OK technically this place is called San Juan Del Sur – but it is the surfing capital of Nicaragua and gets its Nica nickname from the most fun thing to do here.

Today I am completely exhausted from surfing from 10am – 3pm – my body feels like I’ve been through inside washing machine all day.  I can’t really complain because surfing is fun as shit (good).  It is a delicious mix of all the good “tion’s:” relaxation, exertion, competition, meditation, and visualization.  I’m pretty terrible at it, but today we were blessed with great conditions, a private beach, 4-6ft waves on average, and I had a nicely sized 9ft board. This led me to be able to ride 20-30 waves throughout the day and even get the handle on putting the rails into the side of the wave and surfing laterally instead of straight towards the beach.

You can see in the thumbnail image of this post where I dropped in from the lip of the wave and started turning.

I also gave myself a sponsorship deal from Billabong… unlikely.

Surfing is something that I will seek out for the rest of the trip and will be an factor in deciding where to live when we return. It would certainly be nice to blow off some steam after a work day on the ocean.

Brings me to another thing I’ve been wondering about: why is staring at a blank horizon of the ocean so mesmerizing and attention-holding for someone like myself who’s internal thoughts typically bounce around so readily. After doing some research – like many things – no one knows, but the hypothesis that I thought was most compelling was that our mind has to work very hard to classify whatever we see with our eyes. The ocean has only 1 line of contrast for your mind to evaluate, no faces or important edges, a very simple image. Almost as easy as having your eyes closed. Maybe the pleasure you get from looking out into the ocean at nothing is our brains telling us to take a break. Point taken.