Escuela, surf y exploración

Datum: 29.01.2024
Ship: Pelican of London

Position: Jacó, Costa Rica

Etmal: 0 nm

Total: 5089 nm

The Day

We started the day at 06:30 with breakfast. Today it was earlier then usual, because those of us, that have already had spanish had an evaluation test. The rest of us walked to the Academia Tica (spanish school) 30 minutes later. There we were split into groups in which we will have classes for the coming week. We had Spanish lessons until 11:40 and Eva will tell you more about them tomorrow.

Free-time or “Freeshoreleave”

After lunch we were split into two groups, that surf from 2-3:30 and 4-5:30pm. While one group is surfing the others have Free-time. During Free-time my group went to explore Jacó. Jacó is really nice since it has a huge beach, as well as a large main street set back a bit from the Beach. This is where we went. We just explored looked into a couple shops.

One we were a bit excited is Ridiculous Burgers. Not only do the Burgers look good. They also have eating challenges with the world’s spiciest burger (2.2m Scoville) or a half meter tall Burger. Maybe some of us will try one of the challenges. By then it was already time to head back to go surfing so we returned to the hostel.

Surfing

To go surfing we have to walk about 15-20 minutes and then take a bus to get to the surf spot. For surfing, unlike in Marocco we were split into groups of two or three people with each getting their own instructor. This was really helpful, as we were able to get more Feedback and hopefully we’ll get better quicker. The waves here in Jacó are also bigger, which made it even more fun. And since it’s pretty shallow everyone can surf at their own level with green-waves further out and white waves closer to shore.

Noé, Paulina and me were in one group with Victor and today he taught us about the shoulders and Peaks of waves as well as how sets work. So in Jaco the waves typically come in groups or sets of 9-13 waves. These usually have similar characteristics with how the shoulders and peaks form. The peak is the highest point of the wave and is, what you look for once you’ve decided that you’re gonna surf a wave.

This is because the wave breaks at the peak and you wanna surf away from the peak down the shoulder, where the wave hasn’t broken yet. The best waves are those, that only have 1 peak though most have more than one peak. On the walk back from surfing we also saw a tortoise as well as a beautiful sunset.

In hindsight we can say, that it was a very successful day with lots of nice waves and fun. All of us also greatly improved our Spanish skills.