I had to do it one day and yesterday was that day.

What can I tell about it, it was one of the most intense feelings of my life. I was a bit surprised that my pulse didn’t rise at any point. The half a minute free fall was by far the coolest part but I have to say that I think I wasn’t scared at any point, except maybe a little at the beginning while hanging only on my ass cheeks in quite a strong wind from the airplane door.

Conclusion of a tandem jump from 3 kilometeres (10 000 feet): Shit loads of fun and not as scary as you would think.

Next step: Certified jumper.

Did I remember to pull the cord when it was time? Of course! That was the only thing I could do during the fall and I sure as hell wasn’t going to give the guy attached to my bag (great guy) the pleasure of saving our lives. I want to be in control of my own ass (to that extend at least)!

Landing? Perfect.

Feeling afterwards. Sweeeeeet!

Thanks to Panu for taking the photos!

I wanted to find a sailing boat to somewhere. The task should be a bit easier than normally since I don’t care that much about the destination. For the past week me and my Finnish friend have been cruising around to find a boat. Today my friend found a boat to take him to surf in Galapagos. I’m still searching for a boat and being confident that I’ll succeed.

The morning had started at 6 a.m in Puerto Viejo in small town by the Caribbean sea. Shitty tourist town with some serious surf if your up to it. After walk on the beach I got my stuff together and planned on jumping on a bus heading to the border. The bus was delayed because of heavy rain had destroyed many roads. Instead a minivan took us, a punch of foreigners, to the border. On the way we saw a bus that couldn’t cross a part of the road that was washed away by the heavy rains. People were standing by the road and waiting for taxis. Too bad for them..

Border officer: “Where is your return ticket to Costa Rica?”
Me: “I’m not planning on coming back.”
Border officer: “Where are you going After Panama?”
Me: “None of your business!” ok actually I made up a lie: “I have a flight to Columbia” In reality I had no idea where I was going.
Border officer: “Hmmmm.. ok.”

You see technically you can’t enter Panama unless you have a flight or bus ticket to some other country.

- Exit stamp!
- Adios Costa Rica!
- I’ll miss your surf the rest you can keep for now!

On the other side of the border I made the mistake of taking ridiculously expensive minivan. I should know by now these cheaters… Then again I was in a hurry.

Next another bus to David. 4 hour bus ride started from the coast and climbed over the mountains. The forrest looked like thick jungle. At some point we reached the clouds and it started raining. My backpack got soaked on the roof, no biggie. As we reached the top of the mountain the driver started speeding down the road. I hoped the tires were in decent shape.

The landscape had changed entirely. Pine trees and dry looking vegetation surrounded to scenery. I was scratching my head, I guess the rain doesn’t reach that side of the mountain that easy. Further down the nice and fresh air soon changed back to humid rainforest and the sweating started again.

In David 30 minutes layover gave me just enough time to eat a hamburger without meat. The last leg of the trip was only seven hours. After watching the same movie without sound and subtitles from the farthest seat of the bus, twice(!) I made an important realization about myself and fell asleep feeling happy.

At this point I have to mention how shitty the leg space in busses is in Central America (excluding Mexico). All the vehicles are planned out for small people. You always have two options while sitting down. Window seat for nice ventilation or aisle seat for more leg space and as a joker let’s not forget about the standing up position. Of course that rule doesn’t apply to Guatemala and chicken busses in general. In those things you always want the window seat. That way you wont be surrounded by two fat women from both sides on a bench meant for 2 school children. Window seat = nice pressure from 2 women and the wall of the bus to keep you from sliding on the bench + nice ventilation. You have to choose the left or right side of the bus depending of the direction where you are heading and time of the day. It’s an art form and I don’t expect you to master it after these few short instructions.

Finally after 17 hours of traveling at 1.am the bus had arrived to it’s last stop. Taxi playing really loud reggeton music took me to my accommodation. The reception of the hostel had closed but they had the policy of letting people sleep on the sofas. How cool is that?! That would never happen in Finland!

So here I am at my final destination in Central America – Panama City! I didn’t know they had skyscrapers…

I have to say that after taking a quick morning walk around the Casco Viejo (the old town) I like the place. The surroundings make me want to take photos again… Then back to reality, just like many other places in Central America, this place is also suffering from water shortage. No water to take a shower after pretty sweaty trip. Don’t really care about that shower but I am worried about fresh water in general.

Only in Central America: From one major ocean to another in one day. Now what? My ass was still sore from sitting, I stunk like a big and had no idea where I was going. I love it! I just don’t think the swedish girl next to me on this sofa loves me. Man I stink!

Did you know that the Mayans, not even during the Postclassic period (from the 10th to the early 16th century), never even knew about the our great invention called the wheeled vehicle? They knew how all the round planets and stars moved in the sky but ‘wheeled vehicle’ just wasn’t part of their life.

The signs were there, at least so I said to myself. I was running out of wax for my board, my muscles had grown few millimeters, I had lost some weight from my belly, and finally I broke my board while hitting my friends board with it. The sum of all this made me think it’s time to move on. I think I was surfing here in Playa Carmen for 2 weeks or so. I’m not sure since I wasn’t really counting.

The good thing about breaking my board is that it does give me a perfect excuse to continue my travels (even I have difficulties believing that phrase). This whole surfing thing was just too much fun and at the same time I know that at some point I would definitely break something in my body (the lame logic continues). So far my surfing accidents have been minor: small cuts, bruises, moments of breathlessness and general physical fatigue.

Most irritating issue during the last weeks by the beach was by far a Finnish Cosmopolitan magazine. I tried reading it couple of times and severe irritation and anxiety hit me every time after few minutes of reading. Really, who reads that stuff? If in my next life I decide to become a millionaire I’m going to start publishing men’s and women’s magazines and telling them how to live their lives and how to please the opposite sex.

If you like surfing and you have your 2 weeks winter vacation and don’t want any extra hazle and culture shocks, you should probably come to Costa Rica. It’s the easiest country to travel and you don’t have to speak spanish at all (which sucks). Luckily I did meet a really nice person from israel in the hostel to whom I could speak spanish. She didn’t have the “school” accent that almost every single European and American traveler usually has. Sometimes it feels like a job to talk spanish with “those” people. Sorry.

I probably took my surfing project a bit seriously since I hardly saw anything except the beach and the hostel. Then again, now I feel like my (brain)batteries are charged and I’m ready for new challenges (Don’t believe that phrase either).

One thing is for sure. I’m going to miss surfing.

Little bit about the surf spot at Playa Carmen:
The place is chilled. ATV’s and pick-ups roam the narrow beach road. There are no high buildings and the place is surrounded by green. It all feels natural. The ferry you have to take to get to the peninsula slows down the development just enough so the place will hopefully stay easy going for some years to come.

At least at this time of the year there are waves all the time. One of the reasons why it’s a great place to come for your holidays. You don’t have to worry about tides here since the waves work all the time. This place has lefts and rights. Somedays it gets big and it takes 5-15 minutes to paddle out and somedays when the sea is calm you get there in few minutes. My personal enemy number one was the sun. I could only surf early in the morning and late in the evening. It can get crowded but only for an hour or so around 8 a.m and 5 p.m.

San Jose
Now I’m in San Jose for couple of days. It was suppose to be a one night layover but I found a camera cleaning service so I have to wait a day to get it back. Next stop is probably Panama. I’m sure Costa Rica is an amazing country but I’m trying to convince myself to believe that this country has nothing new to offer after all the other Central American countries. Besides you spend double the amount of money here compared to for example Nicaragua which has half the amount of tourism.

San Jose didn’t impress me that much after 2 hours of walking. Active city with people selling lots of things on the streets but hardly the kind of metropolitan like Guadalajara in Mexico. For window shopper like me the stores are full of exported stuff from US and on every second corner you can find a McDonaldDucks.

Next
If you know anything worth checking out in Panama before Panama City, please let me know. I’m tired of reading other peoples guide books and traveling on the Gringo-path.

Disclaimer of the day
I apologise for putting the photos always as a one group. It’s just too much clicking if I was to put all the photos to their proper places. I think I spend enough time infront of this fake world as it is. Besides there is always an other story within the photos if you look carefully.

I think I left Nicaragua behind about a week ago. A river boat took us to the border. From there I got a bus to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. Stayed there for one night in a hostel that was expensive and shit. The next morning I took a bus to Jacó which was suppose to be nice place to surf. It turned out that the city was ugly and from what I understood quite restless. The surf sucked as well since the hight tide and the only ridable wave was at noon. After burning my face there for two days I left the place behind.

In Jacó I did meat this interesting american hostel owner who had pretty tragic past. He used to be rich and had moved to Costa Rica to spend his retirement days in a warm place. Let’s just say that things didn’t really work out with his business, health, family or anything else for that matter. His hostel made no money what so ever and now he was about to loose his only reliable worker. The next step he said was to close down the hostel. Turn the living room next to the road into a punch of showers and rent them to people who come to the beach on weekends. He was also planning on renting the rooms for prostitutes during the night. Prostitution apparently is legal in Costa Rica and it would be easy money to rent the rooms for the women and their customers. Both of the new ideas were suppose to make more money than money saving backpackers, and I believed him.

Other story I bumped into was Costa Rica’s only school for prostitutes. It’s located in Jacó. Apparently the aim of the school is to teach women how to please men properly. All the sexual positions etc. and how to make it all work fast since the prostitutes usually have up to 5 customers per night.

Boy on the ferry

Those stories didn’t make me want to stay in Jacó so I took a bus heading to Puntas Arenas. From there I hopped on a ferry across the gulf of Nicoya. After 8 hours of traveling I arrived to Santa Teresa which is a pretty nice location to throw your brains out of the window and just enjoy the surf and relax in a hammock.

4 hours of surfing every day is a nice way to spend time and figure out what to do next. Probably in 2-30 days I’ll head south and towards the border of Panama. I’m sure Costa Rica is a nice country but from what I’ve heard it’s got all the same things that the rest of Central America has except everything is more expensive. I just can’t be bothered. Apparently if you want to see volcanoes here, you can just take a buss and it’ll drop you of at the crater. That is tourism right there, or something else, I don’t know.

I think I’m too restless to be able to enjoy a great surf and relaxing atmosphere. It’s a bit boring to just eat, surf and sleep. Most of the people come here to escape their everyday life. For me this is my everyday life, for now. I think I like diving more.

I have to mention one more thing. This hostel where I’m staying is probably the best hostel of this trip. It’s got big kitchen, electricity plugs everywhere, hammock, fully booked all the time, good solid beds, store right next to it, beach right next to it and all the guests are really laid back. These people don’t even steal my food from the fridge, not all the time at least. I love this place. The only thing I don’t like is the pillow and the little expensive price. If you someday decide to find a hostel I suggest you hire me as your consultant. By now I pretty well know what is a good hostel made of, just like the travelers that build up this place.

Needles to say, I haven’t really taken photos while surfing. These things don’t go hand in hand (surf board & camera) and still I carry both of them with me. One in my left and one in my right hand.

I forgot to mention on this blog that maybe a month ago I put some new photos from Guatemala to my photo gallery. You might have seen them but if not click here to get to the gallery page.

For now I’m going to continue surfing and not taking photos because of overlapping schedules (morning&evening). The desire to “shoot” around will eventually win but for now I feel happy just surfing around the ocean. It can’t be all work you know.

So some of you might remember my really well figured out plan to take a river boat to the Caribbean coast. Well plans change. On the way I got to know briefly the island of Ometepe. While leaving from the island I met two Finns and an Austrian. After that plans changed. We ended up to the islands of Solentiname where we stayed for 3 days. It’s hard to come any closer to early-August-Finnish-summer-night in Central America. Beautiful islands in the middle of the lake. Fresh water to swim in, Finns around you and few beers. The biggest difference to Finland was that we don’t have bull sharks in our lakes.

If Ometepe with two volcanos was nice Solentiname was great. I bumped into a big group of old Finnish people who were traveling together. I panicked and tried telling all of them “hola!” (”Hi!” in spanish) but I think they knew where I was from. After dozen of spanish greetings one man said “Terve!” (”hello!”) so confidently that I knew my cover had been compromised. I ran back to our lodge as fast as I could hoping the old folks wouldn’t follow.

After doing pretty much nothing for some days in Solentiname, which was great, we returned to civilization and started heading down river. At this point our Finnish girl left to Costa Rica so it was just me (Que Chevara), Sandianista and Dr. Gonzo.

After a loooong boat ride we ended up to a river village. No names this time. There are some places I want to save just for me and this is one of them. If you really want to find out where I was it wont take a lot of detective work.

We saw monkeys, river, locals, river, jaguar prints, river, boats, a few travelers and river shrimps.

We also kind of got stuck to that place and never made it down the river. Plenty of reasons for that but the most important was that we didn’t feel like going down. It was time to change the country. On my second last day in Nicaragua I wanted to fullfil my long dream of eating ´gallo pinto´ for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The plate consists of fried rise and beans. It’s usually served with tiny salad, cheese, maybe a tortilla, eggs and hot sauce. After those three strikes I was out.

This adventure would have a lot more to write about but already knowing how people react to certain things, subjects, opinions and generalisations I find it a lot easier for everyone to just let the photos do the talking. Thank you so much M&M&P for the company during this lake/river trip, it was awesome! :P

It’s a bit long photo gallery but if you’re not in a hurry sit down and see what river and lake life in Nicaragua looks like.

You know who was free? The fish that got away. He only had a hook in his mouth as a reminder.