not. The waves looked like they were getting messier and heavier… but I was itching to surf more. I couldn’t decide. I ran into Sam again as I was walking up and down the beach in my deliberation. He said it wasn’t worth it and I decided to listen to him.

But then as I was walking back down the beach I saw another surfer looking around as well. I saw the spot he was eyeing to take out to the surf lineup and stared at it too. I decided if he went out, I’d try one more go. Worst case, I just paddle back in and get a few more duck dive practices. He went in and I did too, and with a little effort, I made it back to the lineup! I turned to him and told him he inspired me to come back out.

I ended up catching a really nice wave not long after which made the whole session worth it! I made a couple turns and rode the wave as far as it would take me. A little while later I caught one more… and then the same situation happened. Lots of paddling back to the lineup but lots of struggling and no progress. So I turned around, caught the white wash in, and called it a session. I was able to squeeze out an hour and a half session, which I was happy with!

I walked back to the hostel, showered, and then set right back out to get some groceries. I needed to grab the beers I owed Juan and some fruits from the fruit store. It turned out the fruit store stocked the peanut butter I’ve been buying (but has been out of stock from the grocery store). So I happily was able to check that off of my shopping list as well.

I came back to the hostel and Juan wanted to play more pool, not for beers this time. I was exhausted already and after a handful of games I took a power nap.

I woke up and made myself lunch. After lunch I started the process of trying to sell my surfboard. I have a feeling it might be a little more difficult than I had hoped since high season had just begun. But I have plenty of days left to try and many connections in town to help out! I posted it to Facebook marketplace and a groupchat I’m in on WhatsApp. We’ll see what happens!

I read for a bit in my bed and then 3pm rolled around and it was time to start my first reception shift!

It wasn’t very exciting. There was only one check in, so I pretty much just had that to look forward to. Dennis, the manager, gave me a quick rundown and had me read over a document with all the information I needed as well.

Then I pretty much just read and waited for the guest to arrive! But before they did, I got a phone call out of the blue. I checked the area code on Google as it was ringing and it turned out to be from San Diego! I picked up and it was the YMCA camp I had applied for. I had a nice informal round one interview and I believe it went really well. If I ended up getting the gig and deciding to do it, I’d get paid per day, have accommodation and food sorted out, and live on a private part of the beach which would be a quick walk to the city on my days off. Not a bad deal!

They arrived around 6pm and Dennis came over to help me with the check in process. It was fairly straightforward. Get their passport info, have them pay, and just keep track of it all in the computer system. We also need to show the guest around and to their room! Easy peasy! I think the hardest part is sitting around not doing much, but I’m sure that’s better when there’s a lot of guests, so I’ll take the relaxation.

My shift was till 11pm, so I kept on reading even though there wasn’t really anything else expected of me. I believe we just need someone at the reception just in case.

Around 9pm Dennis told me he was closing the bar early and he’d come by to run me through the reception closing process again. But he said I probably wouldn’t need to stay up till 11pm, which I was happy to hear. I’m glad I made some nice progress in my book though!

Ever since the cyclone hit eastern Australia, while I was living there, at the beginning of the year, I downloaded Hinge. Hinge is one of the many online dating apps. I’m not the biggest fan of dating apps, but I was craving social interaction after I had 2 weeks of pretty much isolation due to the storm and having nothing to do. I hadn’t deleted it since, because I had actually met some really nice people through it. Tuesday, November 4th proved to be another one of those nice occurrences.

I woke up at 7am today and went to the grocery store. I didn’t realize when I went yesterday how much I was about to run out of, so I had a number of essential items to get. I came back, made myself breakfast, and then read in bed while I waited for around 9am to roll around.

Today I actually had a date! My first in a while. I’m not going to dive too deep into this part of my life, but since it was pretty much most of my day, I’ll chat about it a little. I had connected with Bethany, from the US, who was spending time in Montezuma for the week. This town is about a 30 minute drive from Santa Teresa.

Now Bethany and I both didn’t have any mode of transportation. We talked about renting a motorbike, but it turned out, she was an ultra marathon runner. Like runs 100 mile races type ultra marathon… so she said she’d just use this as an excuse to run a casual half marathon each way. I think this has to take the cake for wildest things anyone has ever done for a first date in my book.

The weather held out for her and she came trotting in around 9am! She apparently had a very nice run and had lots of cars asking if she wanted a ride, which was very nice of the locals but they didn’t recognize that she was running for a workout as well.

We immediately set out to the beach to spend the morning chatting, relaxing, swimming in the ocean, and then we went to lunch to continue on chatting and spending the morning and early afternoon together! Not only was this a very nice date, but it was nice to have someone to spend time with on the beach, since a lot of it has been alone time recently.

I used this also as an excuse to finally eat a meal out. We went to Soda Pura Vida, which was suggested to me when I first arrived in Santa Teresa. “Soda” restaurants are the local restaurants in Costa Rica usually selling the cheaper local food. The meals were 5,000 colones each but it was delicious and I was happy to eat out for a change.

We hung out all the way till my work started at 3pm and she set off to run back to Montezuma! I’m not sure when our paths will cross again, but hopefully in the near future. We’ll see! Chatting for 6 hours straight was definitely a good sign though.

We had one check in tonight, but they didn’t show up until much later in the shift. I spent some of it reading, but I also chatted with some of the guests and other volunteers to pass the time. We dove into a lot of the usual traveler chit chat about countries traveled to, our experiences traveling, etc. But one of the travelers, from Denmark, was trying to decide between going to college (and she got accepted to a very prestigious university there) or to keep traveling. Obviously we couldn’t make the decision for her, but we all had a really nice chat about it. Hopefully it helped her in some way and didn’t make things more complicated! My piece of advice was if she went to school, she could always stop if she didn’t like it or even after university she could change her mind!

The guests finally checked in around 9pm and I pretty much checked them in by myself! I ran through the process earlier in the night with Dennis and was able to do it without him when they arrived. But we’ll see how many more check-ins I’ll actually do over the next week or so.

I wrapped up a little early and then called it a night hoping to get some surfing in, in the morning!

Wishes came true on the morning of Wednesday, November 5th. I was able to make up for my lack of surfing yesterday and got up around 7:30am to head to the beach. It was a beautiful blue sky, sunny morning in Santa Teresa! The tide was just past low tide, which isn’t the best on this beach, but the wind was allegedly offshore, which I was hoping meant it’d be a good morning.

And it was!

I spent 2 hours surfing and caught a handful of fun waves. The waves started out on the smaller side and fast, meaning you needed to pop up quickly or you were heading nose first into the water. Throughout the session they got bigger and bigger. My tail pad broke a few sessions ago… and during the session the other side broke as well! And then, out of nowhere, a HUGE wave came and I barely got under the white wash, I still got tossed around though. And when I surfaced, my entire tail pad was gone.

The tail pad is a grippy material you add to the end of your surfboard to make turning easier and gives the back foot a lot of traction for sharper turns.

I wanted to keep surfing, I wasn’t tired yet and I had nothing else planned today. But the end of my board was too slippery now and I wasn’t going to take chances on the growing waves.

I walked back to the hostel and actually found my tail pad washed up on the shore. When I got back to my room, I texted the board shaper, Arthur, to ask him his advice and express my disappointment in the tail pad he gave me. There wasn’t much he could do or was willing to do. So I just took the rest of the tail pad off and would use wax in its place instead (which I’ve done on all other boards up until using this board).

I made myself breakfast and then relaxed in the shade by the pool playing guitar for a couple hours. Dennis, the hostel manager, put the Chelsea soccer game on and I watched it as I played. I watched the final 30 minutes of the match after finishing up playing guitar.

Today the volunteers were moving rooms. They were moving us from the nicest dorm to the worst dorm. But that makes sense, especially since the dorm in Free Spirit Hostel in Nicaragua was an old closet repurposed for our dorm. This was at least a step up.

I played a couple games of pool with Martin and a guest from South Africa. I’m definitely enjoying having a pool table accesible to me again. I was pretty tired from the morning surf and hung out in the lobby reading. A few guests were checking in so I chatted with them. And then 4pm rolled around and I decided it was time for another surf!

It was just past high tide and there were 5 knots of wind on shore… I wasn’t sure what to expect but I at least wanted to paddle around and watch the sunset. There were a ton of surfers out when I arrived, but there was also some commotion on the beach where I was planning on paddling out.

I took a look to see what was going on and a fairly large sea turtle was hobbling up the beach. I’m not sure where it was going or what it was doing… but it wasn’t going towards the ocean! I was a bit concerned but there wasn’t anything I could really do and there were plenty of people watching it. So… it was time to paddle out!

The paddle out was easy, but catching the waves proved to be difficult. The waves were flat and not generating enough power at times. And then randomly huge sets would roll through. Even with the chaos I was able to pick off a few good rides and enjoyed a beautiful sunset on the water!

When I finished up my surf, I was starting to walk back down the beach but then I stopped when I saw a familiar face. I ran into my friend Alicia, who I met in El Transito, Nicaragua! Lucky I did because she was leaving in two days to go start working in the Caribbean. She’s been living in Santa Teresa for the past 5 years, but she was very excited about the move.

We sat and chatted on the beach as the sun continued to set. Once it started getting darker, the mosquitos came out and I wished her safe travels and set back to the hostel in the dark.

I made myself dinner and then headed to the grocery store because I ran out of rice. Tomorrow I’d be starting work early and going till 3pm. So no morning surf and no time to go to the grocery store either until I was off of reception work.

To finish off my night, I chatted with one of our new guests, Ame. He is from Norway but living in London and just quit his job to switch to a new one. We chatted all about that and travel and both of our plans. We could’ve kept chatting for a while, but I was exhausted after around 4 hours in total of surfing. I also had to work early the following day, so it was time to call it a night.

Well, it was another nice week in Santa Teresa! The new volunteers are nice to spend time with, I made a new friend, and I got some nice surf sessions in! I haven’t made much progress on selling my board, but I’ll figure that out… I am VERY excited that in about a week I’ll be heading home for some much needed family time.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves! I’ll see you next week!

– Elie