Four youths united by a passion for surf are making waves online with creative videos and images that promote the Costa Rican surf culture as well as creating awareness of environmental initiatives like the Costas Verdes reforestation program in Playa Hermosa and in Playa Guiones.
The co-founders of Gallo Pinto TV are “Tití” Enrique Uribe Herrera, Daniel Berrocal Ferris, Kevin Woodbridge and Juan Ignacio Bravo, who range in age from 22 to 27. Although they are based in San Jose, they can more often be found on the beaches of the Pacific Coast, like Playa Hermosa, Jaco and Guiones.
Uribe explained that the four had many ideas for promoting Costa Rica’s surf culture. They started off in March by making videos with their personal equipment, which includes photography equipment for in and out of the water, video equipment and a telephoto zoom lens. They use Final Cut Pro X to edit the videos and an online video platform to upload the videos to the internet.
Gradually they developed a channel, an Internet page (www.gallopintotv.com) and also a brand of clothing related to the surf lifestyle such as T-shirts and hats.
“We’d like to become a single platform in the country that many surfers can use to improve,” Uribe said.
Gallo Pinto TV was in Guiones for the national surf circuit tournament in May as well as to help with the BarriGuiones reforestation project. What they really like about Guiones, which they visit about once a month, is the combination of waves and the community focus on sustainable development and the environment, according to Uribe and Berrocal.
Uribe mentioned that Guiones surfer Christian Santamaria and Agua Tibia Surf School have been a big support of their work.
Gallo Pinto TV has published about 20 videos online with more than 25,000 plays. Currently they have about 1000 followers on Facebook (gptvCR) and 500 on Instagram (gallopinto_tv).
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