End of Sámara

I don´t have much time to talk, but right now I am in the small mountain town of Santa Elena, which neighbors the other town with a more famous name, Monteverde. The hostel I am staying at is the best place I have ever stayed at, ever. And there´s more stories to come from what I´m doing here and why this hostel I´m at, called Pensión Santa Elena, is so great. But that will have to come later.

The last several days, all I have done is gone to class and surfed. One day, I surfed for 3 hours without even knowing it and was late to class, but it was ok because this week I was the only student at my level. This was severely more helpful and better for me than I thought, because I was just talking and talking and talking nonstop with the teacher. I feel really comfortable using different tenses, even harder ones like the subjunctive and imperfect subjunctive. But that is the boring stuff. The surfing has been so intense this entire week. The tides have been in the morning and early afternoons now, so it´s right when the sun is out and there are just no clouds in the sky, only the horizon of the Pacific Ocean to gaze out at. I have moved to a shorter board in order to practice turning and maneuvering, allowing me to make my rides longer instead of just going straight and waiting for the wave to crash out. However, this came at a price. My chest and especially my nipples were ripped to shreds from the board and wax. It felt awful. Luckily, I have healed pretty rapidly, but it was still painful. Also my shoulders are super super sore. This I can deal with also. What has been hard though is paddling into monster waves and trying to get past them so I can catch some waves of my own. One time I was paddling into a giant wave and thought I could get past it before it broke. Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong. The beast crashed literally right on top of me, after which I was thrown from my board and sucked in by the undertow and thrown around. I had to lunge myself up as I gasped for air. To say the least, it was pretty scary, since that was the first time that had actually happened to me. I decided to call it quits that day after that happened, but luckily, I haven´t had any experiences nearly as bad as that one.

I got to Santa Elena by hitching a ride with a random guy I met back in Montezuma who came to Sámara also. That was an interesting ride, more of which I will explain later. Right now, I am heading off to an insectarium, an exhibit of insects and other random things collected by a guy who started his collection at the tender age of 6. It is currently the second or third largest collection in the world. I have heard spectacular things about it, so I can hardly wait. More to come later.