After leaving the Hotel Pelicano, we decided to go check out some of the Guanacaste beach towns that we’d never been to. We also decided to again take the ferry out to the Nicoya peninsula instead of driving around. We headed to Puntarenas to try to catch the noon ferry, but missed it’s departure by 10 minutes. No biggie, another would be along in two hours.
To kill time, we ate lunch and then let the kids play on a rickety playground a few block away from the ferry dock. Even though we’d just eaten lunch, I could not pass up the amazing looking street food being sold by a lady in front of the playground. The layered concoction seemed to be a hit with the locals; it went like this: a plantain leaf as a plate of sorts; boiled chunks of yuca; a fresh cabbage, carrot, and onion slaw dressed with lime juice; topped with fried chunks of pork, tomatoes, cilantro, and homemade hot sauce. Sounds a little weird, but tasted pretty incredible. We hopped the next ferry and enjoyed the easy ride over to Paquera.
Once on the peninsula, we drove across to the Pacific side and the surfer town of Santa Teresa. We cruised the strip a few times looking for a place to stay, ultimately deciding on a private cabin at Ranchos Ituanas. It was dark by the time we settled into our rancho, and we soon headed back out for a great dinner at Burger Rancho. A nice swell had filled in while we were driving around the southern parts of CR; I was excited to again use the surfboard that we’d been lugging around in the rental car the whole time. The German dude that owns Ranchos Ituanas has been there for 30 years and gave me a quick scoop on the break the next morning. I’d later see him out in the lineup. When I got back, we loaded the kids up and drove 20 minutes to the bohemian beach town of Montezuma. We thought it would be cool to hike to Montezuma falls, until we were halfway into the hike and realized how horrible the path was. A good portion of the hike was spent clambering over jagged rocks in the river or hanging on to ropes to keep us from falling down the embankment. The reward for sticking it out and making to the falls was a weak trickle of nasty looking brown water cascading down the rocks. We should have known the waterfall wouldn’t be spectacular given how low the water level was in the river we’d just hiked up. We didn’t bother swimming and promptly hiked back down. It was a big fail, but nobody got hurt and we got some exercise in, so it wasn’t all bad. We then briefly checked out the town of Montezuma before deciding to head back to the empty beach at our hotel. During the short drive back, Jennifer started a conversation about trying to come up with a product – something that we could develop and sell when we were done traveling in the RV. Something that could potentially change what our daily grind looked like. Having two young kids with us, she was focused on a teether, a toy, or some sort of baby necessity. I brought up the Tooth Fairy, which prompted Cooper to ask about where teeth go when the Tooth Fairy takes them. So it was there on that bumpy dirt road that a spontaneous response led to an idea for a product that we are still working to bring to market. Thanks for the idea Montezuma; hopefully, it will be more rewarding than your lousy waterfall.
We played at the beach when we got back to the hotel and stayed there until the sun went down. The tide was low and there was a shallow lagoon for the kids to play in; the offshore reef shredding the unruly surf down to small rollers by the time it reached us. Cooper was being brave and swam underwater in the ocean with me. It was a big step for a girl who hates getting water in her eyes. Brooks was also working on his swimming skills, laying on his stomach in the shore break and wiggling like a tiny pale beached whale backwards into the water. It was effective, but not very graceful. It was another great evening in paradise, finished off by home-cooked food, which was a welcomed change from constant restaurant fare.
Ranchos Ituanas:
I surfed again the next morning and was hassled by an aggressive local. It was the first and only time I’ve had a localism issue in Costa Rica. He was a big burly dude, looking more like a Samoan warrior than the rasta-Tico look he was going for. I don’t think I cut him off or anything to deserve his wrath, but he sure was raising hell about something. Splashing water, the meanest stink-eye he could muster, and all sorts of F-bomb riddled comments about gringos surfing HIS waves were flowing somewhere in my general direction, but again, it didn’t make sense. I finally asked if he was talking to me? I should have known better as there wasn’t anyone else in my immediate vicinity, but his “no me hables, gringo! get the F@#! out of here!” response cleared things right up. As much as I wished I were some super jiu jitsu fighter that could have met him on the beach and promptly knocked his ass out with a roundhouse to the jaw (which is what he surely deserved), I did what any skinny gringo out there by himself would do – I ignored him. In keeping with the laws of surfers and men (and especially surfer men), paddling away from him as he so eloquently requested was NOT an option. He continued his chest-beating show for a while, until I finally caught a nice right that put a little distance between us. I never saw him catch a single wave, which is about what I expected.
Back at the rancho, we slowly packed our things and contemplated where to go next. Remember back when I said that we couldn’t drive down the Nicoya peninsula on our way to Pavones due to banditos robbing people? Well, Santa Teresa is on the south side of that area and we were headed back north. We confirmed with the owner of our hotel that there had, in fact, been recent problems at some of the river crossings. Though unlikely to actually happen, a potential encounter with bad dudes with guns wasn’t a risk we were willing to take, especially with the kids in the car. This meant that we had a looooong drive around the gulf side of the peninsula to get to the Guanacaste beach towns that we wanted to visit. It was a scenic drive through cattle country, and we got to check a side of the peninsula that we’d never seen before. We drove way up through the town of Nicoya to Santa Cruz before heading over to the beaches and working our way back south.
We checked out several little beach towns before finally stopping in Guiones and getting a room at the Harbor Reef hotel. The sun had just set, but I ran over to the beach to check things out while Jennifer, Cooper, and Brooks explored our spacious room. We then went down to the hotel’s bar/restaurant for dinner and were happy to find a musician setting up his equipment. Cooper and Brooks danced while Jennifer and I ate, entertaining the musician and other patrons in the process.
[[[Guiones dance vid]]]
The next morning while the kids were still sleeping I feasted on some of the best waves I’ve ever ridden. Guiones was serving up a buffet of glassy 8 footers that peeled and peeled and peeled. I didn’t want to leave, but didn’t want to leave Jennifer alone any longer than I already had. When I got back to the hotel, we turned right around and took the kids to the beach for a while. They had fun playing in the sand and splashing in the water. When it looked like they were getting too much sun, we took them back to the hotel to play in the pool. Cooper and Brooks tested their bravery poolside with a young iguana; they wouldn’t get too close to it despite us prodding them to touch it. Jennifer did her best impression of the iguana – lying in the sun while the rest of us swam. We had lunch at a great little spot in the middle of town and are still trying to replicate their passionfruit margarita. We all went back to the beach later that evening; I surfed again while Jennifer and the kids played on the huge beach caused by the low tide. While I was in the water, Jennifer met a fellow mom and her two kids. I forget her name now, but their brief friendship began when this chick approached Jennifer with a half-friendly-half-desperate “please tell me you live here?” It was her first day in town; she and her husband, who I was apparently out surfing with, had just uprooted from California and moved to the area. We all chatted for a while on the beach before saying goodbye and wishing them luck. A year has now gone by; I wonder how it is going for them or if they’re still even down there.
Guiones pics:
[wpvideo aVyXnEoG]
The next day, we worked our way back down to Jerry’s house. His mom and brother had flown in from the US and had been hanging out there for a few days by the time we showed up. Monica was also there again. We were happy to be back in that house, and once again we spent our time doing the usual surf, pool, town, beach, pool, dinner routine. At some point, we decided to have Monica cut Cooper’s hair. Monica is a hairstylist by trade and Cooper was well overdue for her first haircut. We had discussed doing this while down in Pavones, so Monica brought her supplies from San Jose out to Jerry’s house. It was just a little trim and Cooper handled it well. Jerry’s friend James and his wife Cynthia came over the next evening to help make empanadas. Doing so is a labor-intensive process and is best to make a bunch of them at once – and also to make a party out of the work. Monica directs the program, assigning tasks to the rest of us: chopping veggies, mixing masa, and the all-important task of forming the empanadas. The latter is a bit of a learned skill; you know you’re starting to get the hang of it when Monica isn’t laughing at your efforts. We made both beef and shrimp varieties, drank a bunch of wine and rum, and in general had a great evening – the kind of night that keeps us wanting to go back to that house.
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Jerry’s lamb bleating. He bought her at a community auction a few years prior thinking he’d have her butchered, but then found out she was pregnant. Once that was known, Lila forbade him to ever hurt either of them. The ewe eventually had the baby and they both lived on the property for the past few years. In the morning, we would learn from Jerry’s caretaker, Santos, that a wildcat had attacked the lamb during the night, which explained the noises I heard. Sure enough, she had a nasty gash on her neck and various claw and puncture wounds elsewhere. Santos said that she needed to be put down – the same fate her offspring had suffered earlier that year. A few minutes later we heard two shots ring out. The lamb was gone, and with her went Jerry’s days of being a shepherd.
Our time in Costa Rica was quickly winding down – for this trip, at least. We were content just lounging around the house for the final few days. The surf was good, the weather great, and the company even better. On the last day we were there, we finally took the kids down to the beach below Jerry’s house. It is a great surfing beach, but isn’t good for the kids with its hot black sand, lack of shade, and violent shore break. A sea turtle refuge is located there in which (mainly) European kids pay $900 per week for the “opportunity” to work at the refuge. It is tough manual labor, with most mornings spent piling up driftwood or digging and sifting sand. We were lucky to happen upon the release of a few recently-hatched baby turtles. They often hold them back until they have paying tourists to watch, but some videographer was there from a foreign TV station, which was the reason for the release. As is often the case, the beach was deserted except for us, so Cooper and Brooks had front-row seats to the action.
Pics from our second stay at Jerry’s this trip:
The next day, we said our goodbyes and thank you’s to Jerry, Monica, Santos, and Yorleny. We made the drive back to San Jose to turn in our rental car and got a room at the Hampton Inn right by the airport. We then took a taxi to a Mexican restaurant I knew of in the nearby town of Alajuela. After a nice dinner at Jalapeños, we cabbed it back to the Hampton Inn, where we promptly got stuck in the elevator. I think it was just odd timing that Brooks reached up and touched the alarm/bell button right as the elevator stopped moving, but who really knows, pushing that button could have been the reason it stopped. Either way, it soon became clear that we were well and truly stuck. I picked up the emergency phone, which didn’t work at all. We then began ringing the bell until we could finally hear someone addressing us from the outside. We were in there maybe 15 minutes before they pried the door open. It was then we saw that the car was stuck between the first and second floors. They retrieved a ladder and we had to slide out of the bottom of the opening. I have long held a fear of stepping in or out of an elevator. I do it quickly because my fear is that elevator will suddenly move and I will be sheared in half. I’m not one for panic attacks, but the thought did cross my mind that if that’s the fate I was destined to meet, it was likely to occur in this very moment. I could be halfway out of the narrow opening when the elevator suddenly wakes up, continues its journey up to the third floor, taking my head or half of my body with it.
Of course, since I am writing this a year later, the elevator did not kill me. We flew out uneventfully the next morning. We were happy in a way to be going home, but also sad to be leaving a place we’ve grown to love so much. It was our longest trip to date at nearly three weeks, which only means that we have a new goal to beat.