We had an exchange student stay in our house for my first trimester of 12th grade, her name is Gala and she was originally from Germany but was living in Curaçao before coming here. Before she left Costa Rica, we wanted to take her on a trip so she could experience a different part of the country, so we took her to Matapalo, in the Osa Peninsula down south, about a 8-9 hour car ride from where I live. We had been there earlier in the year in July, when it was wave season and we fell in love with the place; not just for the waves, but the dense forest and all the different animals you could come across. From many different species of monkeys climbing on the trees, to scarlet macaws flying over you when you surfed, and whales swimming just a few hundred meters away from the lineup.
We went to Matapalo for 4 nights in December, but unfortunately there weren’t any waves. We knew this was a possibility during this time because it’s not wave season, but we couldn’t plan the trip around a swell, we had to do it around when we could take Gala before she left. Although it was a bummer the waves were tiny and one of our days there we didn’t even surf, it was still an amazing trip where we got to explore the beaches and relax.
It was a great experience because we got to connect with nature. In Matapalo, there is no electricity, everyone has to get their own generator or solar panels in order to have power. Where we stayed at this time, they didn’t always turn on the generator, and the battery that powered the lights in the house was not enough power for us to charge our phones. Either way, there is no service unless you go out to the beach, and the WiFi they had only reached us in the parking lot. I love disconnecting from electronics so it was nice to play UNO with Gala and my parents, and go on many walks around the beaches to check on waves and hope there was finally something. The following picture is of me surfing on the day after we arrived, where we managed to catch a few tiny waves.
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