Our first stop after Jeff and Nikki left was Santa Elena/Monteverde Costa Rica 4.5 hours north of San Jose. There is no doubt this mountain town is well worth the treacherous roads and overstuffed bus. Monteverde is where the cloud forest and zip lining exists. Santa Elena is the closest town which Donna and I fell in love with on our last trip.
We spent our 3 nights in Santa Elena at Hostel Cabinas. This hostel was very typical for Costa Rica. Incredibly sweet and friendly Tico owners run the hostel where $30 gets 2 people a fairly decent room and an amazing home cooked Costa Rican breakfast (bed bugs and smelly water included but who cares in paradise?). The town of Santa Elena is very small. Three streets form a triangle that you can walk around leisurely in less than 5 minutes. Ideal size for escaping to the mountains. The main part of town would be described as some-what touristy but still retains its local vibe with Sodas (local eateries) and plenty of empenada stands. When you step from the main triangle it's back to miles and miles of dirt roads, farmland, and the small and colorful homes of the Tico people.
(a tree about 75 ft high that you can climb inside all the way to the top to overlook Santa Elena's pueblo)
(just another 5star hotel)
(picnic on the mountain top)
(amazing street burritos)
This is a great town to explore the mountains and cloud forests. We packed picnics and climbed steep, difficult trails to overlook the pueblos. On our second morning in town we headed to the cloud forest to zipline and hike through the jungles . We've been waiting for this our whole trip. Monteverde is home to one of the longest and highest ziplines in Central America. We spent 3 hours soaring above the lush green canopy. The series of cables is so high that it was difficult to see anything happening on the jungle floor. On our last stretch of cable they let Adam and I go together so he could brake when needed and I could videotape. We're trying to figure out how to get that on the internet to share! We ended our excursion with a Tarzan Swing... a long free fall jump from a platform that turns into a swing when the rope catches near the ground sending you way into the tree tops. What an exhilarating feeling!
(look for Adam way out above the trees!)
After a few days between cloud forests and jungles (complete with an astonishing amount of Monteverde cheese and local coffee) it was back to the pacific coast. A long bus ride, nighttime ferry, and a 2 hour cab ride got us to Montezuma. Montezuma hugs the coastline in the southern most part of the Nicoya Peninsula. I was much looking forward to this leg of our journey as Donna and I had not made it over here 2 years ago. Arriving at 1:30 in the morning certainly does not illuminate the town's best qualities. After a quick exploration the next morning we decided to head north via bus to Mal Pais/Santa Teresa in hopes of a beach with less people.
When we head to the beach in the states there is often a common image we have of what the town will look like. Hotels and big rental houses sit right off the water with bars and restaurants weaved in. What we found in Mal Pais was a one lane dirt road (the main highway from here on out) with miles of spread out hostels and places to eat. On the beach side of the dusty road was a thick wall of jungle with beach access via thin paths. The beauty of this was quickly discovered. When you are on the beach, all you see is beach and miles of perfect beach. The thick palm trees and green canopy hides anything unnatural.
On the 11th the buzz in English and Spanish around town was the Tsunami and devastation in Japan. How dreadfully sad! Locals were initially worried because our location on the coast had us on a code green? but forecasters ended up saying it would not effect us so far south. Prayers are still going up for all those affected!
We spent our days on the beach amazed at how few people we were sharing it with. At sunset (as we have at every town with big waves) we sat in awe of the surfers who cut through the waters with such ease and grace...usually with a couple stray dogs who found us good company. We rented an ATV one day and cruised for hours and hours along the unbelievably dusty and uneven beach road/main highway. We laughed at each other every time we got off for the ridiculous amount of brown dust caked to our hair and skin. We spent the afternoon miles from the main town soaking in the tide pools without a sole in sight.
After a few days in Mal Pais it was time to head north. We decided to do this via rental car for a change of pace. We planned to hit 6 or 7 different towns for a night each to cover a lot of ground and get some driving time out of our new toy. That's until we found Playa San Miguel. We started out in our new 4x4 on Sunday the 13th. Having a car after 9 weeks of public bus was such a luxury and a welcome change. What fun to be able to stop at any beautiful beach that caught our eye and any restaurant that smelled enticing. We realized why they would only rent us a 4 wheel drive just a few minutes after take off. Just like we'd experienced cruising around on the 4 wheeler, the highway was a one lane dirt road. You would not believe what an uneven butchered patch of earth this was. We rented a GPS and every few minutes an alert would pop up saying "dangerous bridge", "dangerous river crossing", "only proceed with 4 wheel drive vehicle". It wasn't lying. It's only by God's grace that we didn't have to abandon the car in one of the first rivers. If I was driving, we surely would not have made it. The road ended at many points spitting us out onto the beach. We weren't complaining...it was so breath-taking I won't begin to try to describe it! We'd drive for miles in the sand and eventually pick up the dirt road again to hug the coastal "highway".
Playa San Miguel was not on our main map of Costa Rica but a blurb in my book claimed it was "one of the most beautiful and untouched beaches in all of Costa Rica". We thought we'd check it out and see if we could grab a room for the night. No buses run anywhere close to the beach so lucky for us most tourists don't know it exists. We learned on our way that there were two little hostels (nothing else) off the 3 mile beach. The first one appeared absolutely abandoned. The second one only had 3 rooms and they were full. Rossie, the Expat owner, explained he'd gladly put us up in his small, run down cottage on the beach if we could handle it's rustic features. As the beach was entirely deserted and even better than the blurb in the book...we asked to see it.
This cottage was our paradise for 4 incredible nights. Hands down this was our favorite place of the entire trip! Let me see if I can give you a bit of description. Walking into the "run down" cottage both Adam and I tried to keep our cool about how fabulous we thought it was. Its right on the ocean front and all you can see looking any direction is sand, water, and palm trees. This 2 bedroom bungalow had a kitchen, drinkable water (that didn't smell bad!), minimal bugs, and sat on a beach that should be on the cover of the next travel magazine (except that of course I want nobody but you fine folks to know about this gem!). Is the house run down? Absolutely. Did things run as they would in a well kept house? Definitely not. Did we find out after a mid-week fumigation that the house was filled with huge roaches? Yup. Did it bother us in the least? Nope. This place had so many features we'd dreamed about for 9 weeks: a kitchen, space to walk around, a yard to ourselves full of palm trees and mango trees, two terribly inviting hammocks, and the best location of any place I've ever stayed...right on the sand in what I will now call one of my favorite beaches in the world. Nobody was around and sitting on our front porch rocking chairs that first evening, we realized we hit the jackpot stumbling upon our run down cottage :)
There are so many things about Playa San Miguel that we fell in love with; we could walk for an hour along the water and not see a soul, sand dollars are scattered like sea shells along the tide line, it took us 1.5 hours round trip to get to a grocery store via car, if we had to leave our towel for a cold beverage from the house it took about 7 seconds, this cottage has the same wonderful smell of my grandparent's cabin in Maine,... and the list goes on!
Another favorite about this place is the food. The only place to eat is the little restaurant at the hotel that we are renting from. We had mostly been eating groceries from town except for breakfast which is included with the room. These breakfasts are unreal. They start us off with a thermos of piping hot, strong, rich Costa Rica coffee. From there we get set before us the most beautiful plate of fruit. Banana, watermelon, pineapple, and papaya sit artistically placed in the center of the edible masterpiece while strawberries and mangoes line the edges. mmmmmm! After that comes whatever it is we ordered (Typical-rice, beans, eggs, toast; French toast-french toast; Americano-yogurt, granola, milk, toast) ...and the list goes on. It was because of these breakfasts that we headed down the dirt road to eat there for dinner one night. My newest book is "Eat, Pray, Love". I laughed aloud the other day reading how a pizza the main character ate in Italy was so incredibly delicious that she and her friend Sofie cried while eating it. If food could ever bring tears of joy to my eyes it would have been that dinner. One of the guys who helps run the little hotel is an Expat from Seattle who's also a Sushi chef. (We now regret not taking the 6 hour sushi making class he offers.) He started us off with 4 enormous tempura shrimp. Without exaggeration, these shrimp were the size of lobster tales. It took 5 or 6 good bights to eat one. The tempura part (fried outside) was so light and crisp that it seemed to melt in our mouths. The dipping sauce will surely be on the menu in heaven. Have you ever not been able to help yourself from laughing at something you think is so wonderful? This was our time. Smiling like little kids....with mouths stuffed full of shrimp. Next we were presented with two sushi rolls to share. Everything was so fresh; the avocado, the shrimp, the salmon.... At the end of our meal we were so confident in naming this the best meal of our trip that it was impossible to say no to homemade ice cream.
(the main highway)
(sunset from our porch)
(our cottage)
(taken facing right from our house)
Leaving San Miguel was tough. We had found a spot in this touristy country that we had all to ourselves. A postcard perfect 3 mile stretch of beach. But the journey must go on! We continued north along the coast to the beach of Samara. When we finally figure out how to upload pictures we'll put up some of the Congo monkey family we met along the way happily eating oranges in the trees!
We spent two lovely days and nights in Samara. It was fun to get back to a little town and local hangouts. The most memorable take-a-way from our couple days on this beautiful beach were the wild horses. Early in the mornings and when the sun was setting, a family of beautiful, big, wild horses would come from the woods and run like mad along the one mile stretch of water. They would play with each other (and any dogs around) running like crazy back and forth and up and down the coast. The first night we almost got plowed by one but got out of his way in the nick of time. The other event that now takes up a lot of worthy space on our camera was the wildlife refuge. A couple from Germany moved down years ago and now rescues and releases animals. Among the many were; a baby sloth, crocodiles, jaguar, mini panther?, toucans, ect.
The last adventure before our next visitors was up to Bacages to spend the afternoon at Llanos de Cortes waterfall. This waterfall had been circled in pen long before we left Virginia. Our book says that if we only have time to see one waterfall in the country...make it this one! It was easy to see why. The 12m-high, 15m-wide fall drops into a beautiful swimming hole surrounded by soft sand. We saw only a handful of people and a couple locals selling cold coconut milk.
(Waterfall in Bacages. If you look very closely you can see Adam's tiny head way out)
On Sunday the 20th we were up early and headed south where we would pick up our next visitors for a week on the Caribbean coast! Let the adventures continue.......!
(Mal Pais)
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