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WATERSKI MagazineWe were 20 minutes into a rodeo boat ride on the Gulf of Nicoya, off Costa Rica's west coast, when Ramon Arizmendi shouted over the wailing engine.
“Oh, you are going to love it.”
It was the fourth time that the crew – driver Jaime Hernandez, photographer Tom King and I – had heard this proclamation from our ski-school host, and it sounded no less ridiculous than it did the first time. For one, the overmatched MB Sports Boss 190 had been bucking and raring since we left the quiet mainland. Second, Ramon's “love” rhymed with “clove,” therefore sounding dangerously close to “loathe.” But, this being our final full day on the country's Pacific side, Ramon promised to take us to a calm-water hideaway unlike any we'd ever skied. Apparently, he was determined to send us off with a bang.
“Tortuga is in-craid-ible,” Ramon repeated through a sideburn-to-sideburn smile. A Connelly Attack, a Concept, a Hyperlite wakeboard and a kneeboard rattled around the transom. “You have neh-ver seen water like it.”
Hernandez, a 27-year water ski driver whom Ramon lured to his ski school from Mexico's famed Tequesquitengo Lake didn't say a word. He couldn't. He was busy coaxing one of Costa Rica's three ski boats (all belonging to Ramon's Aqua Ski school) through a minefield of surf.
“Are you sure we can ski out here?” Tom asked, not so much concerned about getting in a wakeboard set as he was 1)
concerned about getting something on film, and 2) keeping his spine from being crushed.
“Tohm,” said Ramon, smiling and enunciating carefully, “you will not be disappointed.”
(The last time Ramon tried to be this convincing was four nights earlier when he drove us through the Avocado Mountains from the San Jose airport to the gulf town of Mata Limon in the Puntarenas district. A one-time Formula 3 racer in Mexico, Ramon refused to slow for hairpin turns, headlights in our eyes, people peregrinating in the road or impeding guard rails. Every five minutes he turned his head around to say, “Relahx.”)
After a half-hour on the gulf, there was no evidence that our mystic skiing expanse was any closer to reality. If Jaime had leaned any farther forward in the cockpit he would have been belly-flopped on the bow. But he squinted through a saltwater bath and kept the Boss 190 marching forward. Tortuga had to be out here somewhere.
Earlier in the week we had found another skiing stretch that was plenty unique. It was 15 minutes down the steep, pot-holed road from our quarters at the Dundee Ranch. When Ramon drove through the last stretch to show us Aqua Ski, scattering roosters and pregnant dogs along the way, we were at once curious and skeptical. Then we stepped out of his truck, shooed dust from our eyes and saw this curvy channel hugged between thickets of palm trees and a mountain base. On the flat salt water were the Boss, a Ski Ray, MasterCraft SportStar 19 and, in the near distance, a slalom course.
“I happened to see the Aqua Ski sign one day and didn't think it could be much,” Curt Davis told us later. Davis, who lives and skis in Auburn, California, is a musician on Princess Cruise Lines and stumbled onto Aqua Ski one day when his ship was in port. “Most places we see on the cruise just have combos and ocean skiing. This place came out of nowhere.”
To get a better look on that first day, Tom and I took an hour-long hike through head-high grass in 95-degree heat toward a perch a mile above the gulf and channel. From there we could see the water meandering through this uniquely textured Central American turf, and one of Ramon's ski boats dissecting the water. (Closer to our faces we saw a man wielding a machete outside his lonely ranchito – a tin roof held up with wood. Fortunately, this Tico had come out to protect our exposed ankles, which the snakes could have munched down to gristle.)
Later that same day, as guest Richard Powers, Tom and I lounged under an umbrella down by the dock after an open-water set, I asked Iris, a 20-year-old Aqua Ski employee from Holland, how she wound up in Costa Rica.
“I guess it was the lifestyle,” she said. “It's different than what I'm used to back home.”
“How?”
“Tranquilo,” she said.
“What's that?” I asked, even though the meaning was somewhat obvious.
Gesturing toward us, she said simply, “It's this.”
Richard, a transplant from California, expounded on the country's seduction. “It's so laid back here that … that you're practically dead. There's a phrase here, 'Pura Vida.' It means the good life, or doing well. If someone asks, 'How ya doin'?' you put a thumb in the air and say, 'Pura Vida.'
“Here's what I mean. A friend of ours was visiting from California awhile back. We were sitting in our back yard watching the sunset and this guy says, 'This must be paradise.' And my wife Ginger says, 'No, it's just Tuesday.'”
What moves Richard these days is Ramon's ski site. From his home in the fishing village of Garza (population: 50), he'll drive eight hours round trip to take a few swipes behind the ski boats.
“We see iguanas, monkeys, volcanoes, all kinds of exotic stuff every day,” says Richard, who used to ski on a gravel-pit lake in Colorado. “But the biggest shock for me was the day I found this ski site.” Then, he added, “I'm looking forward to seeing Tortuga. I've never been there.”
So here we were, three days later, bouncing across the gulf and wondering if we'd ever strike pay dirt, otherwise known as Tortuga. Richard, his two children and Iris were in a separate boat. As the sun pulled itself over the horizon, Richard had to be thinking the same thing as we were: Has anyone checked the oceanographic map lately?
Sitting on the engine box, I kept my chin down and eyes closed … until the engine stopped burping without warning and started humming. The bouncing subsided. I opened my eyes, looked up and noticed we were cruising between a cluster of islands. We might as well have been on the set for a Hawaiian Punch commercial.
“See?” beamed Ramon.
There in front of us was a gigantic pool of calm water. A school of tuna jumped on the port side of the bow. To the right was a chain of islands with unblemished black sand. The last link in the chain stood out as a mound of volcanic rock half-dressed in white sand and coconut palms. Tortuga.
“How do you say, 'Let's go skiing,' around here?” I asked.
“Vamos a esquiar,” said Richard.
I almost wanted to ease into the water without causing a disturbance. The series of islands kept this part of the gulf glassy if not mirror-flat. A couple pargo snapper glided through the 12-foot-deep emerald water, just above the sandy bottom that looked as close as the porcelain at the bottom of a bathtub. The place was Barbie-perfect for sending up walls of water.
Richard, who claimed to be out of shape, took a marathon set on the Attack. He wouldn't give up the handle until we asked.
“I feel pretty good,” he said, crediting the surroundings for his vigor. We all found how energizing it can be to carve so close to a deserted island that you can soak the sand. Even Richard's son, Chad, 9, slid though the pool on the kneeboard, and continued his longest set ever until Ramon whipped him through an unrequested double-up.
It was as if Mom and Dad had gone away for the weekend. We were so alone we could have skied with scissors and not been castigated.
“I told you,” Ramon said, retiring the slalom and slipping into the Hyperlite bindings.
“We trusted you,” I said, turning my head away.
At quitting time we tied up in the shallow surf and strolled onto the island prope
r. After everything we put the Boss through, it wouldn't have surprised me if the engine refused to obey the command of the ignition key when it was time to go back. Nor would it have bothered me.
Tourist boats would find us in about an hour, I thought, but for now Tortuga Island belonged to us. A hammock hung beneath a shady coconut palm, momentarily empty. Just when you thought an existence couldn't be any more tranquilo, someone reached into one of the resting boats and clicked on the radio. In the Navy blared across the beach. It was the first time I'd heard that song and didn't lunge for the tuning knob.
“You look content,” Richard said.
A thumb pointed upward. He knew what I was trying to say.
