Whenever I tell certain people that I did an 11 day road-trip with my friends, across 2 borders, and in only a little over $500 total, they either look at me like I'm crazy, or ask what they have to do to come on the next one with me.
Travelling abroad, something so coveted and held in such high regard that there is entire workforce of people weaseling money out of non-experienced travelers by planning their trip for them, does not have to be expensive, nor does it have to come with months and months of anticipation and planning.
My name is Lila and I am 19 years old. I planned the itinerary of this surf trip conjunctively with my friend Jay - also 19 - in less than a month.
The trip consisted of Jay, my cousin Finley, and his surfer friend Trey and I leaving from my house in Panamá and driving up through Costa Rica and to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. I spent the four short weeks before we departed planning our loose itinerary, doing research on surf breaks and party towns, booking our hostel, and, along with Jay, heavily studying exactly what documents we would need to cross each border in his car. We called embassies, filled out forms, watched YouTube videos and scorned travel agents and tourism. "We're not tourists", we would frequently state, "we're travellers."
When we left my house on August 2nd at 6:30 am, Jay’s car full of our groceries, camping supplies and surfboards, we weren't sure of what to expect. Entering a country by land, and without parents, was a whole new experience for us. We didn't know if we would make it into Costa Rica, and what we would do if they denied us our trip even farther north to Nicaragua.
Thankfully, after a five hour drive and three hour border crossing, the last Costa Rican immigration officer stamped our passports and let us through the border.
On top of the world, blasting music and peeling off the main Costa Rican highway, we made our way to Pavones, Costa Rica, the location of the 2nd longest left-breaking wave in the world, a bucket-list destination for goofy-footers. We arrived in time for a 45 minute surf session before we had to pitch camp before it got too dark.
Our first night, we slept in hammocks and tents on a mini secluded beach we found. We all had wild dreams - likely due to the stress, excitement, and fact that the tide came up almost directly beneath us in the middle of the night, and the waves crashing on the shore kept waking us up.
I will spare every detail of the trip, but over the next couple days we made our way through Costa Rica, driving multiple hours each day and surfing the second we got to the new destination until the sun went down. We saw endless palm fields, and an incredible range of wildlife: marsupials, monkeys, parrots, sloths and huge 15 ft. crocodiles. The people were incredibly friendly, which is typical across Latin America, and there wasn't a moment we felt truly unsafe (except for maybe a run-in with an American expat who asked us for money and told us his bodyguard was in jail for 'cutting someone up', but even he called us his friends and left us alone after we said no).
We entered Nicaragua on Saturday, August 5th at 5pm, after four hours of border crossing and no meals since 7 in the morning in Jaco, Costa Rica - a rambunctious little party town we explored thoroughly the night before.
In San Juan del Sur, we traded our hammocks for hostel beds for four nights. We met Andreas and Jackson, our new Australian surfer friends at Sunday Funday (a famous hostel-organized party/pool crawl), who we drove with for two hours to get to Playa Colorados, a heavy, hollow wave north of San Juan. Jackson had the pleasure of watching us convince two different Nicaraguan cops not to seize Jay’s driver’s license for not having our insurance papers with us (they were locked away with our passports in the hostel), while Andreas slept peacefully in the bed of the car.
On August 9th we left Nicaragua, and headed south to CR again. We drove to Lago Arenal where we stumbled across an official campsite (which, until the next morning when we spoke to an older hiker, we thought we were illegally camping on), drank boxed wine and talked about how beautiful the world was and how happy and powerful we felt. The view as the sun went down was stunning, and we felt the most intense sense of accomplishment at having driven 949 kilometers and crossing into two foreign countries on our own.
The next day was eventful: Jay got stuck in a hole in La Fortuna as we tried to find an alternative way to get into a $15 waterfall. The experience was funny and makes for a good story, but left a bad taste in our mouths in regards to La Fortuna, a mountain-town that was equally as pretty as Nuevo Arenal, but more expensive and catered to tourism. Maybe the random Russian lady we met and bush-whacked with part of the way to the waterfall we never got to was right when she literally said “hell no” and turned back around on the non-existent trail.
We managed to get Jay out of the hole out using the hammock suspension systems that Finley and Trey ran back half a mile to the car to get, but we ditched the jungle immediately after that and fled back to the beach, and in summary, eventually back through the Panamanian border and home.
Our itinerary was as follows: HOME → Pavones, CR → Playa Dominical, CR→ Jaco/Playa Hermosa, CR → San Juan del Sur, Nica → Lago Arenal, CR → Quepos, CR → Boquete, PA → HOME
This trip was one of the most incredible and adventurous weeks and a half of my life. I have always loved travelling, but after this trip in particular, I feel a hunger for adventure that I have never felt so strongly before - one that inspired me to actually volunteer to plan the Surf Club at U-Mich's spring break to El Salvador, an idea I proposed that got me put on the executive board.
I think this is partly because I see how affordable and rewarding it can be if done correctly. My biggest piece of advice: EAT, BUY and THINK local. Almost across Latin America you can find restaurants with national dishes (chicken, beans, rice) for $5. Ditch the $50 tour and ask around for hikes or waterfalls, chances are that at most you will have to pay a miniscule entrance fee. Get your hands dirty, talk to the locals and fellow travelers, stay at the cheapest hostels, and most importantly: don't even think about using a travel agent. Half of the fun is in planning your trip yourself, and the other half is in not planning it - going with the flow, making your decisions on the spot, even if that means sleeping in your parked car in a dirt parking lot.
All of this to say that I made a painting. The art is obviously inspired by the trip, and the feelings, wisdom, and mentality that it gave me. Seeing the surf trip unfold before my eyes, with kind, funny and adventurous people who I really admire was the purest travel experience I have ever had.
I wanted to put on canvas the saturation and beauty of the jungle that lines the Central American coasts, and try to capture the feeling of being able to wake up under thick green foliage, to the sound of warm-water waves, and not be entirely sure of how my day was going to pan out. The feeling of looking back to the land after catching a challenging wave, far away from home, and seeing only green.
The painting actually took me a lot longer than I expected it would. Layering the trees and plants and leaves was actually very intricate, which is really representative of the jungle itself.
The couch represents the comfort and safety I found in my hammock, under rain, stars, or the sweaty morning sun. Every night except the first that I slept outside, I slept deeply. The setting of the jungle represents the wilderness, the uncertainty of the trip, and the question of whether or not we were prepared for it.. The painting represents the spectacular dichotomy between the two.
This is “La Selva” - oil on canvas paper, 2023.
She does it all folks