The Light at the End of the Trail
I’ve long book-ended dreaded winter with an early November escape to the tropics, and this year was no different. But instead of heading to the Atlantic/Caribbean basin, 2019 took us and 6 of our friends to the Pacific side of Costa Rica. This part of the world is largely unfamiliar to me, but some of our gang had already visited Costa Rica, and Rick and I count a couple of visits to Belize on our Central American resume.
As often happens, it only takes a few suggestive comments to set me off and running. Rick and I, as well as Jeff and Ginger, and Brett and Erica, celebrated major milestone anniversaries this year, so there was talk of a group adventure (and no trip without Skip and Harriet is ever complete). Rick has always had a hankering to learn how to surf, while I’ve often drooled over rental villas in Costa Rica. Armed with a few key words to pop into Google and VRBO, and supervising an aspiring Master Cruise Director (Erica, who has now completed her apprenticeship with flying colors!), we zeroed in on the surfing village of Santa Teresa at the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula, and Beachwood House. https://thebeachestates.com/beachwood/
On arrival day, we all eventually found ourselves at the domestic terminal of San Jose’s airport, having followed assorted routes and schedules to get there. I thought – naively – that the hardest part of our trip was over. With only a brief commuter flight on Sansa, and a less-than-20 mile (12 miles as the crow flies) van ride to our property, the rest should be easy, right? How wrong I was!
For starters, security at this little airport was a lot trickier than navigating TSA, with the most innocuous items drawing intense scrutiny. Ultimately, we got through, short a few corkscrews and the itty-bitty nail files attached to nail clippers (they let us keep the clippers, but snapped the 1.5 inch files off). Waiting for our flight, we watched dark storm clouds roll in – not unexpected as it was still rainy season. But the rain delayed our flight, and might have contributed to the flight being “overweight” for the conditions. Although we assiduously packed our bags to be below the 30 pound limit (I even bought an electronic scale, confirming that my bag was a mere 22 pounds – which I later confirmed in a more practical way, finding I had way too few clothes…), 5 of our 8 bags were held back, to be sent on a flight the next day. And by the time we finally boarded the tiny plane, the rain was pouring down.
Finally airborne, the stunning scenery of mountains and jungle meeting the sea caught rapt attention. The plane threaded a slot in a mountain valley, landing at a tiny strip with seemingly no permanent structures comprising the Tambor airport. In moments, the last part of the journey began under clearing skies. I had no idea that this short distance would take nearly an hour to cover over tortuously bumpy and potholed tracks. The driver took it in stride; our teeth and tailbones did not.
If this blog post were a novel, the roads would be one of the main characters.
There is actually a speed limit on the roads. As if!
Thoroughly jarred, the van made a left turn into a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it drive, slogged through mud and past a gate, amidst a tunnel of dense and dark vegetation, finally reaching the glow of the Pacific Ocean shining through the front door of our beach house.
Through the door, with a straight-on view to the beach.
Everything was waiting just for us. Coconuts full of chilled coconut water; Veronica, our beautiful and efficient concierge; Rafa, the chef we’d hired to make us dinner that night, and his girlfriend/sous chef Camila; Lubis, our housekeeper; the groceries we’d pre-ordered; even the two rental 4WDs Veronica had arranged for us. All we needed to do was give in to the siren song of this stunning site.
Starting our evening with icy coconut water; some of us managed to siphon rum into ours.
And stunning it was. Seldom do beach rentals live up to their PR; in this case, our expectations were exceeded. From the greenery of the front entrance, we simply walked into the light and the best of indoor/outdoor living. Except at night, when we closed a large set of glass accordion doors, the entire living space of the house is open to the outdoors, passing seamlessly from seating and dining areas to the deck surrounding a 360-degree infinity edge pool, and on to the short path leading to the beach.
Infinity pools are so cool, blurring the edges between man-made and natural.
A view of the house from the beach.
We drew lots for the 4 bedrooms; though 2 of them faced the ocean and 2 faced the garden, they were all roomy, cool and comfortable. The decor was spare but luxurious, letting the natural environment take precedence.
Next up: much-needed cocktails. In the last 5 years, I’ve started to prefer Central American rums to Caribbean ones, finding a product that is at least as good as the Caribbean version (with the sole exception of Gosling’s – from Bermuda, so not really apposite anyway – which has no equal when mixing a Dark & Stormy), and in many cases less expensive. Flor de Caña (Nicaragua) has replaced Mt. Gay, and Ron Zacapa (Guatemala) is the special-occasion choice; and we were introduced to Costa Rica’s own Centenario by a sommelier in Baltimore.
Stocked with Flor and Centenario, we were in business and ready to enjoy the gorgeous meal prepared for us by Rafa.
Rafa made us ceviche, a Thai noodle salad, resh grilled mahi mahi, and a chocolate mousse cake.
Sleep took us early, but Rick and I had suffered a 4 a.m. wake-up that morning. And the 2-hour time difference made our official bedtime seem positively toddler-like.
Surf’s Up
Just as we went to bed early, we rose early. Part of it had to do with our bodies never fully adjusting to the time zone and going to bed early. Another part was excitement to finally be here. And finally, it just seemed like the sun rose earlier here, rousing us from our beds earlier. It made it easy for Rick, Jeff and Brett to have their surf lesson at 9 a.m. – close to low tide. Veronica arranged for their instructor, Ramon, to come directly to our house (and “our beach”) with the boards.
The boys in blue take lessons; Jeff had surfed in his younger days, and Rick once took a lesson in Rincon PR.
They quickly took to surfing (or the idea of it) and ended up keeping the boards for the entire week, tackling the waves at least once a day. And talked about it a lot more….
They look so natural….
The girls didn’t want to be left completely out of the loop. Harriet went so far as to take a quick lesson from Rick, and even stood up and caught a wave. And Harriet, Erica and I did some boogie-boarding (and I have a massive bruise to show for it).
That’s some rugged surf.
Ginger and Skip were too smart to hurl their bodies at the surf.
My self-assigned task was to document this surfing adventure with my new (and wholly-satisfactory! finally!) Olympus TG5 camera. My limited experiences with Pacific Ocean beaches in California and Australia had me expecting cold water; happily, I found it deliciously warm, and I spent almost as much time in the water as the surfers, taking lots of pictures.
Despite the temperature of the sea, it was no Caribbean. The waves were pretty tall (6 feet or more at high tide, reserved for the more expert riders) and crashed heavily and constantly, sounding more like a waterfall than the rhythmic wash-and-retreat of small wavelets. To reach our beach, we first had to cross a small lagoon. Two small creeks bordered the sides of our property and collected behind a small sand bank that rose and fell with the tides. Unlike the ocean water, the creek and lagoon water was chilly, finding its source inland, in the hills.
When the tide was low, the beach was hard-packed – perfect for walking – and wide. I didn’t expect much, but was delighted to find lots of shells. I spent my first few beach walks searching for treasures, but then did some research and found that we couldn’t take any shells out of the country, so I stopped my hunt.
I hated leaving these behind!
In addition to shells, we found sea beans, tons of them. Sea beans are seed pods, and are a hotly-sought commodity in the Bahamas because they come all the way from Africa and are fairly uncommon; in Costa Rica, no one knows they are a “thing,” and they are everywhere. Turns out they come from local plants, so they don’t travel all that far. I didn’t take any of them home either.
Santa Teresa is a small village with a big beach, so the beach felt nearly as empty as I like. At high tide, the waves were studded with surfers. And near sunset, people – and their dogs, lots of dogs – came out to see the day off. A perfectly mellow vibe.
Wine at sunset; my only wish was that it were better wine.
Being in Santa Teresa didn’t ask much of us, and that’s the way we liked it. Unless we were attempting an excursion, we ranged between the beach and pool, with healthy doses of day drinking
We really lucked out with the weather, even though it was rainy season.
Our fridge was filled mostly with wine, beer and mixers, as we mostly ate out.
(A beer after surfing? Sure! It’s vacation and it’s all good.) We spent almost as much time in the water as the schools of fish that comprised most of our meals. Ceviche was on every menu, as well as other imaginative preparations of fish.
Chowing down on the ceviche Rafa made for us.
Every ceviche we had was different. Rafa’s included radishes; at Manzu (the best I’ve ever had) it was passion fruit juice and cashews; and at Shambala it was finely diced avocado.
And unlike in the Bahamas Out Islands – where the only way to have had sushi or sashimi when I lived aboard there was to have made it myself – we had stellar sushi here. Maybe it’s a Pacific thing.
Going Bananas
Costa Rica is considered one of the world’s premier eco-tourism or “green” destinations. Between that mindset and the fact that the climate and growing conditions allow it, much of the food here is fresh and local. The fruit we ate was perfectly ripe, tasting so much better than anything we could get at home in November. I was taken with the cute little baby bananas (last seen in the wild in Grenada, though available in supermarkets in Maryland sometimes). The pineapples were to die for – so juicy and ripe that even the core was edible (like Eleutheran pineapples, but much bigger) – and muddled into delicious cocktails.
Happy Halloween! I couldn’t resist assembling this creepy tableau using baby bananas and shells we found that looked like fungus-infested fingernails.
Inspired by my surroundings, I offered to make dinner Monday night. I love to make something local (or locally-inspired) when I travel, from shrimp in Alabama, Florida and South Carolina, to conch in the Bahamas. I had no idea what to make, but enlisted Rick to go with me to the “super” to see what jumped out at us. Despite the bounty of foods in Costa Rica, the supermarkets felt island-typical. Dim lighting, modest and haphazard selection, relatively high prices, and limited (and somewhat scary) selections of meat. But months of shopping and cooking in the Bahamas left me well-equipped to handle these limitations. Spying some yellow (i.e. not fully ripe) plantains and finding a tropical seasoning mix, I decided to make a pork and plantain stew using other common local ingredients.
I set about chopping and mincing and sauteeing (after spending a good bit of time honing and sharpening the beach-rental-issue dull knives), and then started preparing the plantain. Except, it turns out, it wasn’t a plantain after all, but the biggest, straightest ripe banana I’ve ever handled. Well, this was an experiment, so what the heck – I chopped it up and added it to my Tico stew. Surprisingly, it turned out well, adding a welcome touch of sweet to the savory and a bit of thickening. Besides, everything tastes great at the beach!
That is one big banana!
We ate at home base seldom — my dinner, a few lunches, and carryout Italian from Pronto! for our last night. What is travel without venturing out to try out the local offerings? Even though many restaurants in Santa Teresa were still closed for the rainy season, there were still plenty of choices for us. My personal favorite turned out to be Banana Beach, one I liked so much we had lunch there twice. The beachfront location with sand underfoot, and friendly server Emilio, the off-season hush, and an amazing tuna burger won me over.
Some of our dining selections were driven by a different imperative. Beachwood House does not have a television and our trip coincided with Games 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the World Series. The Washington Nationals being in the Series was a first-in-a-lifetime event for our Maryland-based (or Maryland-originated, in the case of Skip and Harriet) crew, especially for season ticket holders Jeff and Ginger. This was too big an event to be relegated to an iPad screen (though it was for travel day, Game 4), so Jeff scoped out Nativo Sports Bar for Game 5, and Soda Tiquicia for Games 6 and 7. The 1.7 mile drive — which took 20 minutes — to Nativo stressed our bodies and psyches.
Jeff in full Nats regalia at Nativo.
Soda Tiquicia was just outside the gates of Beachwood House. (A “soda” in Costa Rica is a local restaurant featuring local foods.) Jeff and Ginger hung in there for the entirety of Games 6 and 7, armed with Scherzer shirts (say that 3 times fast…), rally towels, and plenty of positive energy. The games were broadcast in Spanish, but we got the gist!
Whole red snapper is a classic Tico dish.
A casado is a bowl that features a protein and several sides (not unlike a plate at a St. Martin lolo, except it’s a bowl.)
Dust or Mud?
The Santa Teresa beachfront is a stunner, but you’d never guess what is in store for you when you drive through the village. Surf shops, medical offices, bakeries, restaurants, bars, hostels, and adventure purveyors line up in an almost impenetrable wall, with a few chinks that provide beach access via public paths or the ocean-facing resorts and villas.
A surf shop in Santa Teresa.
The road in the village is almost equally impenetrable. The rainy season condition is muddy and pitted, but it only takes a couple dozen hours to turn it into a dusty mess. Driving is nominally on the right, but you do as you must, weaving among motorbikes bearing surfboards, ATVs, 4WDs like our rentals, bicycles, pedestrians, dogs, delivery trucks, and — of course — the occasional tractor-trailer.
Santa Teresa street scene.
Our Suzuki was very nearly a casualty of the roads. Rick and I headed down the road to explore the village only to find one of our tires was nearly flat. We knew that the nearest gas station was 40 minutes away, and I hadn’t seen any gomerias (I have no idea why I know the Spanish word for tire repair shop), so we needed to be creative. I had the inspired idea to stop at one of the adventure/ATV shops to see if they could offer up an air hose, and it turned out that during off-season, they are bored and more than willing to help out. In no time, the guys at Savannah Extreme Tours re-patched the tire and filled it up with air, offering helpful advice on food and attractions and not accepting any money.
The few hours spent exploring the village confirmed how genuinely kind and friendly Ticos are. Also, since Santa Teresa is a surfing destination, they are absurdly fit and beautiful and generally young. Most places we wandered, random strangers offered up the shaka sign (“hang ten” or “hang loose”) and a greeting of “Pura Vida.” They also tolerated, even encouraged, my attempts to speak Spanish, my only training having been in 9th and 10th grade. I was amazed what I could dredge up from the depths of my memory, and that I could handle basic transactions (though when entering the country, the immigration officer flustered me on the 3rd question, which I couldn’t understand or respond to…. No entiendo!)
Despite the roads, we were undaunted, 5 of us claiming the 2 jeeps to attempt to reach Cabo Blanco, a nature reserve notoriously difficult to reach. We’d decided, among other things, that Beachwood’s very own monkeys, parrots, lizards, and variegated squirrels were not enough and we wanted more critters. Also, who can resist the lure of secret beaches? After all, it’s only 15 miles.
Scary looking Costa Rican squirrel.
Shy monkey.
I suppose we are slow learners. With some vague directions from a guide book, we set off, knowing there would be steep hills and ravines, and 2 creeks we’d need to drive through.
We made it past those obstacles, only to find a mud pit about 3/4 of the way to our destination. Rick and Brett used materials at hand to assess it and decide we couldn’t get past it with any assurance that we’d be able to get back over on the way back, especially since rains were forecast.
Too risky to proceed.
So, Cabo Blanco would go unvisited, though the scenery along the way was lovely.
And the rains never came. Indeed, though it was still rainy season, the rain only came obligingly at night, in great torrents that kept everything green and lush.
Montezuma Falls Revenge
I could hardly spend the entire week lounging at Beachwood House. So, we dared a second attempt to leave our enclave, heading to a destination that Santa Teresa’s most famous homeowner (Tom Brady) was pilloried for jumping from with his young daughter: Montezuma Falls. Brett and Erica rented ATVs for the day, while Rick, Harriet and I took our trusty Suzuki.
Not wanting to be thwarted, we didn’t take the road we tried to reach Cabo Blanco by, which we now knew was called the Monkey Path. Instead, I fired up Waze to take the “main” road. I found it endlessly amusing that while the road was paved in only a handful of spots, Waze captured every twist and turn of it, every dirt path branching from it. When we had to avoid a front-end loader dumping dirt, I amused myself by sticking a pin in it: “Watch Out: Road Construction Ahead.” But if I’d noted every road hazard, poor Jane (the voice of my Waze) would spend her day saying. “Watch out, pothole ahead. Watch … pothole ahead. Pothole ahead. Pothole. Potpotpotpotpot.” It would be more efficient to say “Watch out, paved section of road ahead.” Not an option, alas.
The lower section of Montezuma Falls was described to us as difficult (because of slippery rocks) but quick.
We stopped at the beach outside of the village of Montezuma, where Rick built one of his trademark cairns.
I question most descriptions provided. After gaping at the crashing waves of the Gulf of Nicoya, we scrambled along the falls, concluding that we needed to approach them from above.
The lower section of Montezuma Falls.
That would cost money. Over 2,300 COLONES per person! (OK, that’s just $4 … I had a laugh when I brought over 800,000 colones with me on this trip, so crazy is the exchange rate.) This included parking in Sunnytrails’ lot, a map, and use of their canopies and trails. Worth it!
Dressed in Keen sandals, with swimsuits under our clothes to take advantage of a waterfall swim, we found the beginning of the trail easy enough. We walked through the canopy over suspended bridges that swayed with every step.
But soon we were walking a steep muddy trail with steps carved into the slope, soaked in sweat and splattered with mud.
A curious coati was sniffing us out as we hiked.
At a fork in the trail, we found a park worker under a plastic canopy who assured us that the lower falls (with a 100 foot drop) were just 5 minutes away. But as the steps kept going down down up down down down (my knees hate down), I could see it was much further than cinco minutos, so I turned back, knowing that when I made it all the way down, there was no way my knees would allow me to get back up.
Rick promised to come back for me, and in the meantime, I enjoyed the breeze and shooting the breeze with the park guy. He spoke no English, and my Spanish is minimal, but we were able to communicate well enough. After a fairly long while, Rick texted that he was on his way back — even in the jungle, there seems to be cell service. He and Harriet had come upon Brett and Erica, who’d hired a guide and found the easy way to the 100 foot falls; Harriet bailed and joined them, while Rick slogged his way back to me.
But we found our way to the local microbrewery and enjoyed some yummy local beer before joining the others in Montezuma (the “hippie” village) for lunch.
A nice spot for a recovery break.
Our lunchtime view after a “rough” morning of hiking.
Rude Awakening
Eventually, we had to face leaving our surf and jungle adventure. It didn’t take long to get an unwelcome reminder that though we were enjoying this remote village in relative luxury, things are different here.
Late Friday afternoon, we heard a yelp from Harriet’s bedroom. As she was packing her bags, she found an uninvited visitor. I called for Rick Mc-F’ing-Gyver, and using the whisk broom and shoe Ginger and I had armed him with, Rick pushed an annoyed black scorpion out the door and stomped him out.
This guy looks like the one that had taken up residence in Skip and Harriet’s room, sized about 3-4 inches. Veronica told us they are “not too poisonous,” but painful if they sting.
I had become complacent, not heeding the advice I’d frequently read about checking my shoes before slipping my feet into them. No more!
Lest we think we were leaving with the worst behind us, on Saturday morning, Rick had to be summoned again, as it appeared that another scorpion had taken up residence in Skip’s backpack. Rick eventually disentangled him from the mesh webbing inside the pack, only to realize that what appeared to be crumbs or dirt inside the backpack were also dozens of newborn baby scorpions. Ewwwww!
Just as Skip had to say goodbye to his backpack, we had to say goodbye to Beachwood House and Santa Teresa.
Though we faced the bumpy ride back to Tambor, due to flight timing, we ended taking a charter flight back to San Jose, easing re-entry. Now, with sunny skies, the views from above were amazing!
A charter flight is a very civilized way to travel! Throw in some earplugs and a beer, and you’re good to go.
Rick and I and Skip and Harriet spent our last day in San Jose, at the Marriott Hacienda Belen near the airport. The site had been a coffee plantation, and the current owners did an amazing job of retaining the look and feel of the plantation without sacrificing modern conveniences and comforts.
But they did nothing about the screaming brat pounding on a piano in the courtyard outside our room past 10:00 p.m. — our 4:30 a.m. wake-up to fly home was especially rude after a night of compromised sleep. Welcome back to civilization….
FINAL THOUGHT: I’m sorry that my blog is such a cliche: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jemimaskelley/travel-photos?origin=web-hf
Calypso's Odyssey 
It was an amazing trip and you told the story with just enough detail and humor! Can’t wait til our next adventure!