A Tale of Two Surfers

This is the second in a series about surfing, Costa Rica, and what happens when you stop extracting from the places you visit and start building relationships with them. The first post was called “What Makes You Feel Whole?”

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The more time I spend surfing, the more I notice there’s a spectrum out there in the water.

On one end, there’s a love-based approach. You’re developing a relationship with every wave. You’re developing a relationship with the ocean. You understand that so much of it is out of your control. You can only do so much, and the rest is trust. If you don’t catch a wave, it doesn’t matter. You’re out there for something deeper.

On the other end, it’s fear. Zero-sum. It’s about catching as many waves as you can. If you’re catching a wave, that means I’m not. It’s my wave. Get off my wave. Or I’m going to get you out of the water.

Most surfers fall somewhere between those two poles. Recently in Costa Rica, I got to experience both ends up close. And what I noticed had very little to do with surfing.

I made friends with an Argentine guy named Nahuel. He has been in Santa Teresa Costa Rica for close to 20 years. When he moved there, there were maybe 200 families. Now there are over 2,000. Nahuel runs an environmental non-profit called Casa Pampa.¹ More on Nahuel in my next story.

When the swell is right, Nahuel and I go over to a break on the other side of the Nicoya peninsula to Cabuya. We leave Santa Teresa/Malpais early, 4am. We paddle out before sunrise. The only light is the moon and the stars. You can’t even see the waves. It is scary and magical at the same time!

On one Tuesday, Nahuel and I get out early. Surfing’s great. Then the crowds start picking up.

I don’t like surfing in crowds. It’s not about not getting waves. I just don’t like it. With a lot of things in life, I don’t like crowds. I don’t mind a handful of people out there. I actually like being out there with a few others who are all in that same connected mode. You can watch how someone else reads a wave and learn something. But when the energy shifts to competition, something changes for me.

There was an instructor out there with a student. He’s pushing the student into waves. I’m trying to stay out of the way, doing my own thing.

I happened to find myself in a place where there was some nice consistent waves. The instructor noticed and brought his student over to the area. At one point I catch a wave and paddle back out. I notice the instructor paddling toward me. He asks if I speak English or Espanol. I said English. And he basically gives me an earful. Very aggressive. Told me to stay away from him and his student. Said some things that weren’t particularly nice, including something along the lines of, I don’t care about your life.

I said, lo siento. Sorry. I don’t mean any disrespect. I truly want to be respectful of the etiquette.

And I was being honest. The typical rules of surfing are whoever is closest to the peak has priority on the wave. That’s how I was taught. I try to be really conscientious of it because I don’t want to be that guy.

I paddled away. Eventually I surfed in. That interaction left a bad taste in my mouth. His negative energy threw off my whole day. It wasn’t horrible. I was just off.

I later learned that at this particular break, there’s a cultural understanding that if an instructor is out with a student, you basically give them the right of way no matter what. I didn’t know that. I’m not saying I wasn’t at fault. Maybe the instructor could have communicated in a gentler way, and I would have been like, oh, I had no idea, sorry. You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond.

Nahuel and I go back on Thursday.

We have the water to ourselves for a while. The conditions are amazing. We’re out there in the dark. The moon is out. The stars are out. We catch some waves before the sun even starts to rise. Then the colors start to pop and burst across the horizon. And you just sit there on your board thinking, this is fucking amazing.

There are maybe five of us. Nahuel, me, a woman, another guy, and an Italian surfer who Nahuel said was basically a professional. Everyone is respectful. It just feels great.

I’m watching the Italian. He’s walking out to the nose of his board, hanging ten, putting all his weight on the very front edge. Think about the physics of that. And he’s just doing it beautifully. He has no problem catching waves. But he’s not out there hoarding them. He’s just a good guy enjoying the ocean.

Then the crowd starts to come. I see that same instructor from Tuesday. I think to myself, this session has been so amazing. I’m going to find a small wave to ride in and call it a day.

As I’m doing that, the Italian ends up a little closer to me. I see a wave coming. I think, this is the one. Then I notice he’s at the peak. It’s his wave. So I’m about to back off. He looks at me and says, go, go.

He just gives me the wave.

I go. I ride it in. And in hindsight, the pressure of that moment hit me. A professional surfer conceding a wave that was clearly his, telling me to take it. If I had messed that up, I would have looked like a total kook. But I caught it. Rode it all the way to the beach. Beautiful ending.

Before that happened, something else played out. One of the instructor’s students got caught up in a wave, lost his board, and it basically became a projectile. It almost took Nahuel out. Nahuel told the guy, in a pretty calm way, that he was dangerous out there and needed to control his board. The instructor wasn’t even paying attention. Then at some point, I could see the instructor engaging with Nahuel, giving him an earful about something, saying things like, you’re not even a good surfer. To be clear, Nahuel is a very good surfer.

Later, Nahuel said that while the way the instructor was communicating wasn’t as aggressive as what I’d experienced, it was still that same energy.

And then he said something that stuck with me, “Imagine having to live 24/7 with all that anger.”

I think that’s a great reframe. But it also opens up something I’ve been thinking about.

How you approach surfing is how you approach life.

How you approach a game. How you show up at work. How you approach a run. How you approach a conversation. I don’t think we can compartmentalize. Can a person truly be really cool and chill with their friends, but a cutthroat competitor in the water? The key word is cutthroat, not competitor. Can we truly do that? Does our brain know how to keep those things separate?

I’ve written before about spilling. The idea that what we carry inside is what we spill onto others. I think if you’re truly going to lead with love, it has to show up in everything. And when you start trying to compartmentalize, when you’re one way in some areas and a different way in others, I think the fear still spills over into the places where you don’t want it to.

Based on how the Italian showed up in the lineup, he’s the kind of person I’d want to be in community with. The instructor? Maybe he’s a great guy to hang out with. I don’t know. But in the water, I saw something that made me wonder.

And the honest thing is, who knows what that instructor is dealing with in his life. That’s real too. I’m not trying to make him a villain. I’m just noticing what I noticed.

I truly believe that what you carry is what you spill. And what you spill, gets spilled back on you. Case in point. The following weekend the Costa Rican Federation of Surfing had their second competition of the season in Santa Teresa. The Italian surfer took second place in the longboard competition.

This is the second in a series from Costa Rica. Next up: what happens when you stop extracting from the places you visit and start building relationships with them.

1. https://casapampa.com/