Pura Vida!

Costa Rica has been a dream!
Our favorite area of Costa so far has been the Gulfo de Papagayo. This area is a cruisers paradise and nightmare depending on the time of year. We got lucky and were able to stay and explore the area since the Papgayo Season, when the winds blow incredibly hard, had just ended! We explored the Murcielegos islands and of course the Oh so famous, Ollie’s Point and Witches rock! We spent five days anchored in a private cove surfing Ollie‘s Point all by ourselves. Every morning we would get up and get a surf session in before the pangas arrived with their boats full of surfers. The water was warm, the waves were fun and best of all we were all alone with our boat just a few yards away. Making our way up into the gulf of Nicoya we had amazing sailing, went on jungle hikes, saw Howler Monkey’s and snorkeled. The rainy season has just begun so we get squalls that come through almost every after noon with the most amazing thunder clouds that wash everything off and cool us down. It is amazingly beautiful here! The hills are green and lush, the ocean is the most beautiful color blue and the colors of the sky are unbelievable. Maybe it is because we are going home so soon but everything seems to look, smell and feel better than ever. We could not have asked for a better past few weeks.
This week though, has been though has been somewhat more of a never ending marathon. Having had little to no strict schedule for the last seven months has made it difficult to face the reality that the trip was slowly coming to an end. Time was running out and we had only a few days to get to Puntarenas and haul Gaviota out of the water. Pulling into Puntarenas and leaving the pristine untouched islands and coast that we had been exploring behind was really difficult. Puntarenas is aesthetically not to impressive. It is dirty, polluted, crowded, incredibly hot and has this lingering smell that never seems to fade.
We spent the first two days after we arrived cleaning out every cabinet with bleach, taking down sails, cleaning the bilge, lines and engine, packing our clothes to go home and deciding what food we could save and giving the rest to Chici the local panga driver. We could barely move to swat the no-see-ums off us by the end of the days. With almost everything done it was time to haul Gaviota out of the water and tuck her in for the next six months. As we sat and watched Gaviota get slowly hauled out of the water we realized our heads are just as blurred with emotion, fear and wonder as the day we left Santa Barbara. The feelings come from somewhere different this time because we are no longer as scared that we cant handle the sea and the weather and we no longer have doubts about the trip. Now the fear is of what it will be like to go home and the emotions come from reminiscing over all our experiences.
Sailing through these countries has been so humbling and has shown us how important it is to appreciate and be grateful for everything you have. The majority of the people we have encountered in Central America live on so much less than the average American. Less water, food, education and opportunities, but they never stop smiling and they always welcome you with curious faces and open hands. The images of children in El Salvador hauling water from a local well in old anti-freeze bottles, or the homes in the small villages of Nicaragua that consist of a dirt floor and palm frond roofs will never be erased from our memories. They have left us with such a great appreciation for how others live and for what we have been blessed with. Of all the lessons learned from this trip from sailing tactics and weather predictions to patience and tolerance the one lesson that I know we will never forget or question is how important it is to be conscious of our footprint, impact on the world. Living on a sailboat has been a great way of forcing us to waste nothing and not to consume more than we need. At first not having access to fresh water, food or electricity was a burden and annoying but the further into the trip we got and the more we saw how people lived in these countries we realized what a luxury it was to have these items at all. It has been so refreshing to see how content and happy people are with what they have and it had definitely rubbed off on us!
For the next six months we won’t have days of panga’s driving by singing and waving, or constant adventures filled with surfing new waves, meeting new people and exploring new places. We wont fall asleep to the crashing waves and Howler monkeys conversing in the jungles. We will go back to our “normal” lifestyle for a while and slowly fall back into the routine we knew all so well. It will give us time to reflect on the memories of Mexico and Central America that have changed our lives and opened our eyes to what is out there. We will always remember surviving our first gale, catching our first big Yellowtail, surfing remote waves and hanging out with the other cruisers. But the most colorful memories will be of the local people we met and their way of life!
PURA VIDA!