Costa Rica - Start of central America

We arrived in Costa Rica, one of the richer countries of Central America, we were there to see the city, beaches and catch up on some surfing.

Costa Rica: Our experience in a nut shell
Expensive - Its not cheap here, in fact it is comparable to North America
Pura Vida - The people are pretty happy and helpful every where we have been, we met some really great locals in Jaco and Santa Teresa
Imperial cerveza - The local beer isn't too bad, and generally pretty cheap
Constant surf - The waves were pumping every day, and usually offshore breeze, the smallest it got was 2ft with mostly 3-4ft days
Dirt Roads - Out side of the major cities, the roads are dirt, dusty and rough.
Palm Trees - no high rise and plenty of beach access everywhere.

San Jose
We arrive in the Capital, and driving into town it could be any American city, (fast food chains, car dealers) nothing really distinguished it from anywhere else, but so far this has been our experience in many capital cities. Damn globalisation!
We stayed in the capital a few days, looked around, nothing much to report before hopping a bus to the beach.We did spend way too much time at the local bus station, where we were later informed you have a 60% chance of being mugged during the day, and 100% at night. We were fine.

Jaco - Pronounced  (haako)
This is one of the two larger tourist beach towns of Costa Rica. As it is only an hour from the capital it attracts lots of locals (Tico's) as well as the standard fare of international tourists.
The beach is black sand which finds its way into everything. It is only Surfable on high tide, so much of our days involved relaxing at our hostel waiting for the tide to come good.

The guys who owned the hostel (Chris and Claudio) were two chilled out guys who had only bought the place a few months earlier. It was a great place, good food, hammocks in the shady courtyard and clean decent digs for $14 each per night in air conditioning. Beds on Bohio for any one reading, or Papas and Burgers cafe.

This is Ads during low tide

Plenty of board shops and we had a few decent surfs, nothing to go off about, the beach break was not too flash and plenty of time spent waiting for the right wave or short rides on close outs.
One thing I (Ads) was happy about was not losing my ability on the waves, having not surfed much for a few months, in fact I felt like I have been surfing better then ever, even hiring a 6"3 for the days at Jaco which is the smallest board I have ridden yet, (and the size that cos usually rides.) I had a ball on it! I can see why everyone goes to the trouble of bringing boards everywhere. It sucked trying to find the right hire board, I would kill to have my boards here right now. (Coming from the man who threw out his shoes cause he didn't want to carry them!)

This was also where we spend Australia day! We celebrated with our Aus flag themed clothes, beer, beach, sun, surf tomato sauce and nachos... It was about as Australian as you can get in Jaco..

Montezuma
After nearly a week we changed scenery across the gulf of Nicola to a town called Montezuma. We were told it would be chilled out hippie town, which it lived up to. Plenty of long dreaded haired people selling hand woven items off of car bonnets and camping on the beach commune style. It was a very easy going atmosphere. We found a hotel on the beach for $10 each a night, literally under the palms on the sand.

The protected white sand beach was great to just relax and hang around, definitely a place you could lose a month of your life and not care.
We took a short walk to some waterfalls and even managed to catch a movie offered during dinner at one of the local restaurants.

Santa Teresa
Moving on we headed to our next surfing spot. Not having booked we figured on walking around to find some where to stay. Upon arrival we found it a little different, the town is spread along the coast with only a very small central part, there are hotels and hostels for km's just spread out along the beach.
Walking in the sun alongside the dust dirt road we found a place run by an Israeli guy called Gingi. Happy and welcoming we called it home for the next 4 days. Turns out the Israelis had bought up lots of land and businesses a while back when cheap, this is now a major destination for them.
The waves here were nice, 3-4ft easy fun surfing waves, a small crowd but working all day. We both had some fun good surfing here and just enjoyed the warm water and excessive sun. (I, Cos, would just like to claim the top two waves of Santa Teresa, which were awesome! Even Ads was impressed and said my surfing has kicked up a notch. I was stoked! )

This would be a town I would recommend as a holiday destination, though we are hoping to find some better cheaper places further north in the next weeks. Transportation here consisted of plenty of quad bikes, so we took one for a spin for a few days while we had some errands to run. You get over it being fun after a while as all the roads are dirt so its constantly dust and you get it in your eyes mouth clothes everything.

Bandit quad bikers...

We headed back to the capital to line up with an early bus to Nicaragua.....our next stop

What else can I say, not a day spent without a sun drenched palm tree beach, good food, good people good beer. What more do you want?