The journey to Costa Rica was probably one of the toughest yet. In fact it turned out to be sixteen hours of solid travelling which involved four different buses, a taxi and a ferry. The distance between San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua and Montezuma in Costa Rica isn’t vast and a whole day is plenty, even allowing some slack for border crossings.
Unfortunately all that slack was used up at the Costa Rica border, and then some! All of Nicaragua, it seemed, had decided to cross into Costa Rica that very morning. Couple that with a seriously slow immigration system and you’re looking at a long wait. All we needed was a stamp in our passports, but the Costa Rican immigration has gone all high-tech. They’ve done away with stamps employing the use of computers to print a stamp in your passport instead. Well that’s just superb! It onlt takes about twenty times longer! So this resulted in a queue that snaked around the outside of the building with everyone standing in the mud and rain.
And I’d like to make another point. The only thing worse than standing in a long queue that is not moving, is watching people push in further ahead. And they got away with it, banking on the fact that people out here do not like confrontation. It was frustrating but you cannot police the queue, I told myself. Instead, I thought, I’ll just guard the space in front of us and make sure we stay behind the same people we were behind at the start. A little while later a man appeared, slowly easing his way into the small space in front of us. I pointed out where the queue actually starts and he said he was holding the place for his wife. His wife wasn’t in front of us earlier, I told him and he just smiled in an embarrassed manor. He asked the couple in front to say that he was with them, and they did! Yeah thanks. I wasn’t having that and I told him that we were behind this couple from the start, and that was how it was going to stay. In the end, my persistence won over his cheekiness and he disappeared off into the crowd, allowing my blood to come off the boil and returning to a simmer!
The three hour delay at the border didn’t help progress, and nor did the bus to Puntarenas, which went incredibly slowly – the bus scheduled an hour behind actually caught up with ours! But, by the skin of our teeth, we were on schedule for the last ferry to Paquera. In fact, the schedule had changed and we were two hours early for the last ferry at 8pm.
At least we hadn’t missed the last ferry, but at this rate, we wouldn’t arrive at the hotel until 11pm. While in a café we quickly emailed the hotel to let them know.
After the one and a half hour journey across to the peninsula we bought tickets for the last bus going to Montezuma. Job almost done, or so we thought. The bus drove on and on, until road turned into bumpy track and then track started coming to an end. It was now 11.30pm, and feeling weary, we asked the driver where we were. Far from Montezuma, he answered. We were apparently supposed to change buses at Cobano. How we were supposed to know that, I really don’t know. I lost my temper and told him what I thought – all in Spanish, I surprised myself!
He called a taxi (the very least he could have done) and for a whopping $40, it took us back the way we came and then to our hotel in Montezuma. It was now just past midnight, and the hotel had shut up shop. With no choice (other than sleeping rough) we rang the bell and, lucky old us, awoke the dragon! It was time to put the cherry on the cake of ill fortune!
A woman (it turned out to be the owner) appeared on the balcony, throwing a barrage of swear words our way, in a German accent. Welcome to Hotel Horizontes! After having lit a cigarette, she came down and continued the barrage telling us how rude we were turning up at this hour. The taxi driver hung around to see if he would get another extortionate fair out of us – and in doing so left his engine on, which infuriated her further!
Usually I wouldn’t have taken such abuse, but there really wasn’t much choice in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. With our appologies for getting her out of bed (it wasn’t that late, for heavens sake!) she eventually thawed a little and let us in, though maintaining that our travel woes were all our own fault. Sometimes its funny the people who choose to go into hospitality!
Montezuma itself is a small overpriced beach town. It does have some nice beaches and waterfalls a little inland that feed into the sea. There are plenty of adventure filled trips you can take, just bring plenty of dollars!
Just one tip; avoid the Dragon Lady of Hotel Horizontes and in doing so, you’ll avoid staying in a place inconveniently located 1kM up a very steep hill from the town.
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