Getting in to Costa Rica was easy; but getting out of Nicaragua was a great pain for a few reasons. First, arriving at the border, we found that we somehow lost the 'permiso' for the truck. This missing piece of paper cost us $100 in the end. After that, we're told we need to put the truck through 'inspection' to LEAVE the country, which was a surprise to us. The cop took one look at the truck and told us to pull it to the proper inspection area, where we had to take EVERYTHING out so they could look behind our door panels and headliner...
They didn't find anything and we didn't find the $100 dollar piece of paper, but we did get a good cleaning done. An hour and a half later, we were onto the Costa Rican side, which went relatively smoothly as loads of whities are always coming through here.
We should be done with borders for quite awhile now.
We still had light and headed to Parque Nacional Santa Rosa, wherein lies Witch's Rock, the famous surf spot. The road in was a slow going 15KM on bedrock, dry creekbeds, and dry dirt, ending at a little ranger station and a decrepit old bridge that didn't look like it was up to holding huge Suburbans. We decided to make a go at it as the muddy crossing next to it looked pretty gooey, and the thing held. We ended up going at the goo on the way out and the Suburban handled it laughing.
Anyway, a reminder that CR is a bit pricey, we had to pay $15 EACH just to surf here, camping was $2. What was worse, they don't allow perros here so we snuck Camp in, only to have here bark at the ranger later as he innocently walked past our camp.
She is pretty nasty looking...
He was nice about it and told us we could only camp for that night, which was is a shame as that amounts to us paying $34 for one night of camping, but we were about out of water anyhow, so we surfed the next morning and would be on our way.
It was about a mile's walk on soft sand to the wave, but it was worth it.
Had it not been for three boats full of surfers dropped off, we'd have been the only ones out there. It's a nice big wave that works better right but there is a left option as well unless it gets huge. The crowd was mainly beginners that day and just about everyone got waves, which were big and shapely but easy to catch and surf.
I loved it here and was bummed when a piece of my leash broke and I had to swim in, which wouldn't have been all that bad if it weren't for the river mouth that is a crocodile feeding area; I just about pissed myself. On the way back to the truck I saw two huge croc tracks coming out of the bushes and into the water; scary...
Croco's in here...
Turns out I wasn't the only one afraid; Alex was still out there surfing with a bunch of dorsal fins swimming him but taking no action. Surfers in the water headed back to the boat, but he stayed on only to brave the crocodile river on his way back to camp, where I met him with my fixed leash.
We headed off to make some lunch and drive the slow road out to the highway. It must have rained as the same road we came in on was very, very sloppy in spots, necessitating 4WD. We were spraying mud everywhere; hooting and hollering...
yee haw
Once out, smooth going on nice Costa Rican roads towards the Nicoya peninsula and some (hopefully) great surf...
GB
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