Dominical, Costa Rica

Ok folks, its been a while and lots of things have happened:

Last day at Bekuo hostel I was planning on heading to Jaco, with enough criticism from people complaining about how the place was overrun by ex-pacts and hookers, I decided to go past Jaco and head towards Dominical. I found a new friend "Eetu" from Finland who was also going to Dominical, so we headed to the bus stations together.

From the get go, we had the right bus station information but each time we went to order our ticket the lady said our destination didn't exist. Even though the buses had the name of the area we were going on, she still didn't sell us the ticket. She insisted on us taking another route...So we did.

Every 1/2 hour the bus that was going to Dominical would load up people (without us) and drive off. The reason is we were on another bus...remember. About 2 hours later we finally landed on our bus and we took off. They pulled there standard $2 surfboard baggage rule, while not charging anyone else for anything. That part gets hard to get used to.

Five or so hours later we saw signs for Dominical. Since the bus driver didn't know we were going there (other destination) we ended up yelling at the bus driver to stop while passing the city at the same time. About 20 minutes later, he decided to stop and drop us off at the next town. Stranded, my new friend Eetu looked stressed. He started to look for a taxi, while I stood outside the grocery store asking people for rides. Soon, grabbed our stuff and put it next to the street to hitch-hike. Easy part was, this area was surrounded by gringos and Americans. Which was disturbing (sorry) but made things easier to negotiate the communication of us being stranded. About 15 minutes went by and found 2 girls loading up there giant car with groceries. They filled the back truck all the way, pushed the cart back and started to drive off. I waived them down, put on a puppy face and we were in! Definitely not enough room, we shoved my surfboard and backbacks around the food and jumped in the car. Luckily, they were heading in the right direction.

A few conversations later, they dropped us off in the town and we were set. We set foot and found a hostel called "Piramys". Which was set directly on the beach and was $10. Not too shabby. The hostel had a interesting layout: One large bungalow with all of the dorms open to the public. Meaning, there weren't and solid walls for privacy and each bed had a pretty serious mosquito net as well as another large mosquito net that wrapped around this large bungalow. But, good people and actually pretty good environment once you get used to it.  

At this point, there was surf, but my arm was still damaged goods and couldn't set foot in the water (or set arm). Which meant, no surf but lots spectating. In the meantime, I caught up on work, daydreaming and exploring the surroundings. One of the workers was going fishing so I jumped on that and we headed to the river mouth to hopefully catch some dinner. We failed, but still amazing.

Couple of days pass, lots of ladies night (each night they say "its ladies night", even though every night is ladies night...great marketing folks) and plenty of stories being swapped. Finally my arm was pink and healed up enough to where I can jump in the water for a surf.

The break at Dominical is a large, wide sand break with plenty of room to be un-crowded. Thus, not ever having a problem to find some gems.

Anyways, this trip included hiking to some waterfalls, being super lazy and surfing as much as I could. Though, the pacific side this time of year doesn't pump out all of the surf you dream of, the Caribbean side was firing. At the hostel I found a new friend named "Stepan" from Germany. He was looking to head to the Caribbean side as well.

Next day, we packed our bags and left back to San Jose at 5 a.m. to catch a bus to Puerto Viejo. Let the games begin...again.