Day 6 started much the same as day 5, it amazes me how the weather outside can sound so wild, yet when you open the curtains everything looks calm and beautiful.
Our journey today takes us from the mountains in Monteverde to the sea at Montezuma, again via minibuses and a boat trip, but this time across the Gulf of Nicoya, the sea we could see from our cabin. The first hour of of the drive took us down the other side of Monteverde, again on a gravel track, the landscape on this side was less lush, but equally as beautiful, with lots of spines coming off the mountains catching the morning light creating great texture and patterns, unfortunately we didn’t get to stop for photos this time. The next part of the journey down to the Panamerican highway was on a smooth road, with lots of flowing turns and gradient changes, it would have been perfect in my MX-5. The last section through Punterenas through to the port gave us a view of non touristy Costa Rica, but I guess a port town isn’t really going to show off the best of a country.
Our driver dropped us off over the road from the port, along with two Canadian yoga teachers we were travelling with, gave us tickets, told us to catch the 11:00 boat and that someone called Luis would be waiting for us at the other end. After a bit of stressing, we got on the only boat that was sailing at 11:00, but without any details of where the boat was going, either on the ticket or boat itself, so it was a tense 15 minutes while we wondered of we were on the right boat. The Gulf of Nicoya was calm for our crossing and the various islands gave me plenty of opportunity to take photographs, so the 70 minute crossing flew by, I even saw a family of rays swimming alongside the boat.
Paqueras where the boat docked was worlds away from Punterenas, just a shack and dock where the road met the sea, we could already tell that we were in a much more relaxed part of the country. As promised, Luis was waiting for us when we disembarked and he dropped us of at our hotel in Montezuma an hour later.
Our room at the Amour de Mar is really nice, panelled with dark wood with a sea view and a five minute stroll to town without any hills. (It has wifi and a large lizard living in the tree outside too.)
After a quick scout around town and some lunch at a shack overlooking the beach we went back to the hotel, to relax in their garden, which had hammocks handily positioned within range of the hotel wifi, which has to be the best way to catch up on twitter/blogs.
I managed to miss the sunset, although with the hotel facing south east, it wouldn’t have been ideal. We’ve got a tip for where we can go to see it better tomorrow, or failing that, Malpais is west facing.