Not sure where to start when writing about Santa Teresa. We ended up staying 2 weeks and having some of the best surf, best laughs and overall good time than anywhere else on the trip!
We got our boat shuttle over from Jaco which was more than slightly disappointing for the price we’d paid. A 6m boat, no lifejackets and angry driver stuffing as many people and backpacks in as possible. AND we had to pay another $10 each for our surfboards! Getting sick of travelling with these things…
Anyway we made the 1 hour trip across the water and was quite cool to see a huge manta ray feeding on the surface (we stopped for a look) and a couple of spotted dolphins. Had a quick lunch in a little soda in Montezuma then into a minivan to Santa Teresa. We rocked up at a hostel called Wavetrotters, run by an Italian guy we’d met in Santa Catalina in Panama. Nice and new place but very noisy and open, not really for us, old blokes that we are.
Checked out the surf and could see a few banks trying to work in the onshore wind and decided to leave it for the evening session and get some food. Also decided immediately that we’d move house tomorrow so wandered about the place to secure better accommodation. Managed to find a nice hostel with cool loft-style dorms at the other end of town and locked that in, also cool to have a look around. Santa Teresa turned out to be a chilled but buzzing town that stretches along the beach for about 5 or 6km.
All fine and not super exciting until we went for a late surf once the wind had dropped off and it was pumping! 3-4 foot, offshore and peaks all up and down the beach! We couldn’t believe how good it was, especially after coming from Playa Hermosa. We surfed until after sunset (no sharks here to worry about thanks to the brutal shark finning industry) then got ourselves some dinner and crashed in bed. Got up at 5am to find it pumping again and got stuck straight in!
Moved house after breakfast up to Cuesta Arriba and so began a 12 day blur of epic early-morning surfs, lying on the beach half the day, more surfing through the afternoon until after sunset, eating at the same place every night because it was so good, nightly card games of Asshole with beer/rum and most of the hostel, a couple of big nights out and swimming in the ocean at 4am. It felt quite exotic too with howler monkeys in the weird spiky trees all around the hostel and iguanas along the path to the beach.
We were really lucky to share our dorm with super cool roomies, Mattea and Jess from Canada. They were great girls, heaps of fun. Most of the people staying in the hostel were cool, something about the slightly quieter vibe meant we ended up with like-minded people staying there and we all got along pretty well. Nearly everyone extended their time there. We’d been planning to stay a few days and go to Tamarindo but the surf was too good to leave. The girls booked a shuttle bus north, then cancelled to extend a bit longer, then booked another then cancelled again. The beach was right in front of us and quite a nice one compared to other places we’d been, everyone said the same from their various travels in Costa Rica. Why leave?
Did I mention the surf was good? We ended up surfing something like 40 hours in 2 weeks and both got some of our best waves of the trip. Not perfect, 300m reef break barrels but ultra-consistent beachies, mostly head high to overhead, with long rides and lots of opportunity to try new things and improve. We both bumped up our skills quite a bit and were shocked on a daily basis at how clean and good the surf was every morning. I managed to smack the back of my leg with my fin after falling off in the middle of a critical turn and going over the falls on top of my board. Ended up not being able to walk too well and stayed out of the water for a day but was ok after that (a day lying on the beach and drinking beers helped). Our biggest problem was (and still is) sea ulcers developing from little cuts on our feet and knees not healing due to constant immersion in the salt water!
Eventually the time came to leave and strangely everyone seemed to leave at the same time. The girls and their travel buddy Justin headed into the mountains, we headed for Nicaragua (along with a few others from the hostel) and a handful of other people scattered in various directions. So much fun but all good things must come to an end.
