Cahuita & Puerto Viejo, Part 1: Animals, Chocolate and jungle

After our jungle experience in Tortuguero we traveled to Cahuita on the East coast of CR. It was a four-hour drive from La Pavona and it was almost a pleasure because the whole way was a good proper road! We had heard that it should be a nice town. Unfortunately, the town was really dead. There were not many people on the streets and everything seemed more or less closed. We stayed in Buena Suerte B&B. The room was okay, but didn’t look very fresh. We also had a small lizard in our room. Markus tried to calm Edda down by saying that the lizard will eat the spiders. :D We had booked the place based on recommendations online that said that the place has great breakfasts ;) And they were really nice, indeed. We could choose between salty or sweet breakfasts. The plates looked a bit different depending on the day, but the salty could be for example eggs, a wrap, rice and beans, cooked vegetables, meat, cheese and a fruit plate. The sweet one was e.g. pancakes, tiramisu, cookies, some other cake and a fruit plate. The plates were really generous. One night with breakfast was around $30 for two people.

The patio in front of our room

Tortuguero – A Fisher village and a National Park in the middle of nowhere

After our hike to Cerro Chato and Hot Springs we left from La Fortuna around 6pm towards Cariari. We had planned to leave around 2-3pm but the hike, springs and lunch/dinner dragged out a bit. We were going to Tortuguero but had to make a pit stop at Cariari. Tortuguero is a small fishing village and National Park in the NE part of CR and it is accessible only by boat or plane. We chose car and boat. The public boat to Tortuguero leaves from La Pavona, a few house village, four times a day and the boat ride takes around one hour and it took some four hours from La Fortuna to drive there. Because of the long drive, we stayed one night in Hotel Vista al Tortuguero in Cariari. 

Our hotel room at Vista al Tortuguero

Cariari is basically the closest place to La Pavona where you can overnight and from there it is still one-hour drive on dirt road to the harbor. If you come with your own car it might be difficult to find the harbor, because it cannot be found on maps (e.g. Google maps). You can find La Pavona on maps, so when you arrive there, just continue driving after the road ends on the map on the only road there is, and you will arrive to the harbor. We left our car to a secured parking place for the two nights we were planning to staying Tortuguero and the price tag was $10 a night. Basically you do not have that much of a choice where to leave the car if you don’t want to walk a long way to the harbor because there is just the road and then the $10 secured parking place. 

Arenal area - La Fortuna, hot springs and Cerro Chato

After visiting Rio Celeste we drove to La Fortuna. We had booked Hotel Villa Fortuna first for only one night. The hotel's location is a bit out from the centrum, which did not matter since we had a car. It wouldn't have been a problem by foot either, but this was more convenient. The hotel had received good recommendations and it didn't disappoint. The room was clean, there was a shared kitchen where we made breakfast and there was even an outside pool. :)

Room #8 if we remember correctly 

Arenal area - Rio Celeste (blue river)

We left Monteverde after our coffee, choco and sugar cane tour to Rio Celeste. We had planned to stay at Hotel Rio Piedras for two nights in Neuvo Arena. There were two reasons for us to stay there: for easy access to Rio Celeste and for Markus the possibility to go kiteboarding if there were windy days. In the beginning of the way we saw Arenal Volcano from a distance but it looked like it would like to throw out some lava ;)

Arenal volcano

Everything does not always go as planned… We arrived to Piedras around 4 pm. The place looked empty so we went to the restaurant next door to ask with Edda’s un poco español. We found out that the hotel is CLOSED!

Monteverde - a peaceful, beautiful and adventurous town

It was time to change bikinis to long trousers and long sleeves! Someone had mentioned to Markus that Monteverde is a town worth visiting. We were anyhow going to  go to the Arenal area and Monteverde was on the way. We found a nice-looking 2-star hotel online, Monteverde Inn located in the Valle Escondido Preserve (Hidden valley). The hotel has an amazing location - you can look over the trees in the valley at the mountains. We even got lucky one night and saw a rainbow over the forest and a beautiful sunset! 

Playa Santa Teresa, Cabo Blanco & Montezuma

After our small off-road trip to Santa Teresa, we found a nice hotel, Beach Break Hotel that was clean, cozy, quiet and close to the beach. There is basically only one road in Playa Santa Teresa. There are hotels, grocery stores, restaurants and surf shops on both sides of the road. The beach is several kilometers long and mainly sand. The surf is better here than in Tamarindo because a bit bigger waves and plenty of space. We went surfing one day and the second day we went to Cabo Blanco National Reserve and Park. The road to there was a small adventure again, with river crossings and steep and muddy up and downhills to drive. 

When we arrived the reserve area we saw two dears next to the road. There are two trails, one is around 2 km and the other around 10 km. The latter ends to a beach so it's around 5 km there and 5 km back. We were around 9 am at the reserve and had planned to do the longer hike through the jungle. When we got off the car we could hear some thunder further away and we were hoping it would pass us.

Off-road on road and some coffee - Tamarindo to Santa Teresa

Our day started with breakfast, packing and checking out from Coral Reef Surf Hostel. Our road trip trough CR would start today when we have picked up our 4wd Hyundai. We started driving to Playa Santa Teresa where we would stay few days surfing, checking out the town and nearby area. After about an hour of driving, Markus saw a sign about some coffee farm and turned to a smaller road. We were lucky because the coffee farm had a guided tour 1.30 pm and we arrived 1.29 pm so it was a perfect timing. The Coffee farm is Cafe Diria and it's run by a family for decades. Dennis, our tour guide, is in the owner family and he was really great and held a very informative and fun tour on the farm about how coffee is made. He told also fun facts about cashew "nuts" that the cashew fruit is really delicious and the nut is actually a seed ;) and the cashew seed is actually poisonous before it is roasted. We learned about the process and quality of coffee beans etc. In the end we had a tasting test about the coffee quality. It was not an easy test but we made it :D After the tour we got some coffee drink that tasted a bit like Irish cream and some local snacks that were delicious.

 Coffee beans and plants at different stages

Surfing in Tamarindo

As we mentioned in the previous post, we have been staying in Tamarindo for the last few days. We had heard that Tamarindo would be a good place for beginner surfing (Thanx for the tip, Pia!). Markus has surfed a long time ago (12 years ago) and Edda had never tried it. Tamarindo is filled with surfing schools. All of them offer more or less the same packages and have the same prices. But what differs is the teachers.

We asked about surfing lessons in three places. The first one seemed a bit weird. It was a small shop in the corner of Main Street and Callejon Oeste. The guy gave us a "special price" - $35 dollars (instead of the "usual" $40). He started to talk about him being a professional fishing man (showed some picture of a big fish on a boat) and that his way of teaching was the best and if the other teachers would suggest a specific time for surfing, it would not be good, etc. The second place seemed okay, but we still wanted to ask from another place. We ended up to Costa Rica Surf Club. The price for a 2-hour lesson was $35 (group lesson). But we were lucky with the low season in Tamarindo and Edda got a private lesson for the price of a group lesson. :D The Tamarindo beach is quite big and during low tide you can walk to Playa Grande where they have also a National park and turtle nesting beach.

Tamarindo, and the beginning of our Costa Rica exploring

To travel around Costa Rica with public transportation is not the easiest or fastest way, but for sure it is cheap compared to the other methods. We wanted to come to Tamarindo from Sugar Beach close to Potrero. First we were supposed to take a taxi, or actually this time the shuttle that took the hotel's housekeeping. Edda had asked and got the information about the trip to Tamarindo that was as following: "First take a taxi to Potrero next to a football field and stand under the big tree. A bus to Santa Cruz drives there by, and you want to get off in Huacas in front of Banco Popular. From there you walk a bit back to the next road, because the bus to Tamarindo drives that way, or you can take a "collectivo" ride (locals taking several people at a time to different towns for a small fee)." If you have gotten used to good public transportation, you can imagine that this system may feel a bit confusing ;) Well, we got actually a free ride from the Sugar Beach receptionist because the housekeeping shuttle was stuck somewhere.

The Bus Stop and the bus in Potrero

Six nights at Hotel Sugar Beach

After the long and tiring bus ride from San José to Hotel Sugar Beach, it was nice to just relax with doing nothing. We wanted to have a bit nicer and relaxing hotel for the beginning of our honeymoon so we decided to come to Sugar Beach for six nights. The hotel has bungalows with two rooms. We had one with sea view (#22) and it is nice to sit on the terrace, having a cup of coffee and looking at the sea.  The rooms and hotel were good with few minor shortcomes. The restaurant is on a tiny hill with a nice view to the sea. Since we were here during the low season (27.8. - 2.9.2016), there were only few other guests during our stay and it was quiet and relaxing. The beach is big enough for the hotel. It is a black sand beach but with a lot of rocks in the waterline and we found only one narrow sand path through the rocks out to the sea. There is not much to do at Sugar Beach, but that is one of the reasons we chose it. It is a great place for relaxation (if you don’t mind 24/7 sound of waves ;) ). The hotel has boogie boards to rent for a price of 2$/h. We rented it almost every day for an hour or two, and even Edda started to like playing with it ;D The waves at the beach are not big enough for surfing so a boogie board is a good option if you want some action in the sea.

 Beach of Hotel Sugar Beach