Montezuma

(21 – 23 Jan)

After leaving early morning from Jaco we had a 1.5 hour drive to get to the ferry, which left at 9:00. We were not able to secure tickets online, so we had to arrive early, queue and hope there were enough tickets available.

We arrived in good time and were greeted with a long queue, but the ferry was quite big with upper and lower decks for cars. So luckily tickets were not a problem. It is possible to drive to Montezuma instead of taking a ferry, but that would mean a 3 or 4 hour drive instead of a 1 hour ferry trip.

We disembarked on the other side after a comfortable trip, and started the 1 hour drive to Montezuma.

The landscape and scenery had totally changed. We went from a relatively developed area on the mainland side to tropical vegetation with steep hilly roads and rural farmlands with palms, mangoes and banana trees. This was a little bit more like what we had expected of Costa Rica.

The roads were mostly tarred, and it was a pleasant drive in the little Jimny, although he struggled up some of the steeper hills.

According to Google Maps, we missed a turnoff on the way. It was a narrow dirt road which was fairly well hidden so we just went past. As we drove on to find a place do a u-turn, we arrived at a roadworks/stop-go. Just as we had turned around, Google had updated its ‘preferred route’ to continue through the stop-go.

We decided to go with the dirt road as we had already turned around and didn’t feel like sitting in traffic and potentially more stop-go’s. And we had a 4wd, so time to stretch its legs.

(This was our first issue with Google Maps, albeit minor. It seems to really lag in Central America and takes a while to readjust routes. And it’s route selection can be ‘questionable’)

Driving on the dirt road was fun and scenic. It was just a standard dirt road easily conquered by a normal vehicle, but at least the jimny was getting a bit dirty. We both joked sarcastically about how glad we were that we had a 4wd, trying to justify our choice of vehicle.

We got back onto the tar road a few km before reaching Montezuma. We were too early to check in at our accommodation so we headed into town to check it out, see the beaches and get some lunch. The town is really small, but had a nice holiday/beach vibe to it. It was peak season and the weather was great.

Montezuma is still a bit under the radar as a tourist destination (for now), so it was not as busy as some other places in peak season, which was lovely.

We found a nice, rustic restaurant for lunch looking over one of the beaches and had decent food and caipirihnas.

We chilled on the beach for a while and swam in the Pacific ocean. The water temperature was awesome.

After lunch it was time to check in.

We drove out of town up the steep hill (with the most intense corkscrew chicane bend we’ve ever seen) and turned onto a dirt road to our accommodation.

This road was a bit more hardcore than the road earlier and we would not want to drive our own car (non 4wd) through the last 100m to the accommodation. It probably wouldn’t make it. But luckily we had jimny, so it was no problem. We added this to our score card for justifying our decision on the 4wd.

The accommodation for the next 2 nights was great. The rooms were nothing fancy, but they had all the necessities. And the guesthouse had a bar, some nice sun loungers and daybeds, and an amazing pool with incredible views. The property was just outside of the town on a hill overlooking the town and the ocean. And the pool held the prime position.

We overheard the manager tell one of the other guests about a new restaurant in town that was supposed to be good. As we had no plans for dinner we headed into town with half information to look for this restaurant. We manged to find it and enjoyed a lovely evening with great food!

We woke early the next morning to watch the sun rise over the pool, and were not disappointed. It seems the whole guesthouse was laid out in such a way for the pool to take advantage of this view daily.

After watching the sunrise, we went back to bed and re-emerged at a more reasonable time.

We went to town for some breakfast and then decided to go exploring. Costa Rica has a lot of waterfalls scattered all over, so we decided to go see the one close to Montezuma which was a 10min drive and 15min hike.

There are 3 waterfalls that you can visit at Montezuma, although we only visited 2. The highest one has a small waterfall into a pool that you can jump into. The jump is about 4 or 5m. The middle waterfall is quite hidden and we didn’t actually even know about it until afterwards.

The lower waterfall is a lot more impressive than the top one, at about 25m high. It is one of the main attractions in the area so there were quite a lot of people. The water was a fair bit cooler than the ocean, but a nice temperature to refresh after the short hike. There is a small jump of about 4m into this pool, but 1 or 2 people were jumping from near the top of the big waterfall, so about 20m up, even though they do say that this is not allowed.

It was very relaxing swimming under the waterfall and chilling, watching people swim and jump. Some people had hiked down with cooler boxes of beer and someone had brought a speaker to play some chilled reggae type music.

After the waterfall we had no plans, so we decided to drive to Santa Teresa, another beach town about 40min away, for lunch.

On the way there we encountered more roadworks, so we were detoured about an extra 30min drive on gravel. The road was actually in pretty good condition, apart from a few really steep inclines and a watercrossing, more points for jimny!

Santa Teresa is more well known and busier than Montezuma. It also seemed to be a bit of a surfing destination (a mixture of Jeffrey’s Bay during the billabong comp and Tulum that we had passed through on our Mexico travels), although the waves didn’t look great.

We found a trendy restaurant across from the beach and had some lunch and more caipirinhas.

The town stretches along quite a few km’s of beach front, so there are many different little beaches that you can stop at. We stopped at a few of them on the way back to take in some of the views.

Our lunch was decent and we’d stopped for ice cream on the way back, so we decided to spend the evening at the guesthouse bar, have a few drinks and plan the next week or two of our trip.

The next day we would be leaving early and heading back to the mainland to head up to La Fortuna in the rainforest.