Meet The Costa Rican Surfers Demanding Respect From Gringos

In effort to protect the labor market for Costa Rican surf instructors against ongoing processes of surf town gentrification, the Surfistas Locales chat group is known to share information on foreign-owned surf camps and tourism providers that hire non-local instructors and workers. They’ve even lobbied the Costa Rican government to intervene specifically in known instances of instructors working on tourist visas without proper work permits.

Similarly, affiliated surf instructors’ associations in towns like Santa Teresa have implemented informal regulatory frameworks for surf lessons, including student-to-instructor ratios, price floors to keep earnings competitive, and no exceptions for non-local instructors.

“They came up and asked me if she was Costa Rican,” first-generation national surf legend Andrea Diaz relays poolside at El Chante Surf House, where she and her longboard champion daughter, Lia, are staying for the week while coaching visiting clients. 

“Yes, of course my daughter’s tica. They obviously didn’t know anything about Costa Rica’s surfing elite,” Andrea laughs behind her rose-colored sunglasses. “Then they relaxed. It’s good though, how they do it here. There should be that kind of regulation, because people don’t understand that surfers’ lives are often at risk. I explain to my clients that there’s so much localism and regulation here because a local surfer was killed a few years ago when a beginner’s board hit him, and he drowned. Localism is necessary, it should be respected, and it needs to be enforced.”

Andrea and Lia’s lives and livelihoods have always revolved around surfing. Now they work together as a mother-daughter coaching duo and host surf retreats throughout Costa Rica. 

“As a single mom of three with twenty-five years’ experience as a surf instructor, I’m proud to support my family and put food on the table thanks to surfing. We need validation from the government as an industry that brings fresh currency into the country. We need support for people like us who pay our taxes and generate jobs both directly and indirectly with our work. We need better regulation because of the heavy competition we face from foreigners.” 

Surfistas Locales’ co-founder Cato Rodriguez opines that this type of “localism is good because we have to defend our country, defend what’s ours. Everyone is welcome here, as long as they come with respect.” That respect also includes behaving in ways that support the local surf industry. 

“Some people come here with a lot of respect and hire local people like me as their surf guides, for surf lessons, or for coaching at different surf spots. That benefits us a lot, and they’re good for the community. Then others come with zero respect, they bring their equipment from their countries, they act like they want to own the place, they don’t want to let others surf. Obviously, that doesn’t benefit us, so we as locals speak up and remind them of the rules of the game. They have to respect the rules or go somewhere else.”

Cato Rodriguez

Of course, locals recognize that surf tourism is a double-edged machete, since it brings jobs and income for local communities, and that it’s important to strike a balance between localism and maintaining pura vida vibes in the water. Speaking of machetes, as local lore has it, southern Costa Rica’s pointbreaks are home to more aggressive styles of localism, especially in the early days when locals would paddle out with machetes between their teeth and tie them to floating buoys just past the break. You know, just in case.

Surf guide and Osa Peninsula naturalist Maykol Espinoza isn’t naming names, but he does give a nod to the “old school” surfers for setting the tone for respect at his local spot. 

“Those guys were the example of heavy localism. That helped keep the place how it is now, nice and calm.”

Maykol and his pro surfer protégé, Tosh Talbot, sit across from us on a pair of tree stumps as the tide and crowd fill in for the sunset Surf Show (spoiler alert: Tosh wins, easy). After a little siesta and before getting his sun-bleached curls wet for the win, Tosh shares his two cents on the issue of foreign surf camps and non-native surf instructors. 

“It’s important when surf camps come, that they help the locals, too. They often come and bring their own surf instructors from their countries. But this is our home. They’re invading our home and taking our work. The businesses and surf camps that come here should also help us out - I mean they’re coming to our home.”

Tosh Talbot

Maykol ties a fistful of shoulder-length dreads into a knot behind his head and gives his signature howler monkey call, as a sunburnt crew of clueless tourists pass in front of the camera. 

“Let’s see if they get it.” (They don’t.)

“That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Say hello. Be friendly. Be respectful. Locals are defined by our place, our beach, our culture, where we were born, where we learned to surf. People who have lived in Costa Rica for maybe a couple years start thinking they’re locals and they want to be working the jobs of Costa Ricans that we’ve personally educated ourselves for. We’ve completed the respective courses we need to be working legally. But there are people now who have it easy because they have the resources to start a surf school, a surf camp, and they’re basically foreigners who come, make their dough and leave, and don’t contribute anything to the community. We’re a country that lives off tourism, and there are many locals like me who need tourism to survive.”

As the sun drops behind the forest and day fades to dusk, surf school owners Aaron García and Oldemar Fernandez, and surf instructor/photographer Walter Vega share the makeshift bench at the surf check spot adjacent to their home break and place bets on what separates a true local from everyone else.

Oldemar starts the bidding with, “You have to spend a few seasons here in the jungle when there aren’t any waves.”

“You have to swallow some rain,” Aaron calls. 

Oldemar raises: “You have to work, and you have to be here when there’s no work. You can’t skip out on rainy season when there’s no work and no money, when all of us are eating rice and beans, scraping the pot, and saving every last penny, and then come back and tell us you’re a local. No, papi, you are not a local. You are a guest.”

“Exactly,” Walter’s all-in. “Locals are the ones who are here for the hardship, when it’s difficult. Not the ones who leave when it gets hard and come back expecting that we give them priority. No way.” While the monopoly on distinguishing a true local from the impostors might be up for negotiation, respecting locals in Costa Rica is not.

And as Surfistas Locales creates a nation-wide space of leverage for surfers to confront labor market competition resulting from coastal gentrification in the country’s most visited surf towns, localism has become a vital strategy for collective resistance and, ultimately, survival.

Santa Teresa surf instructor David Stellar Castro gives it to us straight: “If we don’t organize, we won’t be able to live here anymore.” Yes, the stakes are that high.