Costa Rica had a bit of mystique attached to it. Firstly, it was where Dan had come about 10 years ago and the seed for this whole project had begun to grow. And in more recent memory, our first ill-fated run south made it all the more exciting to finally pass over the border (of course, considering all the people and places we saw as a result, was it hardly seems reasonable to call it "ill-fated").

While getting our papers processed at the border, we ran into a couple Canadian girls (Sara and Silke, above) and gave them a ride to the first city: Liberia. We really haven't taken on many hitchers straight from the roadside. With all the gear in the van, it was just a question of being cagey. All the same, I often wonder what stories and experiences we were missing as a result.


After spending the night in Liberia at a hostel, we said buena suerte to our fellow Canadians, and we drove south along the Nicoya Peninsula, on the west coast of Costa.

The highway was in relatively good condition, but it is set inland, and to make your way to the coast one needs to take a secondary road which 95 % of the time is unpaved dirt or clay. And it being the rainy season, this makes for some tricky driving.

Taking what we thought to be the direct route to our destination, Playa Santa Teresa, turned into a very confusing exercise. We kept running into dead ends where swollen rivers prevented us from continuing down the road. After spending 2 or 3 hours doing this and breaking the muffler on the van fording streams, we were given directions by a farmer which would surely get us to our destination. Only problem, was that the first part of this road was a 1km up a hill on a road of wet clay. To those of you unfamiliar with wet clay, it creates two problems: it is slick as ice and so the tires can't track very well, and it clumps and sticks to everything, especially tires.

The first run up the hill, Veronica just ran out of steam and then began to slide back down, and almost right into a deep trench carved by the torrential rain. We tried 2 more times, while a farmer and his young family looked on. It was not happening. Finally, we gave up and parked for the night on the roadside, agreeing that the next day we would backtrack and take what earlier that day had been dismissed as the "long way" on the map. Lesson: appearances can be deceiving!

Above, the van's rear wheels have swung out and momentum for the uphill climb has been halted for the final time.


Above, the next day a sign confirms that we are very close to our destination: the beaches of Mal Pais and Santa Teresa. We pass lush pastures for grazing as small cattle and horse ranches are common in this area.

Something else I would like to draw attention to in the photo above is the fence behind the sign. At first glance you might have just thought they were a row of stubby trees, but looking again you'll notice that there are thin lines of wire running between them. This is actually a phenomenon that we've seen at various times during the course of our trip south, but I keep forgetting to mention it to you all.

The combination of soil, sun, and moisture available mean that planting a fresh-cut branch is the same thing as growing a plant from a cutting. some of the posts we've seen are close to 40 or 50 years old. We've seen fences where the posts have been left untrimmed and so, are tall trees with barbed wire that has been absorbed into the living wood of the tree leaving them permanently entwined. There's something very beautiful about that - perhaps the understanding that the limits that humans try to impose are not ascribed to by nature.


Arriving on the beach we parked the van at the same hostel where Dan spent several weeks almost 10 years ago. It was off season, and the surf was choppy and pretty rough. Still, this is a surf community and people were out getting hammered by the waves.

Now, I'm not a surfer, but I appreciate the combination of courage, brute strength, endurance, and balance that are required surfers. Just getting out past where the waves begin to break is no mean feat.

So on the day that Dan rented the surf board and headed out into the waves I thought it was important that i get a snap shot of him. Above, Dan paddles his board out through the 2 meter swell. Dan is the little black dot centre frame, at the outer limit of the white wash.


Above, almost dusk, and the light reveals a multitude of greys in the sand, surf, and sky.



The tide has often been used as a metaphor for the changes that are inherent in this world. The traces of our existence, the marks we make on the sandy landscape are wiped away without a trace, leaving a blank canvas and an empty plane which can and will be filled again as the waters recede.

As the ocean draws its waters back, many of the little tidal puddles and pools give off sediment. This sediment can create some beautiful and unique patterns in the sand. The design that you see above came from a puddle under a large uprooted tree stump.



Costa Rica's fauna and flora are often touted to encourage tourism. A multitude of birds (especially humming birds), howler monkeys, and butterflies were our constant companions in the trees among which we had parked. Trees like the pochote tree, above. This tree will make you pay if you stumble into it in the dark! These vicious looking thorns are pretty much exactly what they look to be: seriously pointy and STRONG. Apparently these guys can also give off toxic fumes if burned.



After having been on the beach for a couple days, Dan and I loaded up with most of the cameras in our arsenal and set out for a long walk up the beach. We were going to find the rock face that 10 years earlier had struck Dan uncannily as the head of a sleeping dragon. Would it still be there?

Indeed, it was (above). In the time since his last visit, Dan found that the rock had come to stand completely alone. The sand, ocean, and elements had finally separated it from the main rock formation that it was once a part of. The sand had risen up around it too, making it look like the dragon was hunkered down in it's nest.

Thinking back on circling the dragon with our cameras, wading in the high tide that ebbed at it's base, brings me back to the element of this project that deals with the sacredness of space. There we were, completing a "pilgrimage" to a site that had become special to Dan because of a random association. Yes we were in an exotic local where the elements had created this sculpture over thousands of years, but was this place now "sacred"?

Well, maybe not sacred in terms of organized religion. But, if we think more along the lines of the spiritual energy of a place, then yes. I guess you could say that Dan and I had imbued this rock with a spirit of sacredness.

Yet, is this odd? Thinking of some random place as holy? No, quite the opposite, I feel. We give such significance to ordinary places and spaces in our lives all the time. The favourite coffee shop or bar, the secret lookout over our town, the tree of solace in the park are all examples of seemingly ordinary places that become a place of refuge, comfort, and inspiration to us as individuals. And though we think of such locations as "ours" it is unlikely we are alone in feeling so strongly about them.

Here by the face of the sleeping dragon, I feel I realized something very important. It is not only the established temples in our communities, nor simply the far away exotic locals (Mecca, the Himalayas, Machu Pichu, etc...) that are important to our spirits, even if we are religious. Truly, all of creation is sacred. We are blessed to be surrounded by it all the time and where we are privileged to feel such a quality manifest is where it is meaningful.


Above, the sun sets on our time in Santa Teresa.