Jaco Costa Rica and fishing!

I got a chance to work on my surfing skills while in Jacó

With Craig in tow, Stewart and I were in "intense travel mode" since he only had a week to spend in Costa Rica, and this required maximizing every moment of each day to its fullest. This was done so that as Craig went back he would have volumes of memories, and it reminded Stewart and I of the importance of time while traveling. Long term travelers such as us often forget the blessing of time in these foreign places, something fairly easy to do. Sentiments such as "oh another giant active volcano," or "oh another extremely rare endangered bird, another idyllic Caribbean beach, another quaint group of indigenous locals, another amazing cloud forest, another 200 year old colonial church..." may not be said overtly, but are thought. The majority of travelers that I have met will most likely return to some western nation in months' or a year's time, and the traveling experience needs to be one that stays with you for the rest of your life; hopefully enriching everything that follows. However, maintaining this sort of appreciation for everything that you see is not easy, it requires a diligence and almost work like ethic. The veil of apathy is something that I see in myself at times, but as long as I remain aware of it I can take measures to remind myself of the opportunity in front of me. Stewart and I often did things called "reality checks" i.e. "Reality Check: we are sitting on lava rocks in the middle of the Costa Rican Rockies in pitch black darkness watching an active volcano hurl lava hundreds of feet in the air only to have it explode in giant balls of fire flowing down the mountain" or "Reality Check: we are sipping beers over a gorgeous sunset while watching a German ship pass through the Panama canal on its way to Japan." I think you get the Idea.

Some travelers unfortunately just travel so that they can avoid responsibility or whatever the next stop is on the road of life . This is particularly present in beach towns where you see people in their 20s and 30s who have been at the same hostel for months at a time. They have saved enough money to live in the Hostel, go out every night and get hammered, wake up at noon to grab a bit to eat, start drinking at 5 and get hammered again. They will do this for weeks on end. At least I know I don’t have it that bad.

Keeping these thoughts in mind, we left Monteverde on the 6:00 am bus to Puntarenas, from where we would change and catch a bus to Jaco. This bus, like many before it, had maximized their profit by fitting as many seats as possible in the 30 feet from the front of the bus to the back. This is fine if you are a 5 foot tall Tico, but when you are 6 foot 3 inch Nordic Viking it poses serious problems. To fit in a seat such as this, I have to sit up as straight as possible and literally wedge my femur bone in between the seats. Then the person in front of me tries to recline and can't because my leg is butting straight up to the metal in both seats, so they tell me to quit it... Quit what: being me? having a femur that is twice as long as theirs? Quit sitting in the seat? Eventually they stop because I am twice as big as they are and would win a fight. HAH! The sitting predicament leads to other problems such as bruised bottoms, prolonged numbness in my legs, tremendous lower back pain, and an inability to sleep. But good things come out of hardship: 2 dollars as opposed to 200 hundred for flying, great views of the countryside, and a memory that will last when other fade into the years.

5 hours later we were in Puntarenas, soon to be called Puta (son-of-a-bitch) renas. As we got off the bus, Stewart dove into the baggage compartment to grab our big bags, and as he did he put his small bag on the ground so he could fit in the compartment. I was watching it and had a good view of the general area when a large man (taller than me which is unusual!) came up and started telling me/yelling something about how we were not at the bus terminal. I was trying to figure out what he wanted and just as soon as that he was gone around the corner. Stewart came out from underneath the bus to see what was going on and we both realized that his small green bag was gone... We frantically looked around, on the bus, around the ground, around the corner to find the guy, but it was to late. The bag was gone. It must have been a two person deal, so while one distracted my attention from the scene, the other grabbed the bag. In the bag was Stewart's credit card, his camera with pictures from the entire trip, money, ipod, passport, and journal: basically his life for the past 2 months.

We ran through the market to see if the thieves were already trying to sell their new found goods, but it was a fruitless gesture. After dashing to the police station we realized that this too was going to come of nothing. The bag was gone and Stewart came to this realization fairly quickly. All that was left to do was cancel the credit card and file a police report to get a new passport. Life can change so fast, something that is easy to forget in the safe complacency of home. This is a generalization, but I feel that the people of many countries I have been to have a closer connection with the tenuous nature of normality, not surrounded by as many of the safety blankets that tend to come with life where I grew up.

Stewart was more up-beat about it that Craig or I, taking a "these things happen" approach, something that is always easier said that done. And he was right that these things do happen, there is a saying that there are two types of people in Latin America: those that have been robbed and those that will be robbed. It is a fact of life when there such disparity of wealth, and poverty is the norm not the exception. Craig and I were quick to not be downers and so we tried to cheer up as quickly as Stewart had. I can also count my blessings from this experience and hope that I will never be in a position where poverty or addiction drive me steal from another.

Not Stewart's actual face after it happend, but general representation on his outlook on life.

Even after filling a police report, we still made the bus to Jacó that we had planned on, and back on the road of traveling.

In the 1960's Jacó was a small fishing village on a western coast of Costa Rica with a relatively large pretty beach and not much going on besides great fishing. It saw the occasional traveler, and both walked away with a content feeling of beneficial cultural exchange. Then like a great tidal wave of wealth and local cultural white-out, the American came, and they came, and they came. Jacó became the pacific coast destination for vacationing Americans and other wealthy foreigners. They came to beach, they came to fish, they came to spend money, and just like that Jacó was no longer the domain of the Costa Ricans but now a colony within a county. High abundances of prostitutes and drugs would soon follow this gringo inundation, further solidifying its colonial status.

This is what we had heard, and after passing a mile of billboards and signs without a SINGLE Spanish word, I decided that it might be true. Best Westerns and Subways lined the main road that comprises the town center and runs along the beach. A giant resort called "Los Suenos" anchored the town to the north, and was home to the richest gringos who had help to move Jacó towards its present condition. I was okay spending my Latin America time in such an un-Latin place for several reasons: 1.) We knew what the town was going to be like before setting out on the road towards here, with no false beliefs that it was real Costa Rica. 2.) I had spent the last few months traveling through many other "traditional" towns and could competently recognize the difference. 3.) They had some of the of the best/cheaper sport-fishing on the pacific coast, and that was our real purpose for being here.

Yes, Craig, Stewart, and I were going to go 30 miles of the coast of Costa Rica in search of Blue Marlin, Sail Fish, and Dorados, and then use our innate manly power to fight them in for the catch. And then release them. Many people our age don't get the opportunity to fish like this, and so the experience was going to be all that more special.

Craig, Stewart, and I splurged and got a cheap hotel room with air-conditioning now that we could split the cost 3 ways in an effort to forget about the events earlier in the day. After a stroll around the local fish guides and little bit of bargaining we got the best deal we could on 30 foot center console, scheduled for 7 am the following morning.

The following morning we shared the van ride with another man from US going out to fish for the day. He has a really interesting story that I am not going to include on the blog because he is hiding in Jacó from the US government, but ask me and I will send the links to a few Vanity Fair, New Yorker, and recent Washington Post articles written about him. (On a side note: Stewart and I had read in the liberal lonely planet that all of the sports fishermen were down here for the legal prostitution in addition to the fish, and that their hotels were "high class brothels." We both reacted with skepticism, and both knew enough guys who fished to know that this was some kind of backpacker editorial contempt for rich fishermen. ) Then the guy from the US looks out the window and points at some 20 year old girl walking down the road and goes: "that is what I'm really here for, the young girls." We were both wrong, turns out that the Lonely Planet is always right!

Our captain and 1st mate were both native Jacóians, and were relatively younger, but we were assured that they were good at what they did and would catch us some fish. Out of the Los Suenos harbor 10 minutes later, we were boring away at the morning sky towards our objective: a sunken volcano crater 30 miles off the shore where all the Blues and Sails were known to hang out. We used the trip out there to catch up on a little bit of sun bathing in the morning rays before we all started to sweat like it was going out of style.

It seemed like not a few minutes later, our first mate was throwing out the lines. We had two sitting on the surface and 5 more at varying depths tied to the outriggers, a total of 7 lines for this 30 foot boat, a pretty impressive feat. The "fishing" that Stewart, Craig, and I had been doing up to this point consisted of pretty much sitting on the front of the boat in the sun. I don’t get the opportunity to go deep sea fishing that much (this might be the 5th time in my entire life) so I really enjoyed having a first mate there to tie up the lines and rig the entire set up, while the captain was in charge of finding our fish. I am sure I could learn how, but just haven't had the chance, although this will be the goal of the next trip I go on.

We watched as he rigged the boat and waited...

The sun got hotter and we waited...

and then and hour later it was like AHHH scream AHHH a bunch of stuff in really fast Spanish that boiled down to: get back here and reel in this fish. The drag of the reel was whirring like a siren Bweeeeeeeeee, a sound of excitement and call to action for all sport fishermen. Craig, Stewart, and I looked at each other to decide who was going to reel this one in, and somehow it was ME! 9:30 in the morning and we already had a sail on the hook. Dash like a flash I flew to the fighting chair, rod in hand, prepared to do battle with the beast.

The fish jumped and flew across the water, fighting the line, and sailed to its namesake. It was a back and forth for about 15 minutes, and then the fish started to loose will power, and I spent the next 15 slowing pulling it in bit by bit. The fight was complicated by the fact that my reel wasn’t secured to my rod, and so it swiveled around the rod as I reeled, hence the shot of 1st mate having to hold the reel in place for me. We got the leader and bill, but the fish had lost a lot of blood, and so we decided not bring it into the boat for the photo-op, hence the above shot Stewart took with my camera. One great fisherman (dad) once told me that after every catch, an obligatory round of celebratory beers were in order. And so at 10:00 am, we all cracked open our first Imperial of the day, and toasted to the captain and his 1st mate.

First catch day out of the way, the hesitation was off of our chests and we no longer had to worry about going home empty handed. Like clockwork we had the lines back out ready to catch another big one. Less than 30 minutes later another WEEEEEEEEEEEE on the drag, mad screaming in Spanish, and we knew we had another on the line. All of the dreams we had about pacific coast bill fishing were coming true. Again Stewart and Craig stared at each other, and Stewart said that he wanted Craig to have it since Craig was a fairly big fisherman. So Craig jumped to the hot seat with rod and reeled like there was no tomorrow. A good 30 minute fight with some aerial action on behalf of the fish, and we had one in the boat. A round of celebratory beers later, and it was 11:00, with 5 more hours of fishing ahead of us. It was shaping up to be a great day.

Captain Craig, and Stewart reverting to the basic medical school instinct of studying when bored.

Unfortunately these would be the only two sails we would see, but we counted our stars when our captain radioed the other two boats in the fleet to learn that those two boats had caught nothing so far! We took advantage of the breeze provided by the trolling to simply enjoy being in the pacific ocean out on the water. The 1st mate turned out to be a great fresh pineapple and watermelon cutter, washed down with some more Imperial. We did get to see some dolphins, a sea turtle, and lots of Sails who for some reason were not biting our bait.

Savoring a bit of Pinnapple

The end of the day came, and we headed back to shore with two sails under our belt, taking the evening cruise as an opportunity to enjoy some more delicious Imperial.

That evening we decided to continue living the sport-fisherman lifestyle, and headed over to the ritzy bar at Los Sueños resort to chum it up while watching the sunset over the yachts in the harbor.


While sipping scotch at the bar, we met a Canadian Real-estate agent who lived in Los Suenos and sold a lot of the houses there. This big cheery guy named Marcel Gauthier was as nice as he could be, and owned a company called "Costa Rica Dream Makers" http://costaricadreammakers.com He invited us back to his house where we spent the rest of the evening finishing a bottle Crown Royal with his sister, Dina Gauthier, who runs the business with him.

Productive day out of the way, we had one more day in Jacó to enjoy the beach before it was time to catch Craig’s flight out of San Jose, and try to get a new passport for Stewart!

Take care,
M3