Surfing all day, fishing, frothing out, riding horses, eating amazing food, laughing with good friends until you’re so tired you just have a giddy silly smile on your face. It’s a great life! There’s yoga too, but we never seem to capture any footage of it! Gotta work on that…
An Amiga who joined us at a recent Southern Costa Rica Jungle Retreat took home the footage and edited it into this awesome video. We usually do the edits ourselves, so it is really cool to see the experience purely from the perspective of one our guests. Here’s what it looked like last week in Costa Rica!
At Surf With Amigas, we are always looking for constructive ways to engage with the communities where we host retreats. Whether it’s funding sea turtle conservation, donating school books to indigenous children, giving scholarships for higher education, or encouraging women to participate in sports by sponsoring a local ladies kickball team, we feel good about giving back wherever we are.
In this case, we have become friends with an amazingly inspiring woman named Hadas, who owns a vegetarian cafe and surf view cabanas as her day job, and offers art classes to kids and adults to feed her passion for art. She runs an open art studio called De Colores in Pavones, Costa Rica.
We are so happy to donate funds to support free art classes for local children to explore and express themselves through color, textures, and the allowance to get messy! Here are a few photos from a recent class.
By supporting us, you are supporting her, and thereby supporting them. Thank you!
For those ladies who already know how to paddle into and ride down the line, we offer several advanced coaching sessions per year.
On these retreats the focus is breaking down higher level skills via classroom sessions and awesome surf sessions with our super talented coaches. This particular week featured guest instructor – 2x world longboard champ Jen Smith and super stylish longboard cruiser Macy Sivage.
Carrie edited this little video with the clips from each retreat and it’s awesome to watch the progression. We can’t wait to see where she takes it from here!
“When I came on my first Surf With Amigas trip in November of 2017, it was my first time on a surfboard in almost a decade! I grew up on the water and surfed a bit as a teenager and in my early twenties, and was so excited to reconnect with the ocean and with this amazing sport.
Fourteen months and a few more Surf With Amigas trips later, it’s so fun to look at the progress I’ve made thanks to the video footage! I’ve gone from barely being able to stand up to learning how to cross step at the advanced long boarding retreat.
The coaches at each retreat are spectacular, each bringing different strengths and teaching styles; they really make the retreats such fantastic learning experiences, both in the water and out. I feel like I have so many more tools now to continue improving my surfing at home, and I always eagerly await my next Surf With Amigas adventure.”
Two time World Longboard Champ Jen Smith joined us on two retreats in early 2019 as a guest instructor. She inspired all the ladies with her super stylish nose riding and also technical surf knowledge. Here’s the highlight video from the week.
2XWorld Longboard Champ Jen Smith came down to Costa Rica to be head coach on a couple of advanced longboarding retreats. She leant her expertise and demonstrated immaculate style. Turns, glides, look backs and nose rides were going down every session. Here’s a quick little highlight from a morning session out front.
In late November we scored a late season swell with perfect conditions during one of our co-ed Surf With Amigas Surf Yoga Adventure Retreats. The guests got some amazing waves and that highlight video is coming soon. In the meantime, here is a compilation of some of the waves that our staff scored that week in between coaching the guests.
This week we also had Jackie’s fiance Hugh on the team. He was scoring super long nose rides. Jackie exhibited the utmost poise and grace. Michelle was demonstrating the shortboard shredding. Even Reesie, our yoga teacher rips, and with so much style!
Enjoy these drool-worthy waves.
A trio of girlfriends from San Diego joined us on our advanced shortboard retreat this year. One of them, Katarina – a badass mom of two who was charging into some bombs over shallow reef during the retreat – shared a quick summary of her experience.
It was awesome to go on a trip with your girlfriends and truly be able to surf at every opportunity. We got advice from every angle and I was able to progress further in one trip than all the rest of my surf travels combined. It was truly better than my expectations!
I have two kids and have to juggle my time in the water. Knowing I didn’t need to do the search for the right time, tide, location, my mind was free to just surf! I just needed to show up! How often do we get to do just that day in and day out?!
Continue reading “Advanced Shortboard Retreat Review by Katarina”
New Dates Added for Northern Costa Rica Retreats
Due to high demand, we just added new dates for our all-levels women’s Surf Yoga Retreats in Northern Costa Rica. This location has waves for everyone – from first timers to experienced surfers. We’ll walk from the resort to super fun beach break waves with awesome green waves for working on takeoffs to turns, and really fun whitewash waves on the inside for learning to stand up for the first time.
2019 Available dates :
FEB 23-MAR 2, MAY 25-JUN 1, JUN 1-8, NOV 2-9, NOV 23-30
Continue reading “New Dates Added for Northern Costa Rica Retreats”
