I had never surfed before, I'd never even held a surf board. But I was good at skateboarding and great at snowboarding and figured that that predisposed me to being a good surfer, if not great. I wasn't prepared to be the train wreck I was while trying desprately to get ont that board! Damn is surfing hard!
Well I wasn't long in Costa Rica before I went and bought a board, I should have gained some knowledge on board styles before hand but I was naive, I ended up with a crotch rocket of a board, short, narrow and hard as hell to ride, I don't think that helped my plight at all but my friends sure thought it funny! Well I soon became addicted to trying to surf, I'd paddle out through these huge breakers, it'd take me ten minutes of intense physical excertion and countless moments of pure terror to finaly make it past the breakers. So there I'd sit, floating in the water with some friends talking laughing and enjoying the gorgeous view of the tropical water meeting the lush hilly jungle of Costa Rica. It was beautiful! After awhile I'd start to have my ego kick in, I'd catch it whispering things like "What, are you scared? Look, there are girls and little kids paddeling in, what are you waiting for? Wuss!" And so I'd pick one of the smaller sized waves, which by the way was still "overhead", that's surfer lingo for fuckin huge! and I'd paddle with all my strength, drop down the face of the wave and do a whole body twitch which is in some way supposed to result in me standing up on the board, well thats were things went wrong, the board would just disappear as the wave contorted itself and excepted me as a new part of it, entering me into a world of chaos and water. This is about the point were I'd curl into the fetal position and go, in my mind, to a happy place. I generally survived these episodes and even came away with a desire to try again. That was until I made the mistake of paddling into a wave with all my friends watching, they must have been proud of me I thought as I paddled becasue I could hear them yelling, so I paddled harder. When I again looked over my shoulder to see where the wave was I realized why they must have been yelling at me, this wave was a monster!! (read: double overhead!) Somehow in the short time I'd been paddling this wave must have swelled up to thrice it's previous size. Well what was I do to except try and ride it. Down the face I go, full body twitch thing and I'm actually up on the board! I did it! I'm surfing, or maybe not, I was up for a full 1/2 second before this wave collapsed on me. I can't even describe what went on for the next minute or so, it was like a rollor coaster ride mated with a ferris wheel that has just taken speed and snorted a line of coke, but it was seriously even more fucked up than that! I finally, after what seemed an eternity, feel things calming down and then air, oh glorious air, I grasp for breathe, open my eyes and uncurl myself. I'm now kneeling, head pounding, now I'm standing, shit I'm on the beach. So I stand up to assess the damage; Ok I've got all my limbs, they seem to work, I can breathe and see, so far so good. First damage found, minor nose bleed and cut lip, hmm I look down and find that my shorts are around my ankles, ok so I bend over to pull them up and this triggers an unfortunate urge to puke, luckly I get my shorts up before recycling my lunch.

Not a story but I just want to write a bit about my experiences hitching rides in this wonderful country.
I hitched rides every where I went for the first month and then I bought a car. My first ride lasted a week, I met Kate and Thomas through a message bored at a hostel. T & I bought the gas cause Kate owned the car. We visited many places and had a great time, it was a good introduction to traveling around that country, I had some people to make mistakes with and we all learned little secrets to traveling from one another. Then Kate and I went on a hike for a few days but I got sick after day one and bailed out on the third day and hitched into the nearest town with some crazy German ambulance driver who had a 90lbs! pack! From there I continued to hitch rides until I arrived on the south Island.
I had some great rides and some sketchy rides, here are two that I remember. The first happend one day while I was having horrible luck with rides, standing on the side of the road for over an hour as traffic filed by I was astounded that no one stopped. There was a momentary lull in traffic and then the next vehicle was an 18 wheeler traveling fast, well I thought there was know was no way it would stop but I stuck my thumb out anyway and sure enough he grinded to a halt. This turned out to be one of the best rides I've ever received! The man was a Maori married to a woman of British decent and both were extremely friendly people. As the man learned that I had no place to stay and neither of us knew wheter or not there was a hostel in the town I was headed to, he offered me a spare bed in his house. I helped him unload his haul and by the time we arrived at his house his wife had prepared me a nice hot steak dinner! After that we all sat around talking and when his wife was went to bed we got out some beers and stayed up late drinking and talking, it was really an interesting experience. When I awoke I was greeted with smiles and a nice hot breakfast. It was here that I first tasted MarMite and made the horrible mistake of loading it on to my toast as I would an american spread. My hosts sat by with a knowing little smile on their faces while I bit into this atrocity. It really is amazing that after my first tramatic experience with the stuff that I later became a huge fan and was never caught without it. I got a ride out to main road where it was likely I'd catch another ride shortly and I thanked my hosts and said goodbye doubting that I'd ever run into a more gracious host while hitchhiking.
The sketcy ride was my last ride on the North Island. I was about 1/2 hour drive away from the ferries peir and got a ride quite quickly. The man was originally from Samoa, an Island in the south Pacific and had many characteristics typical of S.P. Islanders, specifically he was a very large guy. He spoke some english although he was far from fluent and lacked many words neccasary to hold a smooth conversation. But we managed for a while, both learning the basics of each other. Then he began talking about the dangers of hitchhiking, I tried to tell him I believed the dangers to be overrated, a product of the media exploiting the few and unfortunate cases. But he continued on the subject mentioning a recent case of a murdered hitch hiker in the nearby vacinity. Then he began to explain that it would be very easy for him to bring me to a sand pit or an abandoned warehouse parking lot and then proceeded to tell me it would be easy for him to either rape or murder me, or both. I didn't like this conversation one bit, in fact I felt very nervous. Well I did my best to maintain composure and change the subject but he seemed quite adament to continue on the ease with which he could kill me. He said all this with a small smirk on his face and occasional quick glances my way. Eventually he changed the subject but the new content just spurred my uneasiness. He said he needed to make a quick detour to his sisters house and then he needed to swing by his place but afterwards would bring go out of his way in order to bring me all the way to the pier. Due to the previous conversation I was a bit nervous and figured this detour was only going to lead to a sand pit or empty warehouse parking lot where he would proceed to do things to me I was unwilling to accept. Well we stop by his sisters and I'm about to make a run for it but the chance never presents itself. Then we head towards his home and by now I have my knife in my hand just trying to maintain my composure and carry on a conversation still hoping for the best. He pulls into his driveway and a big smile crosses his face, I figure this could be the end but I just get a feeling from the guy that he is genuinly a nice person. So we go into his house and he is overjoyed to show me pictures of his family, he has a beautiful wife and an adorable littel girl! It turned out to be a great experience as we sat there going through photos and sipping some tea, both of us talking about our homes and listening to each other with true interest.
All my experiences hitching in that country were great and many of them ended in much more hospitality than anyone could have expected! Judging New Zealand on the quality of it's people alone would easily rank up there with any in the world!

The "trip" I'm on right now is much less of a trip than one would imagine.

I've been completely addicted to traveling ever since I got my drivers license and experienced the freedom being on the road provides. I'll never forget the feeling of being 17 and wandering down backroads and through the woods on the Olympic Peninsula looking for a place to spend the night while on the other side of the country. You see I live in Maine. And then two years later when I had just turned 19 I was living with a friend and partying my ass off, High school was over and I didn't go to college, and I was getting sick and tired of getting wicked drunk every night, so I upped and bought a ticket to New Zealand for 10 days later. I stopped in Hawaii and Fiji on my way but less than a month after deciding to get out of Maine I was on the other side of the world and in the Southern Hemisphere. Again I will always remember the feeling I had when I bought my car down there and for the first time in my life drove on the wrong side of the road (well I mean it's not
the right side, haha). But it was more than that, it was the independence I really enjoyed.

That trip ended three months later and I found myself at home preparing to head off to college. I loaded up my Jeep and drove out to Montana where I went to school for two years and had a great time but it just didn't work out for me, not at the time anyway.

Since then I've bounced around, here and there, been around the States, left the country three times, been out to Hawaii (basically another country) and now I'm leaving Maine with little plans just some big ideas! I'm driving down the East Coast, visiting friends and family on my way down. Problem is I don't have any money so I'm going to have to figure out some way to make it work, but in all my travels throughout this country I've found the people to be amazingly friendly and helpful and I don't think I'll have any problems making it work!