It’s not the first time I’ve been here, nor will it be the last. Nevertheless, my experience in Costa since landing has been drastically different this time around.
Thankfully, we started on a pretty good note landing, as the immigration line was much faster this time–though that may be due to a few less covid restrictions. Catching an uber out of the airport was a somewhat difficult experience, as I had no internet and the uber refused to come down right in front of the terminal (the taxi drivers have beef). Eventually I found the guy and had a very rudimentary conversation using the several words we knew of each others languages. No one was around when I got to Selina, so I took care of the most important order of business–coffee. I just walked around San Jose until I found some, and it was pretty damn good despite the language barrier. On the way back I got completely lost but its okay.
From then on, we jumped into the medical innovation boot camp. Admittedly, it started off pretty slow, but once some of the initial presentations were over it became a bit more interesting. We–which included Walsh, Jake, two Costa Rican students, and me–were tasked with building a portable TENS therapy device to relieve foot pain. While the process in between was definitely important, the most fun was had once we got to prototyping. Our design ended up being a shoe and sock package, in which the shoe contained all of the electronics and the sock simply contained the electrodes that shocked the foot. For our prototype, we picked up the drippiest–read cheapest–pair of shoes that we could find from the local market, and proceeded to barbarically dismantle them with a pair of scissors. It must have ended up looking alright, though, as we won the judges’ choice award. Still waiting for that prize announcement.
For the weekend, I lobbied the rest of the room to go to the beach, my obvious favorite place. We ended up in Jaco on Friday night, and made some great new friends in the events that followed. The hostel we stayed at was super cool, and so was the owner William, especially when he helped break me out of the bathroom that I became locked in.
The next morning I completely missed my alarm. Though late, I managed to drag myself over to the surf shop I rented from last year, and picked a fresh blade. It only cost like 10 dollars too. I love Costa. For breakfast, I picked up some fresh bananas, grabbed a coffee, and shared some brownies. There was a decent swell, though the tide in the morning was making most of the waves close out. I was hoping to go to Playa Hermosa, the next beach over with much better waves, but since we had to leave at 5 it was a little logistically difficult once I woke up so late.
I ended up getting a bit of a surf in, but once the tide started filling in and the waves got better, I started to not feel too great. It may have been something I ate, but I’m not totally sure what it was. Nonetheless, it was plenty of fun seeing the rest of the Jaco crew rip it up that afternoon, where it got up to probably around 8 feet. Also, honorable mention to Sarah, Alice, and Leticia, who were the center of attention during their surf session. Still a little bummed that I missed most of my surf time, but I’ll be back.