To begin is always difficult, this trip began with many different plans, and options, including Hawaii, Mexico and Costa Rica. For a number of very good reasons we chose Costa Rica.
1. Max and I had never been
2. Potential for amazing surf
3. A cool out of the way place (Matapalo) to visit
As you can see on this blog I have been to many different parts of Central America and have essentially avoided Costa Rica as I thought the whole country was like the North, full of Americans and crowded surf. This is only one part of a trully amazing country! The south, specifically the Osa peninsula is the wild west of the country. Full of incredible surf, monkies and untouched primary rainforest. When we arrived in San Jose, max and I found a hostel drank a few beers and basically enjoyed ourselves despite the high American style prices. The next day we got on a small plane, a sea otter with 2 prop engines and proceeded to have what we imagined to be the scariest plane ride of our lives!!! While passing through a giant cloud, it began raining insanely hard, the rain was louder than the very loud engines, and we began bouncing through the sky dropping and gaining altitude. The tico(Costa Rican) in frot was gripping his seat white knuckle and the only thing that made me ok was the other guy in the front who looked very calm, we later found out he was only calm because he had resigned himself to his inevitable death at the hands of our 17 year old copilot!!!
Needless to say we survived and made it to Puerto Jimenez, where we got a cab with the scared passenger, Brett, who was also heading to Encanta La Vida after we bought several cases of beer to avoid paying 4 dollars per beer. The next 45 mins were very bumpy but we made it to what I can only describe as a magical resort.
Encanta La Vida:
The story of Encanta La Vida is the story of one man, Bryan, who literally built the entire town of Matapalo with his bare hands. When he first arrived there was no road to the surf, no place to stay and nobody surfing, perfection! This former sea urchin fisherman from Santa Barbara proceeded to build the only road that is still used today and his entire resort over the next 5 years sure he would work, send money and oversee the construction whenever he could. He taught the locals to surf so he would have someone to surf with, which sounds like a nice problem to have. He built and designed the whole place by himself which is even more incredible when you see how beautiful the place is. There are plants of all kinds, including banana trees, coconut trees and a whole forest of chocolate trees! They even have troops of monkies who will come through to say hi and to eat the bananas, and apparently raid our place. One sentence I never thought I would say, "Max chase the monkies off our balcony!" despite all my previous problems with monkies.
So essentially it was paradise, even without the surf! But the surf was even better. There are three breaks of decreasing exposure to the pacific. Matapalo is on the tip of a peninsula on the inward side towards the gulf. The most outer break is Matapalo itself, a sort of a beach break with a rocky bottom it gets huge and Bryan likes to chase rogue waves at outer Matapalo, not my favorite. Around the bend is the next break, backwash, so named because during high tide it breaks directly on the beach but at low tide it breaks in a very long right. I got. Several of my best waves here when we first arrived and it broke in the morning. I have these amazing memories of huge waves and warm sun and watching the jungle behind the beach, and the scarlet macaws circling overhead. The next wave, just around from backwash, is the most fickle and smallest in terms of size but it trumps all the rest in length, you can surf 300 yards! It is probably around 3 times as long as backwash, an already long wave. This extra long wave, pan dulce, which has been favorably compared to Malibu was so incredible because it was so varied! I would take off way out at the point, ride through some fast sections, then it would slow down a bit, then it would hit tę next point, speed up a lot and continue breaking over many more sections all the way in to the beach, where one could get out on the sand and walk back out for another wave. The best part is that I would sometimes surf alone! If this wave was in california it would be surfed by 300 people on the conditions that I was surfing it an yet I would have my choice of the waves I wanted. I eventually hit my knee on my board and ended up long boarding this wave for the last half of the trip as this was easier on my hurt knee, so I really got to know it well.
So that was all there was. We would wake up early (6-7) surf, eat breakfast, surf or read by the pool or in a hammock, eat lunch, surf/read, eat dinner, sleep at 9-930. It was pretty hard let me tell you.
The two selves:
My favorite book I read is "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Nobel laureate and Princeton professor Daniel Kahneman. It is basically all of his body of work in a very accessible book. He describes many experiments that led him to his views on how humans make decisions and mostly how we think about and more importantly how we perceive the world. His work as well as many others describes the two selves in all of us. A system one, or fast brain, that mostly reacts to sensory inputs, and system 2 which processes and makes decisions and is the computer. System 1 is very valuable to react instantly to stimuli, however it can easily be tricked into making the incorrect decision. For example instead of 10% fat, which nobody would buy, ground beef is described at 90% fat free to trick system 1. It seems like this system 2 is actually pretty lazy and apt to depend on system 1 to make decisions, but if we can engage system 2 we will make the right decision most of the time. Additionally there is your experiencing self, and your remembering self, which are more separate than one would realize. These are the 2 selves.
I guess what I learned is that it is okay to depend on system 1 and intuition for some things, but you must engage your system 2 to make any large decisions or else you will screw up. U definitely depend too much on my system 1 and I have been making a conscious effort to engage more my thinking brain and make better decision. So obvious this was very valuable! The other books I read were more fun, one by Joan Didion, one about Pablo Escobar and one about buff, Jesus christs childhood friend (thanks Andy Grock)
All in all an amazing trip! I will be bringing my family down when I have one, and may even make it down sooner!
Now it's back to the lab. Luckily I got great news and we will meet next week with our patent people to push that ahead, and I will need to scramble to get out a couple of grants and make a few talks incorporating all my new results for the MJFF meeting October 4th in NYC.
