Guest Experience Stories: November & December – Sun, Surf, and Banana Pancakes

As the Bodhi Surf + Yoga Guest Experience Manager (it’s me, George!), one thing that I take very seriously is how our guests feel after their time with us. How did we make them feel? Did their time with us leave them feeling any type of way? Do they feel different after their trip?

These are all important questions that we ask ourselves here, and base our entire service and ‘guest experience management’ around. Fortunately for us, we’ve found that our guests do end up sharing with us that they feel ‘different’ after (or even during) their time here.

While we could write millions of blogs on why we’re the best surf camp for you, why Bahia Ballena is the best place to be, and how we’re the experts when it comes to sustainable group surf + yoga trips, we’ll be using this blog series to bring our GUESTS’ stories to life!

We’re starting this new series to allow you to get a feel for the real award winning Bodhi Surf + Yoga experience. All stories, photos, and reviews mentioned in this series are from and about guests that were here during the writing of these blogs. So these are REAL highs, lows, funny moments, and reflections.

For example… recently a couple of our groups shared that they discovered the key to happiness! Keep reading to learn what that key is, and to take a sneak peak into how our first two months of the season shaped out here through the eyes of our guests themselves.

Stories from the surf

We’ve been fortunate enough to start the season with – dare I say it… PERFECT surfing conditions!

This might be the first time in our history where we’ve had every single guest paddle out and catch blue-green waves for five weeks straight (and counting!). 

Most weeks we have a few guests paddle out. It’s all based on conditions and how quickly they’ve picked up the basics in the white water. But to have every guest paddle out – not just for one week, not two weeks, but FIVE! That is record breaking.

Yes, this is a great testament to our incredible surf instructors. But we must also give credit to Mother Ocean, for treating us to such sublime waves and conditions.

“This was our second time visiting, and we are so grateful for the experience. My wife, a beginner surfer, and I, a more experienced one, both received such personalized and effective instruction – we saw amazing improvements in just one week!” – Jason Muscavage, December 2025

A picture-perfect surfing location

We host our surf lessons at the Marino Ballena National Park here in Bahia Ballena, Osa, Costa Rica; which we believe is the best place in the world to not only learn to surf, but also to advance your skills for intermediate surfers.

It’s a wide, sandy beach break – meaning students have plenty of space to learn, fall and make mistakes, and develop their surfing in a calm and comforting environment.

Just take a look at those gorgeous photos above – taken by guests during the week 11/29/25.

We plan our surf lessons strategically, in order to avoid the ‘busiest’ times of the day, and we do our first couple lessons of the week during low tide, where there is considerably more beach to use for our lessons. Again – more space, more comfort, more learning.

And have we mentioned how incredibly beautiful the national park is? It’s where the jungle meets the ocean – literally. When the tide is up, there’s no more than 10ft of sand separating the two.

Standing in the ocean and taking a looking back to witness the luscious green mountains stretching down to meet the warm pacific waves is a truly spectacular sight.

“This was our second time back to Bodhi Surf + Yoga. We came back to refine our surfing skills. It’s such a great place to learn, because it’s not a busy surf spot and it’s a beach break.” – Nicky Williams, December 2025

Hospitality is the spirit of generosity

A huge highlight for us (staff and guests) over this past couple of months has been the theme of kindness.

Our guests often thank us at the end of their trip for our hospitality, kindness, and generosity. They explain that this is what truly made their trip. What they maybe don’t understand is that we’re grateful for the exact some thing from them!

Seeing our guests – a group of people who have never met before, treating each other with such kindness and gentleness, makes our jobs SO much easier. Our guests being hospitable to each other reminds us of how powerful just a small amount of kindness can be.

The photo above is from our group in the first week of December. They enjoyed a nice sunset dinner together on their last night here in Uvita. A family, a couple, a few solo travelers – people who have never met before, making genuine connections and enjoying each others company.

Some November and December examples of kindness…

Here are a few examples of some of the pure and genuine kindness that we saw over the last two months amongst our guests and staff:

Coffee is the key to our hearts

A big shoutout to Zack and Nicky for sharing with us some of the best coffee we’ve ever had! These guys, who were here in December for their second time with us, brought some coffee down with them from a cafe in San Jose called Cafeoteca – which happens to be one of the best 100 cafes in the entire world!

Needless to say, a big of this liquid gold is NOT cheap. But instead of hoarding it to themselves for the week (which would have been fair!), they made coffee for all of us – guests and staff, every afternoon before heading out to surf. This to them might have seemed small, but small acts of kindness like this go a long way.

Sausages for Dixie

The Crabtree family, who were also here for their second time participating in our Bodhi Family Surf Camp, took it upon themselves to buy some sausages for a very sweet, local street dog named Dixie.

Dixie gets looked after by all of us. She actually isn’t even technically a street dog. She has a home just down the road from us, but often wanders around here with her adorable demeanor making friends with anyone she encounters.

Luckily for her – she encountered the Crabtrees, who on Friday before departing left a packet of sausages in the fridge for us to feed her. Merry Christmas Dixie!

No shorts left behind!

After getting back from a 6:45am surf lesson, four-time return guest Corina mentioned that she had left a pair of shorts at the beach, and that she was going to walk back after breakfast to go and get them.

Lead surf instructor Dennis had overheard this, and immediately got in his car and drove back to the beach to check and see if her shorts were there. Before Corina had even taken her first sip of coffee, Dennis was back at Bodhi Surf + Yoga having gone to look for her shorts.

Unfortunately the shorts weren’t there, but it’s the thought that counts!

Gratitude through gifts

Hannah (the lovely smiley face in the photo below) took part in our Bodhi Sessions: 14 Day Surf + Yoga Camp. When guests are here for two weeks, we REALLY get to know each other and develop a friendship.

During her two weeks, Hannah had asked me where is the best place to buy authentic gifts for friends and family. I had pointed her to Artifice. She came back a few hours later with an awesome ceramic coffee mug. She showed it to me and, as a coffee connoisseur myself, I told her how much I loved it and how if it were me, I’d love to receive a gift like that from a friend coming back from vacation somewhere.

Being the kind and generous spirit that she is, Hannah went back out in the boiling sun and walked back to Artifice and bought me a ceramic mug, as thanks for my hospitality throughout her two weeks. That kind gesture truly made my month!

Gratitude is the key to happiness

On the topic of common themes throughout the past couple months – we’ve also been overwhelmingly grateful for gratitude itself!

In our gratitude circles at the end of the week, our guests have shared how grateful they are for many of the things that we take for granted on a daily basis. Hannah in the photo above, shared that during her two weeks with us she felt gratitude for things like health, our bodies, the ability to move, and the ability to travel.

These are things that we wake up in the morning and don’t even think about. We just get up and get on with our days. But how different would our lives be if we simply couldn’t get up and use our bodies? Our guests have shared how activities like surfing and yoga have inspired their realization of how incredible our bodies are and how grateful we should be our health.

This is exactly why we love ‘Bodhi Grad‘, and why we do it without fail every single week. It’s an opportunity to create the space to be grateful. We believe that this has powerful impacts on our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Gratitude turns what we have into enough.

Going from guests, to friends, to family

In just these first two months of the season, we’ve welcomed back 21 return guests! Just to put that into context, we’ve had 55 guests here so far this season – that’s almost 40% return guests!

Some of these return guests were back for the second trip with us, some for their third, and two families were here for their fourth time. We’re incredibly grateful for our return guests, for a number of reasons:

• Continued support: Your loyal patronage supports our business and our team, and allows us to continue to do what we love the most
• Trust: we don’t take your return visits lightly. You coming back shows us that you trust us to keep you safe, to support you, and to help you have a good ol’ time
• It’s fun! We LOVE having guests come back to visit us – it genuinely feels like having family and friends visiting

“We love Bodhi Surf + Yoga! This was our family’s 4th year going back. It’s really a magical place. They have taught my 7 year old and 4 year old and my husband and I to surf…  we brought our 2 year old too and the staff is super helpful awesome and accommodating” – Elizabeth B, December 2025

Why do people coming back?

Well, that’s a question that you’d have to ask our guests.

We believe that it’s because when they leave here they’re not guests. They’re family. And we don’t just say that – we genuinely consider our guests (especially those that come back!) as friends and family.

And we think that we become family to them, too.

Two-time Bodhi Family Surf Camp guest, Jennifer, left a lovely comment on our Bodhi Christmas Instagram post, which read:

“Merry Christmas! You’ve become our home away from home. We feel like family when we stay…”

We love comments like these. For one, they help us realize that our guests really do feel the family-like love that we have for them. And secondly, it just warms our hearts!

And now for the banana pancakes…

We had an amazing family come back in December for their second visit (in a year!) with us, and they had written us in advance and request that the kids’ ‘favorite breakfast ever’ be on the menu at some point during their Bodhi Family Surf Camp.

We remembered from their last visit that the fam absolutely adored our chef Luci’s banana pancakes. Like I said, you’re family – so you better believe that banana pancakes were hot and plentiful for them on Monday morning.

We believe that the essence of hospitality is a generosity of spirit from the heart – and that’s how we go about looking after our guests. Everything we do comes from the heart, and we do it with so much love and care that our guests can’t help but feel (or taste!) it.

The song above is completely unrelated to this segment, apart from the fact that it’s called Banana Pancakes. It’s by Jack Johnson – a Hawaiian musician who used to be a professional surfer. Jack is also an avid environmentalist, known to support environmental education and his touring efforts are known for their sustainability initiatives.

As I’m sitting here listening to the song while typing this, I realize that the song isn’t actually as unrelated as I thought it was. Jack’s line “We’ve got everything we need right here and everything we need is enough”, perfectly captures the sentiment of the above section – being grateful for what we have, and realizing that what we have is enough.

Staying active – in and out of the water

As if daily surfing and yoga in the November/December sun isn’t tiring enough, our guests have made sure to keep themselves busy during their free time these past couple months!

The Coconut Tour

What an experience. We are absolutely huge fans of the coconut tour here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga – every week we recommend guests do it. It’s one of the most unique agricultural tours you’re likely to come across anywhere in the world, let alone here in Bahia Ballena (photos above).

Davíd is a local cocotero, who has one hell of a story to tell. We always avise guests that half the fun of the tour is just hearing him talk. Aside from sharing fascinating stories about his life and living here in rural Costa Rica, Davíd teaches you everything there is to know about coconuts.

The experience is very hands-on, and also involves a solid amount of eating (all foods coconut based, of course). Our guests have all come back from this tour recently sharing that they’ve never met anyone so passionate about coconuts.

The Uvita Waterall

This might just be the best photo we’ve ever seen. That is Zack – two-time guest and now friend, taking a plunge off the top of the Uvita Waterfall.

We send our guests there each week as a part of the Bodhi Surf + Yoga package. It’s a beautiful place to relax, cool down in the cold refreshing water, and bask in the luscious sounds of the rainforest that Bahia Ballena, Costa Rica is so well known for.

The Uvita Waterfall is about a 10 minute drive from Bodhi Surf + Yoga, but being completely surrounded by primary and secondary rainforest – it feels like you’re at least a couple of hours deep into the jungle.

Here, guests can relax in some of the naturally-formed pools scattered along the river that the waterfall pours into. There’s a platform about 15ft above one of the pools that you can jump in to, or although we don’t tend to recommend it – you can be like Zack and slide down the waterfall itself.

Costa Canyoning Waterfall Repelling

While this is something I – George, am too scared to do, it sure looks like the Trimble family had a fun time repelling down Uvita’s waterfalls!

This awesome family opted for our Bodhi Sessions: 14 Day Surf + Yoga Camp (I.e. our two week program), which gave them the entire weekend to not only relax between weeks, but to get in a few other adventures, too.

Costa Canyoning have over 20 years of experience and promise a fun, safe, and adventurous waterfall repelling experience. The tour takes guests down six waterfalls, ranging from 21 to 80 ft!

Surfing to Save Coral Reefs

Our group from the last week of November paid a visit to Costa Rica’s one and only lab dedicated to the restoration and reproduction of coral reefs.

Costa Rica Coral Restoration (CRCR) is an incredible organization that we’ve been working with very closely for some time now. Our Traveler’s Philanthropy Program – whereby we give back on behalf of each of our guests in the form of a monetary donation, is set up to support CRCR.

James, one of our lead surf instructors, is the lab manager at CRCR and opens up the lab exclusively for our guests to visit. The visit includes a lab tour and an educational talk on the work that they are doing to save our coral reefs.

As surfers, coral reefs should be deeply important to us. They are essentially the lungs and the heartbeat of the ocean – a place that – surfer or not, we could not live without.

Amidst the world climate crisis, experts like David Attenborough have said that the key to saving our world is in saving the oceans. And what do you think the key to saving our oceans is?

Check out our informative blog on how to give back during your vacation.

Sunset season is here!

Would you take a look at that… sunset season has arrived. Our guests this past couple of months often ventured back down to the beach in the afternoons to take in some of the most breathtaking sunsets they’ve ever seen.

As we head even more into the dry season over the next couple of months, we’re expecting even more sunshine, small waves, and of course – sunsets like these.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is community-based tourism?

It is an approach to travel that empowers local communities to take the lead in tourism activities, ensuring that the economic and social benefits stay within the local area, like our home in Bahia Ballena, Osa, Costa Rica.

Why does Bodhi Surf + Yoga limit guest numbers?

We follow a “Small is Beautiful” philosophy with a maximum of 10 guests to ensure deep connection, high-quality instruction, and a minimal environmental footprint.

What is an Ocean Guardian?

An Ocean Guardian is a member of our community committed to environmental stewardship and “nudging the world in the right direction” through conscious living.

We can’t wait to share what January brings!

As the Guest Support Manager here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga, I hope that this first blog of our Guest Experience Stories has given you an insight into some of the fun that you can expect from a trip with us.

Aside from the fun, I hope that it has shed some light on to how transformational of an experience a vacation like this can be: for families, couples, friends, solo travelers – for everyone!

We’re stoked to be starting this series, allowing us to share REAL stories, experiences, and photos from guests that are here with us living these experiences in real time.

Keep your eye out at the end of January for the next of this series, where we’ll share with you everything that we got up to… or better yet – come and be part of the story!