The Long Quest for Love, Surf and Yoga in Santa Teresa

20 December 2010

The Long Quest for Love, Surf and Yoga in Santa Teresa

I quickly dressed and gathered my belongings together after my 4:45am alarm went off. The sleeping man at the front desk got up and called me a cab to get me to the bus station. About 10 minutes later I was arriving at the Coca Cola station where I would board the 6am bus to Santa Teresa or Montezuma…I hadn’t quite decided yet where I would land.

I found the bus station quietly busy at that early hour. The city was not as loudly humming as it had been last night, but there was a good amount of food traffic outside. It wasn’t really much of a station, more like a bus depot. I knew I must have found the bus to the hippie surf area when I spotted a white girl with blonde dreadlocks standing nearby. She confirmed that this would be the area where the bus would arrive in about 45 minutes. I decided that food was in order now that I had time to spare.

Across the street from the bus depot I spotted a basic café filled with Costa Rican travelers. I sat down at the table closest to the open kitchen and was quickly approached by an older man hunched over with osteoporosis. He asked me what I wanted. I said, “Heuevos and café.” He seemed to ask me what I wanted to go with that, but unfortunately most of the Spanish vocabulary I know pertains mainly to vaginas. I nodded my head and figured I wouldn’t have much issue eating whatever the man brought me. The coffee was served immediately. He plopped a spoonful of powdered milk into it before giving it to me. Following coffee came a plate full of buttery scrambled eggs and slices of dry bread. I hungrily ate it up.

By the time I had finished my breakfast and gotten over to the bus stop, I realized that the line was already very long. It seemed that half of San Jose and all the tourists were heading where I was. As I got in the back of this line at least 60 people deep, I started to feel frustrated that I had arrived at the bus station so early but yet might not even get on the bus at all. The man in front of me was clearly not Costa Rica with his long blonde hair and enormous surfboard bag. “So are we getting on this bus or not?” I asked him. He said that he wasn’t sure either and if we did miss the bus, the next one wasn’t until 2pm. Turns out that this guy lives in Costa Rica so I trusted his words.

The bus drivers cut the line off about 4 people before I was finally about to board the bus. There was a lot of discussion between the bus drivers in Spanish and they eventually pointed us to the next bus over, luckily for us, they had a second bus.

It was a two and a half hour bus ride from San Jose to the town of Paquera. When we arrived, we all disembarked from the bus and waited about 20 minutes to board a ferry boat across the bay which would take another hour. I sat with the long blonde haired man on the ferry ride over and we talked to pass the time. His name was Alex and he was an artist. When I asked where he was from, he said, “All over.” He had grown up in Florida, Houston and Southern California and lived and traveled other places. His mother was Cuban and his dad was French. He had moved to Costa Rica to do his art and surf the good waves. He currently resided in a border down just north of Panama but was headed to the town of Mal Paìs for some Christmas surfing.

As the ferryboat chugged along, we talked about our travels. He showed me pictures of his artwork, which were very colorful beach inspired murals and paintings. Recently, he had been traveling to different cities around the US to paint his art on Ugg boots in stores. Alex gave me his recommendations about places to visit in the southern Nicoya peninsula. He suggested I try out Santa Teresa and stay at a place called Casa Zen. The man had lived here for nearly a decade, so I figured I would follow his lead and the specific directions he gave.

When the ferry finally docked, we found our bus waiting for us on the other side. The journey wasn’t over yet; we still had another hour and a half to reach the town of Cobana, which was the entry point to the nearby surf towns. The buses don’t move very fast on these mountainous and trench-filled dirt roads. I took my final bus ride of the day from Cobana to Santa Teresa just as the rain started falling. It was the shortest ride of all: only about 15 minutes. I saw the blonde, dreadlocked haired Canadian girl on the bus again, and she described where I would find Casa Zen. When I spotted the painted sign of a Buddha, I knew I had arrived.

The rain was falling hard when I left the bus so I jogged the rest of the way down the soupy road to the entrance of Casa Zen. Nestled under thatched roofed huts and open-air buildings, I found the hippie enclave of Casa Zen. I asked the woman at the bar if there were any available rooms. She looked through her books and then unfortunately informed me that the only room they had was an apartment meant for 4 people with a price of $85 a night. Now this is not really an expensive room by American standards, but I was in Costa Rica and I knew I could find a better deal. I told her that I would think about it while I ate lunch at their restaurant.

Before I said anything else, she was on the phone with another hostel in town, trying to find me a spare room. When she got off the phone, she happily informed me that her friend Jonnie, who she just “looooved,” had a free bed in a dorm room. I decided that for $12, I would take it and I settled in to eat my lunch of brown rice, beans, avocado and pico de gallo.

This woman, Tiff, working the bar and managing the hostel turned out to be great lunchtime entertainment. She was a thin and fast moving woman with sleeve tattoos on both arms as well as most other places on her body. She flitted around the kitchen in tiny shorts, taking food orders, delivering food, all while playing with the boom box and fixing her hair and makeup. She turned the music up when a particular song came on, “Oh my god! This is my favorite Tears for Fears song! I love it!” she said, before rocking out to the music.

A woman approached her at the bar, and they had a very excited conversation in Spanish. There was hugging and squealing in high-pitched voices. When Tiff returned to the bar she told me, “Oh my god! I think I am going to cry! I am so happy!” “Yes,” I said, “it looked like you got some good news.” To which she replied, while wiping tears out of her eyes, “Yes! That woman I was talking to makes the best bikinis in town! They don’t fall of while you are surfing and the actually make me look like I have an ass…and she is going to make a bikini for me! Oh my god, I am going to cry! I need to start making some earrings to give her back as a gift.” I never saw anyone get so excited about a bikini.

I soon realized that Tiff was one big ball of manic energy. Everyone and everything she talked about was “awesome” and she just “looooved” it. Everyone was also like her family or her best friend, the men at the tattoo parlor were her family. The cab driver was her favorite person ever. She wanted me to tell Jonnie, the hostel owner where I’d later stay, that she “loves him sooooooo much.” I asked her if she ever hated anyone. She giggled and said, “No! Oh wait…there are some ex-boyfriends in this town actually…”

I stuck around Casa Zen for an hour and a half yoga class for $8. It was located in an open-air room on the second story above Tiff’s bar. There were hammocks hanging overt the yoga floor. The teacher was clearly an American expat. She did a good job teaching a class to about five of us, however I could still hear Tiff yapping away downstairs throughout.

When class was over, I walked about half a mile down the main road in Santa Teresa to meet Jonnie and check into the Don Jon hostel. The road was a mess of puddles and slimy mud. As I walked down the road I was passed by countless ATVs carrying bikini clad women and shirtless men with surfboards on the back. I walked by surf supply stores and many a tattoo parlor.

Finally I found Don Jon hostel and was welcomed with the sounds of Bob Marley playing overhead. I met Tiff’s Jonnie, who seemed like he’d smoked so much marijuana in his day that he had lost his ability to make and quick or sudden movements. There were a cat and dog lazily lounged in the reception area that looked as if they had profited from years of second hand smoke and so were equally as lethargic. Jonnie took my $12 and showed me to my room. On the way, he told me to be careful with my belongings at the beach, “There has been some delinquency,” he said. I asked him if it was safe to leave my stuff unattended in the room. To that he replied, “Yes! Your roommates are Norwegian.” Oh, the trust worthy Scandinavians.

The room was basic but clean. Jonnie showed me to one of the lower bunk beds and handed me some sheets. I didn’t linger in the room very long. It was already after 4pm and I wanted to take a run on the beach since it wasn’t too hot that day. If I didn’t get going, it would be dark before I got very far. It took me about 10 minutes to find a path down to the beach. The views were pretty amazing when I stepped out of the jungle path and onto the sand. The beach seemed to stretch on for miles in either direction. I would find out just how many miles, as I intended to run about 10 miles if I could. Running on sand is definitely more exhausting then the dirt paths and paved roads to which I am accustomed. I was able to find packed sand in most areas, but my legs were feeling the extra work. It was also about 75F and humid out, which I should be used to from living in Texas, but nonetheless I was not moving at my normal pace.

It was certainly one of the most scenic runs I had ever taken. I watched the waves break along the beach. Crabs scampered out from holes in the sand. Surfers bobbed up and down in the ocean. Mist rose from the jungle along the shore. Beach goers walked along the coast with children splashing through tide pools. The scents and smells along the way were also amazing. The aromas of tropical flowers were intoxicating; some smelled of citrus, others were like gardenia or jasmine. In one area there was a fire burning. Every so often I would smell another kind of smoke, from the surfer guys smoking marijuana along the beach. And of course there was the smell of sea air.

I ran on for about 3.5 miles and the sun was getting pretty low in the sky. The beach was also getting narrower and more rugged. I had run out of beach and sunlight a bit earlier than I’d have liked, so I turned back. When I had retraced those 3.5 miles, the sun had completely set. If it weren’t for the full moon in the sky, I would have been in complete darkness. There were a few others late to leave the beach as well, but it was pretty deserted. I had a feeling it might be difficult to find the same path I had taken out to the beach in darkness. Everything sort of looked the same during the day, let alone at night. I kept on walking down the beach, looking for some landmarks I’d remembered. I had gone quite a ways and nothing looked familiar anymore so I knew I had gone too far. Luckily I found a well-light hotel beach area and cut through their property to get back to the street. When I reached the street, I realized that I had definitely walked well past my hostel, but at least I knew where I was.

After a refreshingly cold shower, as hot water is not offered at many hostels, I was ready for dinner. I invited my Norwegian roommates to join me at a café called Rendez Vous just a few meters down the road. The café was run by a young French couple and I had a delicious crepe filled with cheese and spinach and some kind of tropical fruit drink. It was a relaxed and cozy café where some people sat on laptops, and others practiced their musical instruments. I heard more about the Norwegians. They had been traveling for about 6 weeks in Costa Rica, and clearly the girl was ready to go home. She said that it had been raining too much and it was making her depressed. I reminded her that in Norway it was dark and freezing. She said, “Yes, but I love the snow!” She was a chef and worked on the ships the left out of Bergen. She’d cook for the men on the ship for about 4 weeks and then return to home for a 4 week break. It sounded liked a pretty good gig. Her companion, Ivan, was some kind of mechanic in Norway.

We also met a young married couple in the café from Texas who had just moved down to Santa Teresa. The guy said that he had a job in security which allowed him to travel a lot and work from anywhere in the world. I asked him why they moved to Costa Rica. He said there were a few reasons. For starters, he wanted his wife to go back to school to get some kind of masters in education. She wasn’t as keen on this idea. So he suggested that they could move to another country and she could work on her degree there. She agreed. So they looked into some different places in Central America. He said they liked Costa Rica because many people spoke English, there were direct flights back to Texas, and a good education and high literacy rate and, at least for Latin America. They had just arrived to their new home in Santa Teresa. They were renting a two bedroom house, just off the main street, for about $800 a month. He said that eventually they would move inland, closer to the beautiful volcano, Mt Aranal, where they could have an even bigger house for only $400 per month. I was starting to understand why so many expats have settled in Costa Rica. I was enjoying the company of all of these friendly travelers, but I was ready for bed. I had decided that catching up on sleep was going to high on my list of priorities while on vacation and my bed was calling.