Costa Rica – The deserted paradise
Our last night in Nicaragua we were exhausted and excited to grab dinner and bring it back to watch something on the 10 or so TV channels. Instead, we got back and the power was out – half of the night. We weren’t astonished, just tired. We had to continually knock on the owner’s bedroom door to find out when they would be through with our laundry…each time being berated by a disheveled slob who was grossly eating a feast in her bed. We woke up at 5:00am with dry laundry and literally dragged our 2 tons of junk around the corner to the bus station – taking breaks every 10 steps because of the enormous weight.
We caught a bus from Nicaragua to Costa Rica ($12 each). It was a nice AC bus, the AC just lacked freon and well, power. So, the toasty ride started at 5:30am and ended about 8 hours later. The border crossings were pretty easy. To depart Nicaragua, we stopped at the border crossing and waited outside of the bus as customs officials went through a stack of passports that had been collected when we boarded. Easy. Chris even tried his luck with a quesio-quesio (tortilla made with nasty homemade cheese and covered in a similar cream) – he couldn’t quite get it down. Then, we got to the Costa Rican border. It would have been easy, if we were simple travelers like everyone else. But, when entering, they have to search your bags and well it took us a long while to figure that out after going through customs, plus we had something like 9 bags. We had to drag our boards and bags into a long line and then haul them back before the bus departed.
Of course, the long board ended up getting a solid ding in the nose, but other than that, we had successfully transferred to the land of easy….Costa Rica, a place that we both had been, a place where we felt comfortable and could relax. Chris woke up in enough time to realize that we were nearing our stop. The bus abruptly stopped and we got out at a gas station in Liberia. On the curb, with no idea where to go, we hauled our enormous amount of luggage across the street and paid a guard to watch the pile while we grabbed some lunch at a food court. We refueled and taking some advice, headed around the corner to catch a local bus to Tamarindo. The buses would be cheap and the tour vans were going to cost between $70-$80. Not so easy. Each bus was full and there wasn’t a place for luggage. Frustrated, we took a cab to the bus station – bought two tickets ($4), a famous “Trits” ice cream treat and paid off a worker and a bus driver to help us get all of our stuff on the bus – through the back. When the bus arrived, anything that resembled a straight line, erupted into scattered chaos with a crowd shoving themselves toward the bus. Somehow, it all worked out and we actually loaded all of our stuff on the bus and it literally took up floor space and 4 full seats. At one stop a local mother got off of the bus by crossing over our longboard; the bus started to pull away as her 4 year old cried because she couldn’t hurdle over the Schroeder blockade that stood in her way. We were the obnoxious gringos heading towards the tourist Mecca and taking up half of the bus when the isles were packed tight with standing locals, but we were happy, okay – hysterically happy, that we were one step closer to unloading our baggage.
The bus ride was quite bumpy and took 4 hours (instead of the 45 minutes it would have been if we had driven direct), but well worth the huge savings. One last feat – we were dropped off on the side of the road, not knowing where we were going to stay and the sun had already set. Unable to get around easy, Chris went and checked some rates and I sat on the side of the road on top of a mountain of luggage. As fellow travelers passed by me, I tried my best to act as if it were normal for a backpacker to have 8 tons of luggage.
Chris found the deal of the day. A cute hotel room, complete with AC and bath, across from the beach and a short walk from everything else. The last challenge was to get our stuff there as quickly as possible – it had begun to rain. After an angry fight with our bags (Chris showed his a thing or two), we were able to sip on a complementary coconut (the best one we had ever had) and make our way to find some dinner.
The rest of Tamarindo was exactly what we thought it would be. Easy and refreshing. We ate at Subway and TCBY on a regular basis, traded our books for some good ones and checked out a couple of local spots. The surf was perfect for me. A little small, but a good spot to work on duck diving. Chris and I crossed a small river mouth to surf at one spot, sat in the water together and caught some really fun waves. Each day our amazing sessions ended right after sunset, we would watch it set while catching some waves…a perfect ending to a perfect day.
The rest would be easy…take a tourist van (our only option) from Tamarindo to Nosara and then to Mal Pais or Hermosa – which meant a taxi service to pick us up and drop us off at the front door of hotels we had been to before. No more lugging around our 8 tons of luggage! We arrived in Nosara, checked into Blue Dogs – a nice, clean and cheap surfcamp complete with an awesome rancho/restaurant/pool. We were back in our favorite Costa Rican town and excited to go visit some of our favorite places. It was October and we had no idea what we were in for. We had been to Costa and this town particularly 2 previous times (in Nov and July). We had no idea that their rainiest month and the month that everything (including the only mini supermarkets and internet cafes) shut down. Everything. Our favorite restaurants where we had hoped to get married to a place that you could buy a bottle of water were all closed.
The surfcamp had everything that we needed, we just weren’t going to save any money essentially eating every meal out. We caught some decent swell, enough to go out for…but sometimes too blown out for me to paddle out. We had a couple of sessions where I got out and caught some 4-6 ft waves (by far the largest ones I had ever caught) and met some other travelers in the water. I personally had one of my favorite times surfing, but the conditions didn’t last too long and we both grew frustrated because when there was no surf there was literally nothing to do. We were reading like mad, going to bed by 8 and really missing our dog Morgan.
After making some calls (the phones had even been shut off for a couple of days), we rescheduled our tickets home 2 weeks early and were ecstatic that we had one week to kill before seeing our baby boy. We literally danced in the dirt road – we couldn’t wait.
The week flew by…we read, Chris tried to make the most of the surf and we hung out with a traveler and expatriate that we had met who were from Canada and a couple from England – playing poker nearly every night. Luckily the couple (Matt and Joella) who ran the surfcamp were awesome. They invited us all over to their home for dinner….we feasted on gourmet stuffed porkchops and enjoyed some wine together in the best atmosphere with some of the best people we had met over the entire trip.
The day came when we woke up, took a rental car to San Jose, stayed at the same hotel where we stay every year when we are departing…ate at the same nearby chain and counted down the hours to seeing Morgan, our family, friends and our own bathroom.
We had the time of our lives in Central America, saw and experienced things that one could never experience on a short trip. We didn’t have one moment where we felt threatened, didn’t have one negative experience and saw first hand that people there love their families, their country and even welcomed us with open arms.
Tags: Travel
pcschroeder
Leave a Reply