Met an old college buddy in San Jose after first arriving. It was nice to see her and catch up after about a decade and she and her girlfriend gave me a tour of the city. City itself was okay, but couldn't have spent much time there. The National Theater was very pretty, but most interesting thing to me was the massive crowds outside the public hospitals of people waiting to get seen.The next day, my travel mate and I headed to the Nicoya Peninsula bright and early. Took a tourist shuttle and the ferry. Headed to Santa Teresa and checked in to our rustic apartment at Raratonga Hotel & Apartments, a super nice place with a balcony overlooking the pool and lots of greenery. The town of Santa Teresa is a long strip of beach with a long dirt/mud road running the length of it with not much of a town center. Doesn't seem to be many local Ticas... mainly expats, Israelis, and Italians.
The rest of the week, my travel mate surfed and I explored and relaxed or we took little trips on the ATV he rented. Even though it is the green season, the rains seem pretty well timed (often late night/early morning) and don't seem to stop you from doing much. I enjoyed just sitting and watching the wildlife (iguanas, butterflies, hummingbirds, a flock of wild parakeets, some kind of cute chipmunk thing, bats every day), cooling off in the pool, laying on the beach and watching the surfers, and playing in tide pools. We took trips to Montezuma to jump off rocks into a waterfall pool, tried to find a snorkeling beach for me, viewed the countryside, and ventured up to a lookout of the area apparently close to Mel Gibson's house.
As far as the food situation, typical Tica food is pretty basic (rice and beans with chicken/beef/or fish) but there is a large variety of food in Santa Teresa. I had fun trying to grocery shop (I found you had to hit up several shops to find ingredients you needed as one would have coconut milk and cilantro and the other would have meat or something else I needed) and make food without my usual ingredients. My second attempt at green curry (first needed chicken and broth) using avocado and cumin was not too horrible. On the last day, I found a great reading spot at the next beach over with big rocks and a shady tree to read under and ran into a family of howler monkeys on the way home.
I am now on my own after taking the bus to Cobano (not a bad little town and lots more local vibe) and then Montezuma, a few hours away. There is calmer beach here and more jungle, but seems a little pricier and louder with a large hostel and rastafarian/dirty hippie crowd. The jungle environment means more wildlife-- I think the girl in my same hotel who was arguing with her boyfriend about "just leave the door ajar... It can't crawl up that high and get in" followed about 45 minutes later by a piercing scream and a lot of thumping around as they tried to get something out of their room just learned an important jungle lesson. I only seem to have a few red ants... which I killed with a towel and left out to warn the others what might happen if they venture in here. But I'm not moving the bed around for fear of what critters may come out! I will do more day exploring from here: national wildlife park, another bigger waterfall, snorkeling in tide pools, scuba diving trip to Tortuga Island, and maybe visiting some cemetery in a nearby town that you can only visit by walking to the island at low tide (I suppose I should learn to read a tide table, huh). Hopefully, that will keep me busy for the rest of the week before I return to San Jose on the 21st and fly home on the 22nd.
Hope you are all well and see most of you when I get back (I have a week or two before school starts back up)!!
Love,
Betsy
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