Photos and Video from Canoeing in Costa Rica!

[Dooleyoc-1]

We had a great trip last week to Costa Rica. Many thanks to Jim Coffey and Esprit. We got live the Pura Vida down there!

We had 80 degree weather and great water all week (there was rain from the week before and there are a large variety of dam controlled runs). I was blown away by the quality of whitewater there. We paddled 4 rivers in 3 days (our trip was cut short due to an injury; more in the blog post). There were everything from waterfall runs, to Smokies style boulder garden creeks, to cheoah type runs and even a Costa Rican Jungle version of the Gauley going through the rain forest. Costa Rica is definitely a world class paddling destination.

If you're ever thinking about doing a paddling trip in Central or South America you need to talk to Jim Coffey and Esprit. I've gone on amazing trips with Jim in Mexico and Costa Rica and he may even have another country in mind for next year (it will be awesome if he sets it up for 2013...) Regardless of where you go Esprit takes care of all of the logistics, shuttles, meals and they have a fleet of L'Edges, spanish flies, taureaus and preludes. It would be a tough call on which rivers I like better between Mexico and Costa Rica. There are amazing runs in both countries (but you can drink the tap water in Costa Rica! haha)

I would strongly recommend anyone taking a trip to paddle with Esprit in Costa Rica. It was 80 degrees and sunny in January, we saw tucans and howler monkeys and we were running waterfalls in the rain forest... Canoeing doesn't get much better than that!


Here is the blog post with photos and video footage. Enjoy!

Dooley

http://canoemovie.amongstit.com/?p=358" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[FullGnarlzOC]

Nice Dooley - Sorry to hear about Matt - that's a bummer.


Glad you guys got some good stuff in. Can't wait to see the movie! Ohhhh boyy

[Dooleyoc-1]

Pozo Azul was one of the best rivers I've ever paddled. It had a 20' waterfall at the put in, another 20' waterfall half way down and then the 30' falls towards the end. It was also really pretty (jungle setting with blue water) and it had a couple of great boulder garden rapids.

We were really lucky to catch it since it's a rain fed run.

The rest of the runs were dam control and felt pretty stout. There were some nice medium and high volume dam control runs in Costa Rica. Also, we barely got to scratch the surface since it was a short trip. There are a lot of other awesome looking rivers in Costa Rica.

On the way back to San Jose we drove by the La Paz Waterfall Gardens which had some really interesting looking waterfalls...

[Bob Wiggins]

a couple of the drops in la paz looked semi-runnable with enough water when i was there. there are about 8 in there, 3 were runnable, 2 questionable, and the rest, well.... just plain ugly.