A Typical Day: Bodhi Awaken the Inner Surfer

What does a typical day here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga look like? Well, that depends on which of our vacation packages you choose. 

We have a number of different options, each one carefully designed to offer you a unique and immersive travel and ocean experience:

• Bodhi Sessions Adult Surf + Yoga Camp
• Bodhi Family Surf Camp
• Bodhi Slide & Bodhi Awaken Bodysurf camps
• Bodhi Awaken the Inner Surfer

In this blog, we’ll be guiding you through what a typical day here looks like during the latter of these options – Bodhi Awaken the Inner Surfer – which is our SURF ONLY camp option.

7 Day Surf Camp

Week long, set-date, surf vacations that invite you to learn the art of surfing while learning about Mother Ocean, engaging with the community, and awakening the inner surfer.

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As you’ll see on our availability calendar, we run our packages from Saturday to Saturday. The first Saturday is the day you arrive into Costa Rica, with the following Saturday being the day that you fly back out.

We follow a weekly schedule here that’s intentionally designed to give you the perfect amount of activity, time for relaxation, and opportunities to go off on your own (or with your new friends!) and discover what our community has to offer.

A typical day here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga depends on the day of the week – each day is a little bit different. 

We invite you to keep reading along to this blog post to get a feel for what each day participating in our Bodhi Awaken the Inner Surfer package can be like!

An Experience Designed to Inspire Awakening

Before we get into the details of the daily schedule, we’d like to tell you a little bit about what the experience that we provide means to us – and what it’ll mean to you, too.

We intentionally craft all of our vacation packages to empower our guests to experience some form of awakening during their time here. This ‘awakening’ may be different for every single guest that we welcome here.

For many guests, this awakening and enlightenment is often a profound realization and urge to make changes in their daily lives that bring them closer to nature, to their purpose, and to themselves.

All we do here is harness the immense and beautiful power of nature, yoga, community, and human connection, to facilitate an experience that encourages our guests to live more purposeful lives.

Over the last thirteen-plus years, we’ve been able to create weeklong (and longer!) vacation packages that follow an intentionally designed schedule, allowing you to press that reset button and bring yourself back to center.

Each piece of the schedule plays its own role in telling the story of Bodhi Surf + Yoga and the experience that we want you to have. So without further adieu, we’re stoked to invite you to dive into this story with us!

Saturday – Welcome to Costa Rica!

Your flight to Costa Rica can arrive at any time on Saturday, as you don’t depart for Uvita until Sunday at 9 am.

You will have let us know in your participant information form what time your flight is due to land, and we’ll have taxis/shuttles coordinated for you to get you from the airport to the hotel that we have you staying in as part of your package.

Our go-to hotel is the Adventure Inn. This is where we have the majority of our guests stay on their arrival night.

We coordinate that for you, so no need to worry about it! If the Adventure Inn is full, we work with a number of other hotels nearby that are of the same quality and price range as the Adventure Inn.

When you exit the doors to the airport, you’ll see someone holding a sign with your name on it to take you to your hotel. Once you’re there, we recommend resting up, having a bite to eat, and chillaxing before the adventure REALLY gets going on Sunday!

Sunday – Travel to Bodhi Surf + Yoga

On Sunday morning, our driver Wali picks you up with the rest of the group at 9am and you start your journey down here to Bahia Ballena. The drive is about 4 and a half hours, with a bathroom/smoothie break included.

You arrive here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga at around 1:30pm, where you’re greeted by our head of Guest Support, George (me!) with some fresh cold coconuts to rehydrate you after your long journey.

George gives you a quick introductory talk before showing you into your rooms and giving you the “Bodhi Tour” – a walk-about of the property pointing out some points of interest, wildlife, and telling a bit about the history of Bodhi Surf + Yoga.

After this, guests have about an hour or so to grab some lunch nearby before heading off for the community tour at 3:30pm. This is one of our favorite and most important parts of the entire schedule!

It’s a great way of getting your bearings, learning about our community, and spotting some wildlife ahead of your week (or two weeks) with us here.

Sunday ends with the “Bodhi Welcome Dinner” – where George takes the group to dinner and we’re able to get to know each other better and ask any questions about the schedule, classes, meals, activities, etc.

Typical Schedule

• 1:30 pm – Arrival and welcome
• 2:00 pm – Bodhi Tour
• 2:30 pm – Lunch (not included)
• 3:30 pm – Community walking tour
• 6:00 pm – Welcome dinner

Bodhi Awaken the Inner Surfer – Day by Day

Now, we’ll walk you through what each day typically looks like down here with us doing our Bodhi Awaken the Inner Surfer package.

Monday

Welcome to Monday – your first full day with us at Bodhi Surf + Yoga!

As you’re doing our surf-only package, your day will start with your first surf lesson of the week. Bright and early at 7am, you’ll make your way down to the beach to start the day off the best way possible – in the ocean!

The Marino Ballena National Park is absolutely breathtaking at this time. You arrive there to the sounds of howler monkeys and scarlet macaws doing their daily ‘wake up call’.

The surf instructors use this first session to learn about everyone’s surf experience, goals for the week, fears, and expectations. This lesson is also usually a bit heavier on the theory side of things, whereby before getting into the water, guests learn about:

• The national park and its importance to our community
• The ocean
• Surfboard anatomy
• How to conduct a surf report

We also start the lesson off with some bodysurfing!

After arriving back at our lodge, you can make your way over to Area Alegria, where a delicious and nutritious breakfast will be waiting for you. Oh, and not to forget – coffee!

After recharging at breakfast, you’ll get ready to head back down to the national park for surf lesson number two, where you’ll practice a bit more what you learned during the first lesson.

Following the surf lesson, the group returns back here to the lodge and gets ready for a trip to the Uvita Waterfall – a great place to chill out nestled in the jungle.

We give the group about two hours there, which is plenty of time to go for a swim in the natural (and cold!) pool that the waterfall pours into, as well as to grab some lunch from the restaurant there.

Day one ends here, with guests having the opportunity to head out into our local community for dinner. Don’t worry – we send you all of our favorite places!

Typical Schedule

• 7:00 am – Surf lesson
• 9:00 am – Breakfast
• 10:15 am – Surf lesson
• 1:30 pm – Uvita Waterfall

Tuesday

Tuesday typically looks quite similar to Monday – whereby the day starts with a 7am surf lesson, followed by breakfast, and then your second surf lesson of the day.

You might feel a little achy this morning – that’s completely normal. Surfing engages muscles throughout our entire bodies that we don’t normally use, or even know we have!

In Tuesday’s surf lessons, we spend a bit more time in the water than on Monday. It’s crucially important to us that we set our students up with a strong foundation before rushing into the water.

Our whole ideology behind teaching you to surf is that you can leave us and continue your surfing journey anywhere you go, rather than having to start again every time.

What’s different about Tuesday is that we enjoy our first group lunch here together! Our chef Luci spoils us with a freshly made, typical Costa Rican dish that’s accommodating for all of the week’s dietary restrictions.

Lunch is also accompanied by a refreshing homemade fruit juice!

Typical Schedule

• 7:00 – Surf lesson
• 9:00 am – Breakfast
• 10:15 am – Surf lesson
• 1:00 pm – Lunch

Wednesday

Wednesday’s schedule is the least crowded of all the days, making it a great day to do a tour, get a massage, or just chill out and catch up on some relaxation. 

You will still have your two surf lessons, but for the rest of the day you’re free to do your own thing.

In terms of activities, some of our favorites that we always recommend to our guests are the coconut tour, a visit to Costa Rica’s one and only coral reef restoration lab, and walking our national park’s famous ‘Whale’s Tail”.

If a relaxing massage is more your cup of tea, we’ve got you covered. We work with a local massage company that comes here to conduct on-site massages up on our yoga platform.

They’re super easy to book – you just let a member of our team know when and for how long you’d like to have your massage and we’ll take care of it!

Speaking of relaxation, we have many spaces here on our property designed to allow you to kick back, relax, and recharge – all while feeling connected to nature.

Our newest addition to our lodge includes our meditation garden, which is now OPEN. Come and be amongst the first to enjoy this new natural and relaxing space!

You’re also ‘on your own’ again for lunch on Wednesday. Guests usually head to our local farmers market, where you can enjoy various exotic fruits, baked goods, typical lunches, and more!

Typical Schedule

• 7:00 am – Surf lesson
• 9:00 am – Breakfast
• 10:15 am – Surf lesson

Thursday

It’s at this point in the week that one of your surf lessons may be at a different time than the previous days, due to the changing of the tides throughout the week.

It’s likely that on this day you’ll start with your 7am lesson, and your second lesson of the day will be a ‘sunset session’, starting at 3:15pm and ending at sunset.

Again, this time between lessons can be used to squeeze in a last-minute tour, a massage, or to simply relax.

We also have our second on-site group lunch here on Thursday, where we’ll enjoy yet another delicious and nutritious typical meal over some good quality conversation.

Typical Schedule

• 7:00 am – Surf lesson
• 9:00 am – Breakfast
• 1:00 pm – Lunch
• 3:15 pm – Surf lesson

Friday

Your final day of Bodhi Awaken the Inner Surfer typically starts with a 7am surf lesson! 

We’ll then have our final group breakfast afterward, where George will make some final housekeeping announcements regarding:

• Departure
• Our Traveler’s Philanthropy donation
• Tipping at Bodhi Surf + Yoga
• Online reviews – check out our hundreds of 5-star reviews!

Following breakfast, you’ll enjoy your tenth and last surf lesson of the week.

The group will meet back here for lunch at 1pm, giving you a couple of hours to finish up some last-minute packing or souvenir shopping before the last activity on the schedule – Bodhi Grad. 

Bodhi Grad is a sort of play on words, meaning both grad-uation and also grad-itude (gratitude circle).

Here, we sit around the tables in Alegria one last time and share something that we’re grateful for. We think that by practicing gratitude, we’re putting positive energy out there into the universe that has positive impacts on our mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Once we finish up with Bodhi Grad, it’s time to say our goodbyes to our new friends from the week and wish them a happy and safe journey.

Typical Schedule

• 6:45 am – Surf lesson
• 9:30 am – Breakfast
• 10:15 am – Surf lesson
• 1:00 pm – Lunch
• 3:00 pm – Bodhi Grad
• 3:30 pm – Departure

Every Day Here is Special

We often get asked by guests: “You do the same thing every single week, don’t you get bored?”

Our answer is always “NO!”

Although the schedule for each week may be similar, every week is completely different for us… because of YOU!

Each week has its own identity. Each guest brings their own personality, which contributes to the overall identity of the week.We invite you to come on down here and be a special part of a special group of people!

To get more of an idea of what our daily life looks like here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga, feel free to follow our Instagram and Facebook pages.