WanderingWhy…

A few years ago I read a book by Alan Weisbecker called “In Search of Captain Zero” I loved this story. Is it a bit embellished? Maybe, but I think most great storytelling is. If you haven’t read it you should click the link and buy it (or anything) to help get me some extra beer money.

In the story, the author gets a postcard from an old friend postmarked in Central America signed “Capitan Cero.” He sells his house out on Montauk Point in Long Island, NY (my homeland), buys a big pickup truck with a camper in the bed, and sets out with his dog and surfboard. He drives down from California all through Central America surfing and remembering past stories while creating new ones along the way. Crazy tales of surfing and drug smuggling mixed with some very interesting introspective thought.

Surfing along the coast he talks with other people who may have surfed with or seen his friend. Eventually the trail of clues leads to his old buddy but the scene is none to pleasant when he finds him.

Rather than hit you with a spoiler, at the end of the tale the author ends up in Pavones, Costa Rica where the story is penned. He speaks very highly of his new home where the world’s longest left break is loved by the surfers who live and visit there.

I had to check this place out. After four long bone-jarring molar-loosening hours on the bus we arrived in the pitch blackness. With no rooms left at the place we wanted to stay (there are no phones or internet to book ahead) we ended up in some run down little cabinas seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Needless to say Dawn was not happy about my latest obsessive quest and let me know. “I don’t even know why we are here—what do you want to do here?!” I didn’t have an answer. I figured we may be back on that nightmare bus ride 1^st thing in the morning since Dawn has some kind of incredible ability to sum up an entire town within 5 minutes of stepping off the bus. I slept on eggshells hoping the morning would reveal my reason for wanting to come to this place.

The good news was there was a yoga place to sooth the savage chic. In the morning we went back to the place we originally wanted to stay “Rancho Burico” and managed to secure a room for the remainder of our stay. “The Yoga Farm” was right up the road from our new digs so things started to improve (for me, in my wife’s graces).

We rented bikes and rode the entire length of the beach. The reasons for wanting to come here were revealed as we rode along. This is what Costa Rica should be and probably was at one time—a real slice of paradise. The quiet, desolate, palm lined beach is gorgeous and as we pedaled along the shady road it seemed impossible that it was the same one we were on the night before.

Weisbecker no longer lives in Pavones. I knew this before coming here but still expected to see some kind of mark left by him. Capitan Zero is on the shelf of almost any surf shop in the states but the author’s former home doesn’t reveal much about him. Looking for signs of an author is a dopey tourist thing to do I know, but my curiosity was getting the better of me.

I asked an old surfer who has lived there since 1989 about Alan and he said he knew of him and told me he no longer lived there. He said Alan’s former girlfriend is living in his old home. He then told me he never read “Captain Zero” and went back to telling me all about his high def tv and Direct TV… how lame when this is outside the front door:

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