It was time for my journey to expand beyond the central Pacific coast, and Costa Rica is such a small place, that moving from one peninsula to another was a snap. Well, not exactly. My goal was to make it across the Nicoya Peninsula to the far side that is exposed to the Pacific and south swells. Malpais seemed like a good destination, but getting there without a rental car was not an easy task. A bus ride from the little town north of Jaco where I began my day's odyssey took me two hours to the major port city of Puntarenas. From that bus stop I convinced a bitter cab driver, who looked me up and down several times before agreeing to tie my surfboard to the top of his Hyundai, to take me to the ferry terminal. I just made it. If I had not taken the five-minute taxi that cost me more Colones than seven hours of bus rides combined, I would have missed the mid-afternoon ferry and been really behind the boat, pun fully intended. The ferry was another two hours, but allowed gorgeous vistas from a vantage point only possible on the deck of a large boat big enough to haul several cars, trucks and passengers. A bus waited at the ferry terminus and it seemed like almost every single person proceeded to get off the ferry and onto that one bus. It was the only bus and it took me on more bumpy, unimproved, pot-holed, pockmarked roads for another hour and half. The bus driver stopped at a town thirty minutes from the coast and the auspices of Malpais, and everyone got off. I guess it was the last stop. After utilizing my barely passable Spanish, I was able to get the driver to take me and me alone on the bus that he would use tomorrow. It appeared that he lived in that direction and with a little fee . . . and that final stretch of dark Costa Rican countryside to my seemingly never-to-be-reached destination. A boa constrictor eased its way across the road and the driver let me jump out and check it's size. A good six foot at least. Big enough to be ambling into the cow pastures seeking lord only knows what.


The next morning Malpais roosters had me up out of my little below rustic cabana at 4:45 AM, and I grabbed my board and shook off tropical dream cobwebs to hit the surf. Dawn rose calmly, with a light rose tint across every point, every wave, and the far corners of the sky. Unfortunately, Malpais is also feeling the pain of tourism and the plague of hyper-development to meet the needs of the greedy. I was sitting on my board, in paradise, not a soul around, and the heat and humidity of this sizzling coastal community had not begun to take hold. But yet something was amiss. What could possibly detract from such a holy union of surfer and ocean at the break of day? The wind was offshore, which was good for wave shape, but bad for the surfer who has to breath the fumes of ancient diesel generators belching from the seafront property undergoing a Frankenstein transplant from paradise to Club Med. These guys even had a crane lifting steel I-beams like the ones that hover over metropolitan skylines! It seemed that Costa Rica sunrises were met with howler monkey growls, bird songs, and rooster crows, but also the droning, mechanical buzz of generators and builders.


I paddled in and stood there on the beach, board under my arm, my brow furrowed as I shook my head in disgust. How can I be an advocate of people going out and traveling to these magical lands when it leads to exploitation and destruction of the natural environment? Here I am a tourist, bummed out that there is enough interest in this small slice of tropical heaven to warrant large resorts and buildings erected on the shores of the pristine beaches. It's such a weird hypocrisy we must live in from day to day. How can we enjoy all this world has to offer and minimize out footprint at the same time?

ER Harris