I thought I would do something different for this year's Costa Rica retreats and post our daily videos to the blog so that you all can follow the great times and waves that we're having down here. Above is the video from the first day of trip. Andrew and I "test out" the beach break to make sure that it is acceptable for the students. It was. Then we drove to Quepos to pick up Johann and Christina, both of whose flights successfully landed despite warnings that the Turrialba Volcano near San Jose Airport was going to spew a bit of ash into the sky. Our third member of the full retreat (we're getting a halfway member in a few days), Mariza, was not as lucky and had to spend the night in Miami awaiting a non-cancelled flight on American Airlines. [Word to the wise: lots of other carriers are landing in San Jose, but American seems to be a lot more conservative and cancels more flights.] You will see her in the next video as she arrived yesterday. After we settled Johann and Christina into their rooms, we got in a sunset surf at Playa Chaman. We finished the day with dinner of warm cabbage salad with roasted broccoli, shredded carrots, and bell pepper, tossed with a citrus vinaigrette and seared chicken breast stuffed with pesto. Dinner was followed by raw video screening and a seminar on how to use the lower body for turning.
Our goals for this crew this trip are: learn the fundamentals of turning, more board control on the inside, walking up and down the board (weight distribution generally), continued work on paddling form, graceful kickouts, backside butt drags, and hopefully a head dip or two. Everyone has had lessons with us in NY and already has the early fundamentals down, so now it is a matter of helping them engage their fins and rails to experience new parts of the wave. Another huge theme is to find the power source both for take off and for riding the wave, i.e., to make strides on wave judgment skills.
It's 5a right now. Andrew is making smoothies and we can hear surf pounding down the mountain. I still have to edit yesterday's video, so the posts are going to be 1-3 days after the day the video was created. Stay tuned!