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Playa Santa Theresa
The white sand uncorrupted by development Well, what a few weeks! The title sums up my feelings of what have been some of the best weeks of my life for many reasons. But just to keep you all in suspense for a little while longer, I'll return to where my last blog finished. After Nicaragua, I had my last week of classes in Heredia and it was a fairly uneventful week with the highlights being two 'Intercambios', where I spent an hour with local Costa Ricans who are learning English and we spent half an hour each speaking in English and Spanish. I was most impressed with myself over how well it went!
After that, it was a week off for most of the country for Semana Santa (Easter) and I headed away to the beach, specifically to Playa Santa Theresa where I planned to learn to surf and generally chill out and get rid of my English tan. All three had ticks in the boxes by the end of the week!
On the bus down there, I met two Aussie guys and two Tico girls and ended up hanging around with them for most of the week. The beach was stunningly beautiful and it
is no exaggeration when I say I didn't see a meaningful cloud there over the week. Each day followed a similar routine of: get up to surf for a couple of hours, chill on the beach until about 11.30 until it got too hot (40 odd degrees every day), head back to the hostel to chill out in the hammocks until about 3. Surf/chill on the beach again in the afternoon and watch the most beautiful of sunsets before chilling at the hostel for a few drinks. As I said, Paradise.
About halfway through the week, the routine was broken slightly when I met the first Kiwi I have seen on the trip. He had a car so we made a day trip to Montezuma and attacked the waterfalls again. It came out a draw as I jumped the 12-15m high one, but it knocked out a contact lense in the process and my spares were back in Heredia with my big pack. Two weeks with one eye!
But I loved Santa Theresa and by the end I could stand up quite regularly in the fairly vicious surf! Photos tell the rest of the story of Santa Theresa
Sunset #1
It was like this every night. I know this because I went to watch every one! and then it was the mission of a trek to Samara, despite being only about 2 hours away along the coast, the road is so bad, buses don't go along it. I spent 12 hours getting there in this order, bus, ferry, ferry, hitchhike in back of jeep, taxi, taxi. An expensive and long day!
But my disappointment ended there as my homestay was right on the beach and it turned out to be a fabulous little town which was nowhere as touristy as I had feared.
My first week of classes here went pretty well and it helped that I knew several people from the Heredia school who had come down as well. As you will be able to see from some of the photos, the school was in prime position, and despite a minor ear infection, I used the beach to my best advantage. I also tried a lot more of the extra curricular activities like yoga and movies in Spanish. As there isn't a whole lot to do in the town except for the beach, there are a lot of nights out, which I took advantage of a little bit in the first week.
After a quiet weekend, the second week was phenomenal fun and I was sad to leave by the end of it! I had made quite a few friends throughout the town, and it was through a couple of these I met a girl who had just started a week of Spanish lessons, Lee from New York. We hit it off straight away and spent most of the next 5 days together. The weather was starting to turn slighty towards the rainy season so with the humidity we were treated to some amazing lightning storms out at sea.
On Friday, it was the last day of classes and I had my 'graduation' where I gave a little speech in Spanish. After that, we were at a bit of a loss of what to do without homework, so Lee and I made the trek to the end of the beach and back which took about 4 hours! We saw some cool stuff and I had a lot of fun teasing her about crocodiles and other animals that could have been lurking anywhere.
On my last day and Samara, Lee and I headed to the beach where we met up with
the others and spent the day surfing and chilling in the sun. Our last night in Samara, we had a couple of drinks before calling it a night early before our early bus the next morning. Lee had a couple of days in San Jose before meeting a friend and heading down to Panama for a friend's wedding so we walked around and I showed her Heredia before we had dinner back at the homestay. It was another relatively early night as I had to get up at 4am to get to the airport for my flight to Colombia.
So before the sun had even risen in the morning, it was a bleary eyed goodbye to Lee and Costa Rica as I finally touch down into South America for the next leg of my trip! Next stop Colombia!
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