Activity Summary
Sunday 28th May - Day 269 (continued)
Drive to Tamarindo
Evening pool session
Monday 29th May - Day 270
Tamarindo beach surfing
Tuesday 30th May - Day 271
Travel to Santa Teresa
Stopover in Samara
Mr Pelicano fish & chups
Wednesday 31st May - Day 272
Walk through Santa Teresa to Carmen
Cold drinks at The Roastery Coffee
Attempted surf at Playa Hermosa
Luke: Santa Teresa beach
Crappy sunset, drinks and beach nachos
Thursday 1st June - Day 273
Travel to Monteverde
Montezuma falls fail
Summary
Tamarindo
Hella touristy beach town (also known as Tamagringo) but we were totally ready for that. The town was bustling with a whole array of food and drink options that would go down an absolute treat on holiday. Sadly we had to resist but we could appreciate the appeal.
Tamarindo beach was a nice beach, close by and had decent surfing for beginners to intermediates (although not so great when we were here but Sod’s Law) so we had an easy time winding down and relaxing while here.
As with most beach places we would’ve gotten bored had we stayed longer, but the fancier hostel with pool helped our zen a great deal.
Samara
It was so wet we could barely make anything out when we drove by. Supposed to be a very quiet beach / surfer town with very little else to do. Decent and reasonably priced fish & chips was our highlight.
Santa Teresa
Santa Teresa and Carmen were a lot less relaxing. Both are fairly big towns, running along the beachfront for a good few kilometres and while busy they do not have the infrastructure to allow people to safely get around unlike Tamarindo. It was pretty stressful getting to and from places which was a massive negative for us.
There are plenty of beaches to go to but none seemed as nice as Tamarindo for chilling and the surfing for them is a lot harder. Luke couldn’t easily rent a board and this was a massive downer for him. There wasn’t much else to do but go to the various beaches really.
Happy to have seen the place but not somewhere we hold in high esteem and would be looking to go back to.
Accommodation
Tamarindo - La Botella de Leche
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £20
Probably the best place we have stayed in Costa Rica because of the pool. It was great when hot and bothered to just go for a quick chill in the pool and also in the evenings.
The kitchen was fine and the super king size bed in the room was ideal and had AC. Otherwise the place wasn’t all that good. The worst part was the lack of cleanliness at the place (the toilet had someone’s legacy sick stains running down the bowl) but we only noticed half way through our stay and couldn’t be bothered to mention it.
It was pretty noisy but that was expected from a gringo party town. It was pretty chill here and we liked it a great deal.
Santa Teresa - Salty Enthusiasts
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £11
The parking was an absolute shitshow here and an ordeal we are both not keen to repeat. We would avoid staying again purely for this reason.
Otherwise the room and shared bathrooms were fine. The kitchen was outdoors and fairly basic but we didn’t end up using it a great deal as we had leftovers.
The mozzie count however was off the chart. Luke ended up killing double digits in the first night and continued a long killing spree the next day. He still got bitten quite a few times from some he clearly missed.
Diary
[Continued]
Our hostel was surprisingly nice. Decent parking space out front so we had no stress about that, with a nice communal space and pool for guests. The pool in particular was an appealing touch.
Sadly our next door neighbours were not so ideal. Before we’d even had a chance to enter the room we were hit with a barrage of drunken shit chat from two Vancouver Island Canadians trying to be funny. This trying to be ‘funny’ descended into right wing rhetoric you’d expect from Americans and they would not leave us alone.
The constant shit chat continued our way when we tried cooking as they decided it was a good time for them to make food, them spewing absolutely horse shit about politics, how Donald Trump was their idol etc etc and us desperately trying to cut any ties with them. We managed to do this by having our dinner by the pool rather than the kitchen and peace was well and truly restored, although we could still hear their drunken dimwitted conversation topics being directed at others who more than likely just wanted to be left in peace. Turns out they had been drinking since 10am and had done the same the previous day - we expected to be in for an earful when they came back later in the evening.
Our nachos by the pool were nice however and we got talking to two French Canadians Julietta and Eleny who would be the only people we would really chat to. We had a nice evening pool session, passed on hostel social activity given we didn’t have booze and couldn’t get ourselves up for it having had such a long travel day. Instead we had a short walk around town in the evening.
Turns out it wasn’t the drunk Americans that would be the source of the late night noise. Our next door neighbours were the Canadian girls at about 2/3am Luke was woken to the sound of some serious late night drunken pounding. Bunk beds hitting the water thin walls, squeaking slats, skin on skin slapping and noises that indicated people were having an alright time. It was an aggressive session that went on for a while and the lack of subtlety kept Luke wide awake throughout. Nicola on the other hand didn’t even flinch.
More entertaining was that the two girls were sharing a room. Assuming it was a 1 on 1 session, the non participant must have had a much tougher night than Luke did. Neither of us brought this up with the girls the next morning despite desperately wanting to clarify this point.
We would be in beach towns for the next few days which meant there was absolutely no activity to get up for so we decided to deviate away from our traditional boring breakfast and try our hand at a more slap up version. Luke’s first attempt at cooking eggs for a long time in shit hostel pans did not go well. Every good cook blames the utensils.
Luke had determined we weren’t going to go far to find some surf as he’s a big fan of ease, a beach break and with waves that are comfortably below or at intermediate level. Tamarindo beach was on our doorstep and while the surf wasn’t great, it would allow Nicola to get on a board as well.
We walked down the beach to where all the surfers & surf schools were lingering (always a good tactic when not knowing what we are doing), rented a board for $15 for the day from a vendor on the beach and then spent the next few hours taking it in turns surfing.
Luke tried his best to impart what little surf knowledge he had to Nicola and tried to help her get speed in order to stand up. His first attempt at doing this had a wave wipe him out from behind, nearly losing his hat and sunglasses and then deciding he needed to change his protective attire. For Nicola’s second surf attempt she did pretty well considering her teacher and the foamie was far too narrow for a beginner. We got a couple of decent rides in on the knees but no standing. It was, however, a really good laugh for both of us.
Luke got a couple of half decent waves but most of it was spent hanging out the back waiting. Both of us got some serious chub rub from the foam board.
Ever keeping our food choices as cheap as possible in Costa Rica, we went back to the hostel for lunch. The girls were going for an evening surf to catch the sunset so Luke (although pretty tired) decided to make use of the paid for board and do the same.
He managed to get the board for an hour, making them stay open later than the usual 4.30pm, until he got bored because there was absolutely nothing to surf as time went on. Nicola attempted some shop browsing but everything was either very expensive or closed.
Our evening was spent in the pool with a couple of bevs which was lovely.
The basic b pasta wasn’t particularly exciting and since the hostel had gone hard the day before there was no attempt at a party this evening. Suited us fine.
We were slow to get up a going, opting for another slap up breakkie (for our meagre standards anyway) rather than setting off early. This ended up working against us somewhat again.
Luke was keen to have a stopover in Samara, a very small surf town in the middle of the Nicoya Peninsular. He was also interested in going to Nosara but on researching, the roads indicated this would require multiple river crossings that Rico and our risk averse hearts couldn’t deal with. Samara however was reachable by main road and therefore theoretically low stress, albeit an hour and half detour on the drive to Santa Teresa.
All started well on the drive, raining a little but nothing too horrific. This of course changed just as Luke turned off to head into Samara.
The savage downpours that plagued some of the previous drive ended up being relentless while we were on our way to and in Samara. Having come all this way we ducked into Mr Pelicano for some consolitory fish & chups, which was great and actually more affordable for once, hoping the rain would subside for a bit.
When this didn’t happen we quickly gave up, settling for a quick drive by of Samara in the rain being the sum total of our experience here.
While we had researched the roads into Samara, we had failed to properly look into the route once heading into Santa Teresa. Google’s initial route tried taking us on a more direct but sketchy gravel road with all the standard problems of undulating hills, loose rock, savage potholes and tyre busting conditions. The safe route around went via Paquera, was double the distance and a fair bit slower.
Once again we were going to be arriving past sunset on account of Costa Rican roads and our poor planning. The rain was also pretty shitty throughout.
Once in Santa Teresa (the road conditions throughout were fine thankfully) we pulled into our hostels gated car park then had a mini argument with the desk worker who had determined pulling in forward was a great mistake. We disagreed but he wasn’t letting up so Luke ended up going back out of the hostel onto the busy main road, navigating a pretty horrific lip between the property and the road in order to reverse in. This was all done with the rain lashing down, Luke unable to see properly and Nicola’s voice being drowned out. Naturally this didn’t go all that well, Luke clipping the nose of the car on the road lip, then on hearing Nicola say ‘no no no’ went back the way he came thinking his reversing was the problem and gave Rico a nice secondary session of the nose grind.
It was all too stressful after driving so far, so when we had made it to the room we were both fuming. We made food and kept ourselves to ourselves to preserve the relationship.
We were both very happy pottering around, Nicola glued to her switch and was only pried from it when Luke was ready to go out for the day. This was a big moment, he is never ready first. Luke quietly and patiently waited for Nicola to get herself ready, like a calm Buddhist contemplating the meaning of life, but the silence was construed as pure rage that we weren’t out of the door yet and led to a number of flustered errors. Once out of the door we ended up going back to the hostel to get sun cream and Nicola’s glasses, the happy gaming good mood well and truly out the door, replaced with hot and rushed.
Luke wanted to have a walk around Santa Teresa, the neighbouring town of Carmen and the beach. Santa Teresa itself is not particularly fit for walking tourists, having zero pavements and plenty of inappropriately parked vehicles making absolutely no side of the road safe. There wasn’t a whole lot to see on the way down to Carmen so cut onto the beach.
Sensing Nicola’s discomfort, Luke decided to go for some ice cold drinks at The Roastery Coffee in Carmen. They were expensive but suitably reset stress levels before Nicola’s eyes started hurting from the AC unit pollution and we left.
On our way back to the hostel we stocked up on food from the supermarket and rustled up the standard ham mayo, cucumber, tomato, onion & avo sandwiches.
The owner of the hostel mentioned they would try surfing at Playa Hermosa, a 15 minute drive up the road, and Luke’s research had determined this was a decent beginner beach in the area. Despite really not wanting to get the car out of the tight parking space Luke felt it would be a waste of the trip here if we weren’t going to see anything so the executive decision was made to try to rent a board. It did once again top up the stressed car navigation interactions.
The roads to the beach weren’t too bad, rocky and pot holey in places but it wasn’t raining so it made it much easier. We parked up and had a wander down to the beach which was pretty barren bar a couple of people with a surf school and all hope of renting a board on the beach evaporated. Nicola wasn’t keen to sit and chill on the beach so we turned tail and sacked off the plan. The beach wasn't too shabby though.
When trying to get out of the car park at Hermosa Luke nearly reversed into a tree (totally his fault). Them stress levels got another nice level up. At this point we drove past a couple of surf places up the road Luke could have gotten a board but no one was having fun at this point so we went back to the hostel.
We had a plan this time to get the car back into its spot without (supposed) problems. For Luke this seemed to have worked fine but Nicola was at stress master 3000 levels and it was decided some time apart was necessary.
Nicola stayed in the hostel while Luke went for a soul replenishing walk down the length of Santa Teresa beach (which is actually quite long), pulled out some of his best travel exercise routine for the admiring beach goers (all talk - he hates doing this as he feels like a pretentious wanker doing sit ups on a beach), swim and a wholesome chill. Plenty of crabs and hermit crabs were running around the beach which was entertaining to watch. Best part of the day for him.
After some time Nicola joined just in time to not really see the sunset, have a few drinks and chow down on some beach nachos she had lovingly prepared for Luke. We walked back to the hostel with the sun down and did little in the evening.
The only real concrete plan we had in Santa Teresa was to go to the Montezuma Falls. This was on the way to Monteverde so we decided to do a short stopover along the way. Luke however wrecked this plan after driving 45 minutes there, to park up (the last stretch of road was bad but not the worst and also quite short) and realised he’d left his £50 Chillies bottle behind at the hostel. It was therefore cheaper to drive back to Santa Teresa and pick it up, despite Nicola kindly offering to buy him a new hot pink one as a replacement.
The hour and half round trip for the water bottle crushed any chance of us going to the falls as it was a pretty long 5 hour plus drive to Monteverde. We had also left some other food items in the hostel so all in all it was a pretty chaotic departure / stay while we were in Santa Teresa that we don’t hold with too much regard.
Lunch was prepared from the glamour of the car / side of the road after stopping at a local fruteria. Ended up having an audience of distant bikers for this one which was a little odd.
The roads around Monteverde, or at least the ones Google made us take coming from Santa Teresa, were not great and gave all the standard boy racer fun of swerving all over the road to keep the car intact.
We arrived just after dark, cooked food in the kitchen and settled in for the night.
Comments