We spent spent our last night at Villa Mango B&B. This is a great place, but my predominant memory will be me vomiting up whatever it was that made me sick. I still don't know the culprit, but I am sure it was not the liquor I consumed meeting with a fellow mogger. While that contributed to some early-morning distress, it did not cause the balance of my symptoms. But happily, the worst passed after about 6 hours and I got a reasonable night's rest. Next morning, we loaded and headed out toward Santa Teresa near the end of the Nicoya Peninsula.
We knew
that the road would be lots of dirt, but
it was a really rough ride -- Baja
rough. And it included a number
of jungle river crossings just
for good measure.
The photos below are what we saw.
Rick Chalmers came by the B&B to
say adios. From left to right: Jo (the owner), Rick, and
Bill.
We
passed a number of really nice bays on our route, this one
being Playa Pelada.
Our
little rental 4x4 has been taking a thrashing. In
fact, when I closed the hood from checking engine fluids, the left
plastic cover fell off. But, so far it has done
the job without complaint.
Along
our route we passed this Mercedes 1314 truck. This truck is a 1988,
same year as Thor, but is a 13-ton gross as opposed to
Thor at 10 ton. These guys had nothing but good
things to
say about the truck, having owned it for about 5
years. "No hay problemas". There have been
no problems.
They were happy to show me under the hood, so I showed them
photo of Thor. We bid them Adios and headed on down the road.
They
quickly overtook
me when I stopped at our first river crossing.
This was NOT
on my expected menu with a small rental car. I
watched them carefully noting their path and how far up the wheels the
water came.
After the truck
finished its crossing, we had oncoming traffic, so I got
another chance
to check the depth of the water. We decided we
could do it without getting stuck, so we saddled up, put it
into 4x4 and headed into the water.
Many miles down the road we came to Playa
Carrillo with a
beach and nice palm trees.
The trees next to the beach had these funky seed
pods with a fuzzy coating that carried the seeds away on the breeze.
Further
on we stopped at a bridge that crossed a small river and
spotted these odd trees. The trees were planted and
used as fence posts.
The
old foot bridge had
collapsed. I think it would have been exciting
to use in the rainy season as you surely could not cross
the river when it was running strong.
About
2pm we stopped for lunch at a really nice roadhouse in the
middle of nowhere. The food was good.
The furniture was hand made of slabs of tropical
hardwoods.
The
road ascended the cliffs and we followed the ocean for
many miles. The road was narrow with tight turns.
Yikes,
another river crossing.
On
a number of the
water crossings the exit from the river was not that obvious and we
nearly took
the wrong path.
Yet
another water
crossing.
This
one had a pool of unknown depth, but we forged ahead.
This
happy crew passed us in the mountains.
After 6 hours of ass-busting washboarded road we
were rewarded with a nice room in Santa Teresa. We
just found this place as we drove by and were lucky enough
to get a room.
As
usual, we seem to end up coming into places the hard
way. Santa Teresa is a surfer's paradise and there
were plenty of gringos there, thus the presence of a nice
hotel. Many nice hotels actually, some over $800 a night.
Ours was $120 cash.
The
hotel had a
small pizza restaurant and we found out later it was the
best pizza in town. The pool was right next to the restaurant.
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Photos and Text Copyright Bill Caid 2014 all rights
reserved.
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