We left just after work on Friday and caught the bus to Puntarenas. We caught the ferry across to the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula and arrived at 10:00 pm. We managed to arrange a ride to Mal Pais from a bus on the ferry. The first hour was smooth paved road, but the last hour was a painful bumpy 10 km through potholes and soggy dirt roads. When we finally arrived in Mal Pais the rain was coming down very hard, it was midnight and we had no hotel. Rather than search for a place and get soaked we decided to sleep in the minivan that brought us. The night wasn't particularly comfortable but it was free and way better than being soaked outside.
We woke up at dawn and wandered down the beach toward Santa Teresa beach to the north. Eventually we arrived at a good surfing beach and Justin headed out to surf. I talked to some of the surfers hanging around and then fell asleep on the sand.
Later we walked back towards the road and ran across a really neat surf camp/hostel. It was only $8 a night and we had a big room with a bathroom and there was a well equipped communal kitchen as well as a TV room. The hostel itself was a big building with a large courtyard. It had a few shops, such as a convenience store and a t-shirt store, attached to the street side of the building. It also had an old softtop surfboard that I could take out and surf with for free. I went back out to the beach in the afternoon and fought the waves to go surfing. The swells were very high so it was challenging to get the big surfboard out into the water but once I caught a wave it was fast and fun. At first I kept stumbling into rocks and getting pulled sideways down the beach but I eventually discovered a nice rock-free area where I had some success surfing. That night we watched game 6 of the playoffs between Boston and Cleveland and the two Bostonians staying there were very pleased that Boston won.The next morning we went out surfing again and the waves were even more challenging. I had to return to the shore every 15 minutes to rest. Justin was out farther and was catching the big waves as they were breaking. They were as big waves as he had ever surfed and they were easy to catch so he had a blast. In order to get back to Bagaces we had to catch the four o'clock ferry and we were told that the bus would come at 2:20. We got there by 2:15 but no bus showed up. There was no way we were
going to catch the ferry with the next bus so we decided to stay another night. Before returning to the hostel we decided to take advantage of the extra day and rent a quad bike. We were slightly concerned about the security of the quad at the hostel, but we were allowed to park it inside the courtyard. All the roads in the area were in terrible conditions from the rain, but the quad had no trouble getting through, even when we had to cross streams. The first trip we took was south to the Cabo Blanco National Park, the first park in Costa Rica. The trail there went along the shore and sometimes it was only as wide as the quad with a steep drop on the side. The shore was rocky and the waves crashing on them was very impressive. Eventually the trail ended at a volunteer camp where there were people studying the wildlife inside the park and we learned that the access point to the park was on the other side and we were technically not supposed to be there. So we had to back track out of the park and we took another trail that led to Montezuma, another beach town. It was dark by the time we arrived in the next town of Cabuya so we decided to return to our hostel. Unfortunately the lights didn't work on the quad so we had to return the whole way with only the help of a flashlight headlamp. We arrived back at the hostel just in time for the headlights to start working. In the hostel we watched game 7 and the Bostonians were again very pleased when their team won the game and the series. Most of the people in the hostel were surfers and there were people from Uruguay, the States and Switzerland. Some people were living in the town and everybody was enjoying the big waves.
The next morning Justin went out to surf so I took the quad out by myself. I went north along the beach and it got more and more quiet and peaceful. I decided to stop at one isolated beach to take pictures and shut the quad off. I took some shots and sat on the beach for a while before returning to the machine. Unfortunately I had forgotten to shift to neutral when I turned it off and, just like the headlights the night before, it refused to shift the gears without the engine on. And I couldn't turn the engine on until it was in neutral. I was planning to make the long walk back to find help but I decided to wait a half hour and see if it suddenly came back to life like the headlights. I waited and was just about to give up when suddenly it came back to life and I managed to turn it on. I made sure that I always switched it to neutral when I turned it off after that. I continued north along the beach until I reached a river crossing the trail. Even though I could have crossed it, I decided to turn back because it was getting late. 
This time we managed to catch the bus to the ferry (even though it was stuck behind a dump truck that was mired in the mud for a half hour) and we made it back to Bagaces by 9:00.
