Chet and Karen's Adventures--South of the Border: Santa Teresa, Costa Rica

From Boquete we had another early morning to catch a bus. We caught the 6:00 am to David. We watched a spectacular sunrise in a sky dotted with massive cumulus clouds spilling over the mountainside.

Our plan was to catch an 8:30 bus to San Jose. After we purchased our tickets in David, we had a half hour to kill and we had some postcards to mail. So Karen and I decided to walk to the post office about five blocks away. It took us longer than we expected to find the place but eventually we succeeded. Between Wyatt, Karen, and I we had 21 postcards to mail. The lady working the counter sold us the stamps, two for each postcard. We had 15 minutes before the bus left so Karen and I proceeded to speed lick and apply 42 stamps. It was a humorous scene. We ran back, arriving at the bus sweaty and with the chemically stamp taste still lingering on our tongues.

We stayed the night in San Jose at an interesting hostel called The Grand Imperial. It was located right in the middle of downtown. The hostel was massive, with room for perhaps 100 guests. It had a large commercial sized kitchen, a pool table, several dining tables, and a large flat screen tv. It was a grand establishment which lived up to its name but seemed as though it had been built for a livelier time. We were three of the five people staying at the Grand Imperial. The hostel was eerily quiet.

The young Tico who was running the place was very friendly and helpful. He told us where to find the bank and confirmed that we were heading for the right bus terminal in the morning. We went out to dinner that night and got some local cuisine. Then we went to a fruit stand to get some breakfast fruit for the morning. By that time it was dark and the city had transformed. Everyone was off the streets more or less except the zombiefied drunks and drug addicts who were started to creep out of the alleys. We decided it was time to go back to the hostel for the night.

We had yet another early morning (4:30) in order to catch our 6:00 am bus.We started walking just after 5:00 so we would have time to get to the terminal and buy our tickets. We got to the terminal but could not seem to find were to buy our tickets. We asked around and no one seemed to know. We were becoming to get nervous as the bus was leaving in half an hour. Finally one seemingly helpful women told us we needed to go somewhere else approximately 10 blocks away. She pointed us down the street and gave us directions. We started to run down the road but something didn't feel right. We had triple checked where we needed to go beforehand. I ran back one last time. There in front of the terminal was a bus with a sign flashing "Santa Teresa". I asked the one of the people queuing up for the bus where to buy a ticket. They gave me a weird look and told me you just pay the bus driver.

We took the bus to Puntarenas, where we caught a ferry to the Nicoya Peninsula. Then we got back on the bus to another town and finally caught one more bus to arrive at Santa Teresa. It was a long day but well worth the effort as we were soon to find.

The ferry to the Nicoya Peninsula from the mainland.

Pelicans following us across the strait.

Santa Teresa is a stretch of hostels, restaurants and various shops located along a dirt road parallel to the coast. The beaches are beautiful and the coastline is relatively untouched. The people in Santa Teresa are more or less all tourists or travelers of one kind or another.

The place we stayed was a hostel/language school. Most of the students were Costa Ricans coming to learn english. It was a very relaxed and quiet place with jungle all around. We saw howler monkeys in the trees overhead several times throughout our stay.

We spent about a week in Santa Teresa. Our days consisted of surfing and walking the beach in the early morning and lounging in our hammocks reading and watching the surf during the very hot afternoons.

Most things in Costa Rica were expensive so we lived off of beans, rice, and fresh veggies which were the cheapest things to eat. This forced us to get creative with our cooking. We made tamale pie, fresh pasta sauce, banana passion fruit bread and lots of beans and rice.