So this blog has nothing to do with surfing the web or being a lurker. No, it has to do with actual surfers. You know, the kind that shred waves, hang ten, and probably enjoy life a lot more than most of us — which alone is reason enough I think we can all learn something from them. But I digress…
The story goes something like this: A few years ago, I was going through a rough patch, I came across a cheap one-way ticket to Liberia, Costa Rica ($283 return — I know, eh!), so I decided to book it without knowing anything about the country or where I was gonna stay. I didn’t really care, either. I just needed to clear my head and escape winter for a week.
Of course, tickets that cheap come without strings attached, and the whole was kinda last minute, so I had to bust my ass to to make sure that all my clients had everything they needed before I dropped off the grid for a week. One of them even offered me a discount on any of their stupidly luxurious Costa Rican vacation rentals (disclosure: they’re still a client ), which was tempting, but clearing my head meant not only distancing myself from my clients but getting out of my comfort zone, so I opted for the whole backpacking and hostel thing instead.
I spent the first few days up in the mountains, bungee jumping and canyoning and getting extorted by corrupt cops (you know, what gringos do in Central American countries), and the next few days in a very Americanized, tourist-slash-surfer town called Tamarindo. Many hijinks ensued in both locations, but that’s not the point of my story.
No, the point of the story is what I learned from the surfers in Tamarindo. Some of them were locals (i.e. Ticos), and some of them were ex-pat beachbums, but what I learned from them had nothing to do with either surfing or cultural experiences.
What I learned from the surfers in Tamarindo had to do with patience, context, and how to play to your strengths. You know, your competitive advantage.
You see, Tamarindo is a place flooded with Western (or “Northern”) tourists from around the world. They’re taking a time-out from life, maybe have just finished school, and living on a shoestring budget or  off of their parents’ dime. I was not one of these. I was in my early-30s, was running my own business, and was not at all worried about my daily-expenses-abroad (especially at Costa Rican prices).
Sounds like a pretty good position to be in, right? Well, it wasn’t. Not that it was bad. It’s just that none of that did anything for me. And do you know why?
Because (apparently) context matters (a lot). You see, the first night I went out to a bar in Tamarindo, I noticed something. While myself (and all other kinds of tourists) were chumming it up at the bar and chatting up the (other) tourists girls, the surfers were just hanging back. My guess is that they did this for two reasons: (1) they were probably too broke to be buying drinks for strangers, and (2) they knew something that the rest of us didn’t know.
And you know what they knew that we didn’t? They knew that in some cases, it doesn’t matter how interesting you are or how much money you’re throwing around. Sometimes, all that matters is who you are and the context in which you operating.
For the surfer of Tamarindo, this is what that meant: they were surfers in a surfer-town where tourists flocked to for the surfer-town experience, and that includes the tourist girls who me and my new acquaintances were chatting up.
So what happened was that the surfers all lurked around the edges of the bar waiting for the girls to get bored of talking to other tourists (and drunk enough that they no longer cared about the free drinks they were being offered), and then they’d stepped in with their tans and tattoos and pura vida attitude, and kinda just sweep them off their feet.
A few of the younger bucks would get frustrated with this happening night after night, but I clued in as to what was up right off the bat, and learned to just accept it. Every other night I went out in Tamarindo after that, I put my energy into doing things other than chasing tail, and enjoying those other experiences — such as being in the company of so many strangers I thought I’d stay in touch with but can now can’t even remember the names of.
More importantly, though, I learned to embrace who I am just a little more, play to my strengths when they apply, and just enjoy the ride when they don’t. And you know why? Because as cliched as it sounds, you only live once, and there’s no point trying to climb tree when you’re a goddamn fish.
You had me at escape! Thanks for sharing – more stories like this need to be told, especially by guys.
mp/m
Lulz, I knew this would come off as a “guy story,” but there’s also a much greater point to it ;)