Explore Your Own Backyard: Part 3

Up the coast, shot early one morning by Harry Knight.

Alex, on our regular am routine.

"How far d'ya reckon it is?" Down the coast.

Alex reaping the rewards of looking around the corner, shot by Nosara Shack.

Sunday arvo, down the coast.

For my friends at Surf Simply out on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, there really isn't much of a need to explore their back yard because their front yard is so damn good. The beach where they live and work is a long expanse of sand with numerous peaks along its length, more than enough to spread out all of the surfers there so that you can surf with just your friends. When I worked out there (Ru and Gem have employed a few of us for varying lengths of time over the years) Alex and I would get up when the howler monkeys started roaring in the dark every morning and ride down to the beach to get an early surf, then start work in wet boardshorts.

But every now and then we'd all get up a little earlier, throw down a coffee, water and banana (Ru's dawny routine of wake-up, hydrate, energy) and straddle the quad-bikes to go surf someplace where we'd not only be the first ones in the sea, but we'd be the only ones in the sea.

The best of the backyard breaks was a twenty minute quad ride away in the dry season (before the rivers became impassable due to rains). We'd unload the boards and carry them across the rope bridges then tentatively ease the bikes over the bridges, pulling back the cables to get the handlebars past. There are three rivers to cross and it's a hassle but there are heaps of crocs in the rivers. And it's worth it when you get to the beach; a remote turtle sanctuary with a board-buckling beachbreak to wake you up.

North or South, every now and then we'd climb aboard one of the quad-bikes and go looking; guaging the paddle to off-shore reefs or trying to figure the optimum swell direction for nearby coves. The crew currently out there are still doing it, exploring safe in the knowledge that their fall back option of surfing out front is still the sort of surf spot that we're all doodling in the margins of our notebooks.

Go take a look around that corner and see what you find.