Costa Rica, a land of peaky, hollow beachbreaks and reeling left and right pointbreaks

waits surf travelers with open arms and waves aplenty. This Central American paradise holds consistent surf and a unique peaceful tranquility, making it one of the most ideal surf destinations in the world.

With beautiful beaches, warm water, good food, inexpensive lodging and a huge variety of year-round surf suited to just about every taste, this small nation of four million Ticos and Ticas is hard to top when it comes to a surf trip. Which is why over the last three decades it has gone from a barely-known frontier to a full-blown surf camp, surf tour, package deal, fully-guided or do-ityourself hotspot for surfers from all over the world.

Two stunning stretches of beach, the Pacific side and Caribbean side, give Costa Rica over 1,000 miles of glorious, largely undeveloped coastline. Rocky headlands and points are complimented by serene white, black and brown sand beaches. Tropical forests with more than their share of the world’s bio-diversity stretch from mountains down to reeling reefbreaks, where monkeys hoot tube rides and guavas hang from the trees. It is truly a paradise to the surfer who is also inspired by nature.

Lying between Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south, Costa Rica is more traveler-friendly than both its neighbors, while also offering a wider range of surf. You can fly in, rent a car, swill a smoothie on the scenic drive to your wave destination and be pulling into tubes by sundown. Time slows down in this sleepy nation, and after a day or two you’ll begin to understand the common phrase “pura vida,” which the friendly locals use for everything from “great” to “goodbye” to “cool” but translates literally to “pure life,” which pretty much defines Costa Rica.

A (VERY) BRIEF SURF HISTORY

Costa Rica’s saltwatery riches were first mined by tight-lipped Centro-American surf travelers and dropouts in the late ’60s, but it wasn’t until a ‘74 surf magazine article that the rest of the surfing world saw photographic evidence of somewhere way south of the border. Till then, it was bandits and mosquitoes and left pointbreaks in Mazatlan; once Costa Rica was discovered (it was safe!) it seemed almost too good to be true. Numerous magazines featured the waves of Pavones and Boca Barranca and Salsa Brava though the late ’70s, but when Surfing ran a huge, double-page Aaron Chang shot lineup of Witches Rock in ‘83, the rush was on. Morris Overseas Tours started the first Costa Rica surf tours in ‘85, and the rest-the dozens of pay-to-play surf camps, the feral campers, the 5000 locals and thousands of visitors, the national contest circuit is writing its own history as we launch into the second generation of Tico surfers.

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