Costa Rica was once an exotic, remote and desolate surf paradise. When the original surf crew from my hometown began to venture forth in the mid-eighties, urged on by early surf movies like Burning Boards and The Endless Summer, getting to the land of Pura Vida was not an easy task. Once in the country, getting from coast to coast was extremely difficult, with roads barely paved and river crossings run of the mill.

Things have changed quite a bit. My last trip in 2000 brought me to the Punt arenas Pacific coastal town of Jaco, in order to shop for supplies to bring back to Playa Hermosa where we were staying and surfing in little cabanas on the beach. The central strip was in disarray; there were massive potholes throughout the entire mile- long stretch of road. Very few gringos were visible, unless they were like us, surfers getting supplies or shopping for little trinkets at the local artisano stores. Although there were a few nice hotels sprinkled here and there with clean restaurants, in general, it was dirty, funky, low-lighted surf town. 2005 was a completely different story. The main strip looked like it was cut out of Cancun and dropped into the place where I had visited five years previously. There were huge several story neon light blazing casinos. Bustling restaurants. Not just multiple gringos walking everywhere, but FAMILIES from Texas and Florida with little kids walking around and gazing at the useless tourist storefronts raking in the colones.

Playa Hermosa changed a bit too. Instead of a handful of surfers clustered around the main peak, with another cluster further south and further north, maybe a total of twenty five or thirty guys spread out evenly in the lineup. 2005 saw packed bungalows and cabanas, hundreds of surfers in the water in the morning, and very little breathing room.

Americans have flocked to Costa Rica as a way to avoid the rat race, but either knowingly or not, they are bringing the rat race to this little country. Hotels and malls and bizarre renditions of US food and entertainment establishments are popping up all over the place. Hopefully as this continued migration of disgruntled ex-pats and dollar-signs-in-their-eyes investors hits this Central American paradise, the vision of a healthy ecology remains part of the picture.

A great example of the strange irony of this influx of money and investment in real estate in Costa Rica is my surf session in Malpais. Sitting near the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, this little surf paradise is only miles away from Cabo Blanco national preserve, and the beauty of this idyllic tropical paradise has always endured. Well, I woke up at 530 AM to the roosters (in Costa Rica if it's not the howler monkeys it's the roosters who provide free alarm clock service daily), and walked down for my dawn patrol surf session. A humongous steel-beamed complex was being built on the ocean side of the one street through town. There was actually even one of those gigantic cranes on the work site to pick up the beams and place them accordingly. Already the welders were there, probably trying to avoid the heat of midday, and they were using a decrepit, diesel generator that couldn't pass a smog regulation even if it was a Bush family inside guy doing the inspection for a Chaney operation. It was belching the most awful, despicable fumes that you could imagine! I didn't think too much of it as I walked past on a trail to the beach. After paddling out, I realized that the offshore winds were carrying the fumes directly at me, sitting on my board several yards out to sea. I just sat there shaking my head, and pulling my rash guard over my nose, thinking: 'I came all the way to Costa Rica, to this beautiful, little town to surf paradise, all around me is a scenery worthy of adam and eve, and I feel like throwing up and my head is dizzy from noxious fumes.' How can my brain compute surfing in paradise and breathing noxious fumes? They just don't seem to belong together.

ER Harris