Santa Teresa, Costa Rica
January 10, 2012 – Santa Teresa, Costa Rica.
Anyone who’s followed my blog knows that we haven’t been crazy about Costa Rica. Santa Teresa ended up being the one place in Costa Rica that we loved!
First of all, Santa Teresa itself isn’t much of anything. It’s a dirty little town built up along a horrible dirt road. Because of the dryness of this area, a wave of dust bellows up whenever a car goes by, covering the plants and stores on both sides of the road with a layer of dust. Motorcyclists (a lot of people on motorcycles or ATVs here) wear bandanas to cover their faces. It amazed us that they couldn’t tar a road cutting right through town, yet, a couple of kilometers away in the middle of nowhere, the road is tarred. Walking in Santa Teresa, anyone walking has to contend with both the dust plus the lack of sidewalks. Costa Rica is not the place to walk anywhere. Access to the beach is along little dirt paths from the main road. Santa Teresa is in fact another dirty Costa Rican beach town.
Still we loved Santa Teresa. For one, the nature is beautiful. We flew in from La Fortuna (via San Jose) and saw the rolling hills and rocky shoreline and thought that this area had the most spectacular geography that we had seen to date in Costa Rica. Sunsets were spectacular and different in some way every night. The weather was hot and dry, unlike the wet and humid that we had encountered in La Fortuna. But the main reason we loved Santa Teresa was because of the hotel/yoga center we stayed at. Yup, yoga center – I know I can expect some snide comments from friends on that…
We stayed at the Horizon Ocean View Hotel and Yoga Center on a small hill looking down over Santa Teresa and the beach. I had booked this place for Lissette – she’s always enjoyed yoga but never has enough time. I’ve never done yoga but figured I’d give it a shot.
Below: The iguana that hung out on our roof.
Horizon gets a perfect 5 out of 5 from me.
The hotel has about 10 villas and cabins spread out over a lush, green property. The cabins are modern, comfortable, and completely equipped. Each has a private balcony where you can sit and enjoy the sunset. I could stay there for that alone. The highlights of Horizon however are the yoga and the food.
Yoga: A beautiful yoga deck overlooking the coastline and wonderful yoga teachers. I was afraid to embarrass myself but each yoga teacher that we had over the course of 5 days was fabulously helpful and encouraging. Every morning at 9am we would go for yoga, the courses lasting 1 ½ hours. In the beginning I just wanted to survive but after the first class I actually started to enjoy it. It got the circulation going and I would feel great the rest of the day. Another thing I never knew – there are a lot of really hot women who do yoga. I would suggest to any guy who wants to meet women to take up yoga.
Food: The owners (Yoav and Gali) serve the most wonderful food in their lovely “Tea House”. It’s all vegetarian, which made me nervous when I booked this place. But everything was incredibly delicious and we always looked forward to our fruit shakes after our morning yoga.
The hotel attracts a very international crowd and while we were there we met Italians, Israelis, and some Swiss. The hotel has an ambiance that makes it easy to mingle with others. Maybe it’s because of the yoga. Many of the guests were repeat customers.
We actually wanted to prolong our stay because we enjoyed it so much. The only thing I would suggest to Yoav and Gali is that they don’t change anything.
Below: Santa Teresa is a very popular surfing spot.
Below: This dog came out of nowhere to say hi. He took a liking to Lissette and just sat there on her feet for 10 minutes. Little things like that sometimes really make your day.
Santa Teresa was our last stop on this trip and we actually left Costa Rica on a sad note. We didn’t think much of Costa Rica overall but wish we could have stayed a bit longer at our last destination.
Tags: 1, Costa Rica, PHOTOS
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