How I Ended Up An Accidental Surfer in Costa Rica

I booked the trip online, and, in my haste, thought “yoga and surfing” meant “paddleboard yoga.” The difference, I would come to learn, could not be more profound.

It was 6:30 a.m. in Costa Rica, and I was slipping in the mud and struggling to carry my surfboard across a footbridge in the middle of the rainforest.

I was in my mid-40s, didn’t know anyone I was with, couldn’t speak the language, and had never surfed before in my life. How, I wondered, did I up here?

Technically, we ended up here because of a shortcut gone bad. Then we had to take the boards off our van’s top to cross below the bridge’s upper guard rails.

After we strapped the boards back on, we all piled back into the van and continued to bounce through the rainforest headed toward the ocean. The group I was with sang along in Spanish with Pedro Capó as a song about going to the beach blasted through the speakers. I didn’t know the song, but by week’s end, I’d be singing the entire thing with conviction.

I booked the trip online, and, in my haste, thought “yoga and surfing” meant “paddleboard yoga.” The difference, I would come to learn, could not be more profound.

I tried canceling the trip. There was no way that I was going to a surf camp in my mid-40s and about 30 pounds overweight. I wasn’t going to embarrass myself or the country of Costa Rica, even trying.

I made multiple calls and begged profusely, but this was before the pandemic struck, and it was non-refundable. Thank you, universe. I decided I would go, but only to do yoga and not take part in surfing.

A few weeks later, I found myself in a 10-seater plane gouging my nails into the seat as we began our descent into what looked like jungle treetops. Somehow, the pilot saw a gap in the trees that I could not, and we glided down the short, narrow runaway into the rainforest.

Safely back on the ground, I found my driver. After another intense hour on dirt roads with potholes the size of craters, he dropped me off at my hotel, which wasn’t a hotel at all. My living quarters turned out to be a hostel on a strip of land in the middle of nowhere.

He left me standing there holding my bags while two girls in G-string bikinis ran past with squirt guns and water balloons. I was sure the description online did not mention the word hostel. Surely that would have caught my attention.

Through a blend of Spanish, English, and the patience of several saints, I determined that, yes, I was in the right place; it was a surf hostel, and everyone here was in their 20s. I practiced deep breathing.

After I paid for a lock and jammed my belongings into a tiny locker, I was sitting poolside watching a group of what I think were teenagers do body shots. There I met my host, Victor.

Victor wore a backward baseball cap covering his long dreadlocks, a pair of red swim trunks, and flip flops with a few hundred miles on them. On his wrists and neck were an assortment of puka shell bracelets and necklaces.

In my shabby Spanish, I explained to him that I’d booked the trip on accident, haha, and I’d only be doing yoga, not surfing.

“Ok,” he said in barely discernible English. “You first surf lesson 7 am. You come here,” he said, pointing at the precise spot I was standing, “in morning and Antonio show you how do surf position and find you board. Tomorrow, you surf!” He patted me on the back and smiled broadly, showing me his big, white teeth.

We were not speaking the same language.

I counted myself lucky to have my room, with two bunk beds, to myself and started to think this might work out after all. I peeled down to my underwear and drifted to sleep. That lasted a few hours. At two in the morning, my room was overtaken by three Nicaraguan men who showed up late and rented the other three beds. The men, lack of air conditioning, and the music that played by the pool outside my window all night meant I was up before the sun.

I crept out of my room away from the snoring Nicaraguans and found a hammock by the pool. I watched from beneath a palm tree as a bare-chested, dark-skinned, incredibly fit Antonio began instructing two French women. Sophie and Marie, I overheard, were learning surfing for the first time and voiced a lot of the same fears I had: inability, lack of experience, sharks, etc.

Just then, though, they only were practicing board positions in the sand. It looked a lot like yoga, so I threw caution to the wind and joined them.

After learning how to lay on the board, stand on the board, and proper positioning for going from prone to upright, Antonio announced we were ready to take it to the water.

When I said I’d just swim, he reacted like I just told him I didn’t plan on breathing the rest of the day. His face said, “You have a board, and there’s water; what’s the problem?”

What his mouth said, after making me carry that heavy, oversized board down to the water anyway, was: “We only go white water, not green. You ok.”

“Ok?” I agreed, not knowing what he meant at all.

White water, I learned later, is the little waves that break near the shore. Green waves are the big rolling mothers out deeper. We were only practicing how to stand on the boards in the white water. Because I was only in water up to my chest and didn’t want to disappoint Antonio, I agreed.

Maybe I was having the cliched mid-life crisis. Logically, what kind of person books a trip alone to a foreign country and doesn’t know what she signed up for? Not even the type of “hotel” she’d be staying in? One must wonder what would possess her to do such a thing.

Hindsight brings questions but few answers. If I’m honest, I don’t recall what might have warranted a hasty escape, but I accepted my fate, and one thing was certain — I’ve never been faced with a challenge I didn’t take.

I grew up in a world of boys. My athletic and competitive brothers and cousins didn’t think girls warranted softer treatment. If anything, it meant I needed harsher lessons. They challenged me physically and mentally at every opportunity. Nothing was made easy because I was a girl. Everything was made harder.

Those lessons, the obstacles they made me face, built my endurance for difficulty. They taught me to fight hard, harder, and don’t stop until I succeed, or at the very least, survived.

It is, I realize now, my brothers who lead me to that muddy footbridge in the early morning rainforest, wondering just how in the world I was going to survive this one.

The waves, repeatedly breaking in my face, kept me alert while Antonio screamed, “chicken leg!” at Sophie. Chicken leg was how he explained the proper way to bend your leg while rising to stand. Sophie, for God’s sake, could not figure it out.

It turns out my wide feet and a low center of gravity made me a solid surfer. While the French girls, much younger, thinner, and you would think nimbler than I, struggled and blundered their way through the water, I was able to stand on my second attempt and after that every time like a champion. Antonio and I fist-bumped.

On day two, Victor, hearing that I did well during my first lesson, decided I was ready to hit the green waves at another beach with the big kids.

“Oh, no way.”

“Yes, grab you board.” He was chewing on a plastic straw and had the thing worked down to nearly paste. I wondered if he was trying to quit smoking. Where did he even get a straw at 6:30 a.m.? I decided not to press him.

Thus, on my second day in Costa Rica, I found myself in the surf van heading across the island where the waves were bigger and better, whatever that meant.

Surfing is easy, in theory. Basically, you paddle out into the ocean, fighting the waves smashing you in the face until you feel like your arms are going to break off, and your neck is paralyzed. Victor didn’t allow breaks. You know you’ve gone far enough when you’re hoping a shark will come along and put you out of your misery.

Once you get out of the surf break, you can rest and sit on your board. That’s what I was doing when I learned my first green wave lesson.

I was staring back toward the beach, admiring how far I’d come, when Victor shouted at me.

“Where you looking? There’s nothing for you look there, you watch wave.” He gestured to the ocean behind me, and on cue, a big wave came from behind and rolled me off my board.

When I surfaced, he was shaking his head.

A few minutes later, while trying to catch my first wave, one tumbled me in the ocean like I was facing the WWF’s Macho Man Randy Savage. I struggled to the surface, gasping for breath, totally disoriented. Then my surfboard, attached to my ankle by a cord, came rifling toward my face and blasted me in the jaw, nearly taking my tongue off.

In a blur, I heard Victor yelling and motioning. I was dizzy, about to be sick, and wished he would just shut up. I needed a minute. Then I realized, too late; he must be saying something important.

He was throwing his arms to the right; I realized to tell me to swim away from the next wave, but I was too late, and it was on top of me. It felt about five years later when I surfaced again. That time I swam like a bat out of Hell and hopped back on my board to relative safety. This is surfing.

Wait, wasn’t I wearing swim shoes?

Do you know that phrase “knocked your socks off?” It’s real. One minute I had awesome octopus print water shoes on my feet; the next, I didn’t. Victor shook his head. I was the most pathetic surfer ever to grace the Costa Rican waves.

“I hope I find them. The rocks hurt my feet.”

Victor, with his soles of steel, rolled his eyes. I never found them.

The guys won’t take no for an answer, so each morning, I find myself carrying my board to the van and heading for the beach. Somehow, I’ve relaxed into the rhythm of surf life. I’d wanted to do other things in Costa Rica, but after a full day of surfing and a night of yoga, what else is there? I no longer remember.

Each day I improve. I can swim out faster now, actually catch the waves, and even ride them fair distances sometimes. I’ve learned how to spot a wave, the precise time to paddle and stand when it’s at peak power.

After surfing, we hang out under the palm trees, and Victor or Antonio chop up melons while we all share our war stories about that day’s waves.

“Tomorrow, I’m going to work on my bottom turn, so I’m not caught inside,” I say to Victor as I grab a piece of watermelon.

Grinning, he finishes carving a hole in a coconut and gives it to me to drink.

“You surfer girl now,” he says with a pleased smile. I look at my mismatched borrowed water shoes, torn rash guard, and envision the smears of white cream across my face. I suppose I am.

Somehow, I became an overweight, middle-aged surfer — what a wild world. My brothers wouldn’t be surprised.

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