To Panama and Back - Lost and Found

    While we were on the islands people kept raving about this eco hostel called Lost and Found, which happened to be up in the jungle in the middle of nowhere. We were told to catch a bus to a town called David and when we get half way jump off when we see three big yellow rocks. We were also advised to go during the day as there is quite a long hike up to the hostel through the jungle. So the day came when we were going to depart, but it was super sunny and lush so we decided to push our boat taxi back to the mainland to three o'clock. Thinking the boat taxi would be thirty minutes and the bus two hours to the yellow rocks this would give us an hour of sunlight to hike to the hostel... perfect. We were on the bus looking for these yellow rocks and it kept getting darker and darker until it was pitch black and all I could see was my reflection in the window, but we told the driver and he let us out when we got to the rocks. We were quickly left on the side of the road with very limited moonlight, no passing cars, and no towns for two hours in either direction.

    We crossed the road and came to beginning of the trail only to see it dissapear into the black jungle. The noises that were coming from the jungle made all the stories ive heard very real, about how the jungle becomes alive at night. Prata and connor led our group of six using a blackberry screen to light the path with another couple closely following them and me and Phe taking the rear. The trail was alot gnarlier than everyone had told us, it was very overgrown and some points were so steep we had to climb, I had a surfboard in my right hand so it was quite difficult when it came to the climbing, every second that passed seemed like an hour. I was dwelling on the stories my friend Pat used to tell me back in Costa Rica about how hes nearly been bit by multiple times by very poisonous snakes that could kill you if you didnt get to a hospital within the hour. As I was thinking about how nuts those stories were, the bushes right beside me began russling. I froze thinking it was just a gust of wind but no it was something very very big and it was moving slowly along the ground closer to me until it was no further than a foot away. I ran one step forward only to run into Phe who was stuck behind the other couple who were having trouble getting up one of the steep bits. So of course I did the manly thing and began shoving phe into the couple infront shouting move your asses theres something in the bushes! I had a couple moments of panic and I was very tempted to run/roll myself backdown to the highway and sleep on the road, but luckily everyone began hustling and we were out of there. The rest of the hike sucked. But we made it to the top eventually and were very welcomed by all the staff and we were all having a laugh about our hike. It turned out the path we should have taken was a well tracked hiking trail, and the path we happened to climb that night was very rarely used if not ever used because it is so overgrown and steep

 

    One of the offered day trips we took was to these hot springs, which were average... until we found this monkey who was the friendliest clumsiet monkey in town. We were having so much fun playing with it I put my camera down and it quickly ran up the tree infront of me and jumped toward the one behind. Very touching music was playing in my head while this monkey soared through the air in slow motion, its times like these you slow everything down to really appreciate nature... until the monkey missed the branch and hit every other branch on his way down to the ground and then snatched my camera! I took off after that cheeky thing and he only looked at me once before letting the camera go because he knew I was going to annihilate him, and I most definatly was. We made up soon after.

 

 

  

    We explored the jungle around Lost and Found while doing a treasure hunt, which was free and if we completed it we won a bottle of wine. Strike!

To Panama and Back - Bastimentos Island

We arrived in Panama and our original plan was to go to Bocas Del Torro, which is an island town on the Carribean side of Panama. We stayed our first night there and it turned out to be a town packed with tourists, which we were NOT super stoked on. So we took a boat tour that had dolphin watching, snorkeling and a stop at Red Frog beach, which is on Bastimentos island. The dolphin watching and snorkeling was pretty average and Red Frog beach was alright, but we mainly wanted to end our boat triop on red frog because we heard good things about Bastimentos Island. Long story short we had a lot less cash than we planned to have and we had to save some money for the boat taxi back to the main island. So we crashed in hammocks at the hostel for five bucks a night and shared two boxes of KD between three people each day, for three days. We ended up going for a hike to two other beaches which were completely deserted we only saw three people at the beginning of our hike. The walk was super fun because we felt like castaways, we were hungry, we were smelly and we were tired. We came to this point in between the beaches that was filled with coconut trees so Prata Shimmied up a tree and knocked off a coconut and after spending a good half hour trying to break the coconut open on the razor sharp rocks one finally busted open and there layed before us the best looking coconut we had ever seen... at least at that moment casue we were starving. So up goes Prata again to grab five more coconuts to eat later.

 We found a native girl on the walk and gave her a coconut (below)

Harry(Swedish) breaking his board at Wizards

To Panama and Back - San Jose

We have recently got back from our trip to Panama, which was pretty fun and as usual when traveling you come back with some stories and hopefully some good photos. We were hoping to catch a bus from Jaco to San Jose and then San Jose to Panama. We arrived in San Jose bright and early, but not early enough to catch the bus down to Panama so we spent the day and night in San Jose and made our way the next day. So our first stop was San Jose, which we were pretty gutted about because we have heard from pretty much everyone we met that it is a rough city, the people can be pretty dodgy and there is nothing to do in the nights. Luckily close buddy Matt Prata had recently been in San Jose and knew of some things to see. The first stop was the Museum of Costa Rican Art which was free and quite inspiring.





Afterward we ventured downtown to get a casado(rice, beans, meat...) and to see what was happening in the streets of San Jose. As we turned down this one street a giant mob of people appeared standing infront of this big gate and there was quite alot of commotion amongst the crowd. The first thing that came to mind was that there is going to be a riot, and then the gate began to open. We heard a giant roar that sounded like a million lions harmonizing and out came a fired up hillbilly driving a monster truck, I began questioning whether the rumors were true and if monster trucks are needed to control the riots here. But it turned out they were just showing the truck off to the crowd and everyone was having pictures around it.

Prata also insisted on revisiting this central square in the middle of downtown to have another look at this game he saw being played. We dont know the name of the game but we do however know the inventor and his name is Rafael. The second we showed up in the square without hesitation Rafael called us over and got us involved. I wont go into the rules because I didnt really understand them myself but Rafael has been playing this game for thirty years and his two amigos seemed to be ditching school to play so im guessing its pretty fun once you know the rules. Soon after partaking in this game we were being approached by multiple sketchy characters including this one young eighteen year old Nicaraguan boy who was missing most of his fingers and was saying that the other men were robbers so we gave the boy some cash and quickly left the scene.

Magic

What a treat two blog posts back to back! Last friday night there was some serious magic happening on the mini ramp in the Christian Surfers Property. Local skate legend Marlon Solano and grom Erick Miranda progressively turned what was thought to be a normal skate session into a face melting, nail biting, board smashing session full trickery. Marlon was busting out some huge 360s out of the pipe nearly smashing his head on the metal roof, Erick was blasting some steezy backside airs in the pipe and if that is not rad enough Marlon threw the skate box at the top of the mini ramp, and shredded some more magic on that.