Published on March 23, 2008

Mal Pais and Montezuma

If there is anything I can say about the transportation system in Costa Rica is that they have some gutsy and skilled bus drivers. Though it is true you can get to all the main cities without leaving a paved road, most of the country infrastructure is on unpaved roads, riddled with potholes and some (what seemed to me) defying slopes with no rails. The trip from Monteverde to Puntarenas where we boarded the ferry to cross into the Nicoya peninsula and reach Mal Pais was no exception.

Costarican Sky.Mal Pais, a surfer’s heaven was a heaven to us as well, though not just for its surfing as only the most persistent of us managed to catch a wave or two.
A group of three beaches (Mal Pais, Carmen and Santa Teresa), Mal Pais at this time of year epitomized what I always imagined an unspoiled beach on the Pacific will be like: thundering waves crashing over towering rocks side by side to tens of meters long beaches that never really know the pleasure of dry sand but that you could almost substitute for a mirror, stout palms and meandering almond trees keeping shade to the debris brought by the tide and no soul, just all the earth elements as far as you could see.

To get the whole experience of being in the tropics we were also "lucky" enough to have been caught in the outskirts of a tropical storm (lucky because we weren’t in the middle of it). Besides the electricity and water being cut off because of the storm for about 24 hours, the experience was quite… rustic and romantic.

We were all crowded around half a candle stick, jumping at every sound that came from the jungle right outside our door step, fighting bugs that were attracted by the candle light and were blindly flying into us and wondering what storm was outside, how serious was it and how would we ever find out how serious it was if there was no electricity; our cell phones weren’t working and obviously the internet would be out of the question. We woke up next morning to a clear sky and survived just fine with no running water for the entire day.

Though this was supposed to be the vacation of the year and I thought I would be constantly active and on the move, the pura vida mentality caught on pretty fast. Our host in Mal Pais, Franz, an Austrian construction worker turned a surfing hotel owner, embodied the pura vida mentality and expressed it every chance he got with a "don’t worry, you’re on vacation":
"Franz, we broke the key to the safe…"
"Don’t worry, you’re on vacation, I’ll fix it."
"Franz, there is no electricity…"
"Don’t worry, you have beer and you’re on vacation… you don’t need electricity"
"Franz, a tree fell on your house from the storm?!"
"Don’t worry, I fix it. Pura Vida!"

Between Mal Pais and Montezuma, a beach only an hour away (again through some pretty bad roads) but somewhat more developed, we spend the next five days waking up late to the dreadful sound of howler monkeys, attempting to surf or watching others attempting to surf, sleeping on the beach, sleeping in the hammocks and trying to reach previously unattempted shades of brown by spending every daylight minute in plain sunlight.