26/07/2022 From San José to Montezuma

San José

On our first night in San José, Costa Rica, we slept like babies – understandable after the long travel day we had yesterday.
Before going into this trip, Blake had been on a father-son-trip with his dad around the States for one month. Having organized that entire trip on his own plus planning out the last 2 weeks in Canada for us, he was pretty exhausted. That’s why I thought it would be a nice idea to surprise him with two nights in a very nice lodge in Montezuma on the Pacific Coast.

Montezuma is a picturesque small village, known for its bohemian atmosphere and the stunning natural beauty of its beaches and waterfalls. Nestled into a landscape of true tropical paradise, Montezuma is perfect for any beach lover and eco-tourist.”

nicoyapeninsula.com/montezuma/

The only problem was: How would we get there?

Unreliable bus timetables

Bus timetables online are not very reliable in Costa Rica (or often non-existent). All we knew was that there are two buses going to Montezuma each day: one at 6 a.m. (eehm.. no thanks!) and one in the afternoon. However, we neither knew the right time nor the right bus station.

Helpful Costa Ricans

Luckily, the guy from our accommodation was very helpful and told us that the bus we had to catch leaves at 2.30 pm from the “7-10 station”. He also told us that we should take an uber there (apparently they are illegal in Costa Rica, but everyone uses them anyways). He then added on a side note that once we get out of the uber, we should walk into the station straight away as it is not safe outside – welcome to Costa Rica!
To be fair though, when I spent a month in Costa Rica in 2018 with a good friend of mine, I haven’t felt unsafe once!

Bus and ferry ride to Montezuma

The bus ride took 6 hours in total: three hours to the ferry terminal, 2 hours on the ferry (with the bus) and 1 hour to Montezuma. And this is where the day should have ended. That’s what we thought at least.

Montezuma

Sketchy taxi ride to the hotel

However, in Montezuma town we “only” had to catch a taxi to our accommodation on the hill. A guy approached us with “Taxi?”. In this moment it seemed like it was our very first time backpacking because we both said “yes” to the first stranger who asked us to hop into a random car with him. At least we bargained a little bit about the price (we still got ripped off by a lot). Our ten-minute-drive then turned into a 45-minute-adventure ride in the dark. We both didn’t have internet. But we could see the little blue GPS dot on google maps going further and further away from our actual destination.

In the end, the so-called taxi driver, who was driving us around in his old jeep, whose engine sometimes suddenly stopped working on the dark bumpy road, went all the way out of town to get some petrol for his car, to then drive us back to our accommodation – which he had never heard of, nor did he know where it was. You might think we were doing our very first backpacker trip ever – such beginners!

On my last 8% of battery, I tried to navigate him to our hotel on really bumpy roads in the pitch-black night. It was clearly an adventure, but not one of the good kind. Finally, we made it to our lodge, paid him way too much money and arrived at an empty reception. No wonder: it was long after check-in time.

Safe at last

Luckily, they left the key inside our room door for us. Even during night time we could see how incredible our place looked and what great view would await us in the next morning.

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27/07/2022 Montezuma

Waking up in the jungle

Costa Rican wildlife

The “common area” was a level below our room, which was all in the open. And while we were eating Gallo Pinto (typical Central American dish with rice and beans as a base), a monkey climbed up the tree next to us! I excitedly screamed “sloth!” and threw my cutleries to the ground, but I guess a howler monkey was pretty cool too 😉. Later that day, a family of racoons hushed by. In the next morning that same procedure with the monkey climbing up the tree and the racoon family passing by happened again. I felt a little bit like in the Truman Show.

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Montezuma Waterfall

Montezuma is a small town and its main attraction is the waterfall. Fortunately, our hotel had its own path to the waterfall where we neither had to pay entry fees, nor did we have to climb up the massive steps (since we were already really high up). We were pretty lucky since we had the whole waterfall to ourselves!

Montezuma Town

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28-30/07/2022 Santa Teresa