The loveliest of lovely girls told us about a town. A town on the beach. A town where she rented an ATV and explored  the peninsula. A town that had a handful of streets and music from every corner. A town that would take a ferry, a bus ride and walk to get to. And so, at 6:00 a.m, leaving my Monteverde haze, we boarded a bus that would take us to the ferry. And saw Julien! Our French friend! At this point, we could not stop laughing. We had never made any plans to meet up, we just kept finding each other. Fate. Destiny. Tourist trail? Who knows.

Frenchman on a ferry

What a wonderful ferry ride! Truly, it was spectacular. And then came the bus. OMG was it ever hot by this time. The bus had no air conditioning. The windows barely went down. We had a few hours of this until we got to Montezuma.

Not a bad way to spend a few hours

Julien had heard of a hostel and he was trekking out to find it. I walked by the first hostel from the bus stop that said pancake breakfast and I called it home. An old wooden structure, with an open patio space, a shared kitchen, a snuggly cat and the most bad-ass woman I’ve met awaited us at the Downtown Montezuma Hostel. Elena rides around on her ATV, and she is always available to chat and give advice. Stay here. And ironically, we had just missed the four French boys we had been following all over Costa Rica. Like I said, we didn’t do much here. Just relaxed. So just pictures.

Just beauty. So much.

One of the things I will say about Montezuma – don’t be fooled by the number of hostels on online booking sites. When we checked, there was only a handful but that doesn’t quite represent the actual number of hostels. There are dozens. Tons and tons. Just show up, walk around and I am sure you will find one.

I could have spent forever here

Since it’s literally a three street town, we found Julien in the ocean! And proceeded to take a picture of him! In which he got angry with me. But you know, what are the chances! We ended up hanging out with him quite a lot and quite saddened to realize this was the last time we were to bump into each other. The next day, he made it to San Jose to fly to France.

He is NOT impressed with me. Mostly because I am a creep.

Besides walks on the beach, treks through the town and hammock hanging with Molly, we went hiking to find a waterfall. We swam a bit and watched people jump from the top. I am clearly not that brave. But it was a beautiful little spot. We headed out one night to a night of karaoke! And like I said, i find French people everywhere I go. Some of the girls staying in our hostels, awesome girls from Montreal and Quebec city, ended up sitting in the common area of the hostel and chatted and drank until the very early morning. We chatted about boys, life, adventures and told them they MUST absolutely go to Monteverde and stay at Casa Tranquilo.

Sick ride yo

And then the day we rented an ATV. We drove around the peninsula, stopping at quite a few beaches and running through the ocean. Which by the way is my favourite thing to do in an ocean. Or one of them anyways.

Beaches of Costa Rica – a photo series

Trees and oceans – what more can you need

The beach seemed like it extended forever. It was just stunning. We ATVed on the coast and then on the way back, drove through the quiet farm streets and then dropped off the ATV. We had plans. We were off to Jaco to meet up with Julia! And guessed how we did it?

This is our ride!

BOAT TAXI! It was certainly not the cheapest way. But it was the quickest. A 45 minute ride got us all the way across. The cheapest way would have been to take a bus, then a ferry, than another bus. This way was better.

Took a picture of my phone. Phone dying. Camera fully charged. Brilliant.