I’ve gone to Costa Rica on surf trips for years. We always did a lot of surfing and fishing, but typically stayed at the Los Suenos Resort outside of Jaco. It is a nice place, but is kind of like staying in the Ponte Vedra Club back home and you’re not ever part of the local community. With our Surf Fish Serve trips, we get a lot of time out in the local communities and that is what I often remember most. We usually have a small group of guys so we also get a lot of time together to talk about what’s going on in our lives. How often does that actually happen these days?
The service work we do in the communities is not intensive and it doesn’t have to be. We’ll take a few of our afternoons after surfing and fishing, then go out in the local community to help those in need. We have taken on all types of different projects, but I really enjoy getting closer to the local people and being more in touch with what’s going on in their lives. If we can help them, or just even talk or hang out with them, it’s different than they are used to because most foreigners don’t bother to stop or get involved. The locals are great people, super nice and hopefully the relationships we create are as important to them as they are to us.
We used to just go down there and give out a bunch of stuff, but it’s evolved to more of a focus on people and not projects. We started simple, but have recently helped with microloans and gotten more involved with the relationships in the community, which I have found to be a really cool part of what’s going on. The other cool thing about doing the microloans and some of these other longer term projects is that you really have to get in with the community because somebody local has got to stay on top of it down there when you are gone. You’re hopefully educating that person, that community and creating a potential career for them that could change their lives financially and that is great to be a part of that. The first year I went we were helping build this little house and literally I was looking at the Nicaraguan workers and they were laughing at us. We didn’t know what we were doing and so after a while, we just stood aside and they hammered it out in an hour. We were literally just there, but you know what, we were there and they noticed. It’s less about what we’re actually doing, even though I do enjoy that, but more about just being present and showing that we care. The funny thing is that it always ends up that I get more out of the interactions we have than they do. These experiences have also has helped me find things in my life that I’m really passionate about so I can continue to give back when I return home and that is what it is all about.