Beach bums in Montezuma

We've spent the last few days in Montezuma, a hippy beach town on the southern tip of the Nicoya peninsular. On our drive down from the cloud forests, we finally got a good view of the monkeys we'd heard howling on numerous occasions, just on the edge of the road (transpires you don't need to go to the national parks to see the wildlife here - our best sitings of sloths, snakes and monkeys were all on the side of roads, with tourist bus drivers our helpful spotters!).

Following an early start, we reached Puntarenas in very good time, joining a long and slightly disorganised queue to get the ferry across the gulf of Nicoya. Thankfully we made it on to the next ferry, for a very pleasant crossing (much more pleasant than the bumpy roads that had preceded).
Montezuma itself was pretty much as expected - a ram-shackle town full of beach bums/surfers/hippies - we obviously blended right in! We were staying just out of town, up and down some very steep, bumpy roads (anyone noticing a trend?!), and across a very narrow bridge, and despite pretty average directions, we managed to find our accommodation with only a couple of wrong turns (a name on the gate would have been helpful). However, we can certainly forgive the directions, as the cabin was perfect - a bed with a view out to sea, the small but well equipped kitchen, an outside shower, a nice little terrace and a stunning view from the top of the cliff - we both immediately knew we'd want to make as much use of it as possible over the next few days:

Peter, the owner, had a lovely labrador, who quickly made herself acquainted with us...and was relatively well behaved (as an aside, if you don't like dogs, Costa Rica isn't for you - they are everywhere - every house seems to have one, plus lots of strays, several on the beaches, etc, etc)
One morning, we woke to hear something on our roof making a racket. We wondered whether it might be one of the dogs - but upon closer investigation (a little later) - turned out to be a pretty decent sized iguana:

Our days in Montezuma were filled with (very) long walks along the beaches (with a random dog obediently walking alongside us for about an hour of one of them), regular swims in the delightfully warm sea and some good quality time with our kindles.

We also had regular fly-overs from well organised flocks of birds:

And nice sunsets (although the pictures make them look slightly better than they were...)

Having celebrated UK new year over Skype with our friends that were at Sarah & George's house, we wandered down into town, to find a street party in full flow, complete with some pretty amazing fire dancers, and the obligatory free-style firework display to welcome in 2014 (we're not sure which was more risky, that, or Hamish's attempts at Sophie and Jamie's wedding)

Having struggled to drag Sam out of the sea on our final morning, we were eventually on our way back to Liberia to catch a flight early the next morning. The drive was a little eventful - an early wrong turn (signposts are pretty few and far between in many places) led to a(nother) longish drive through Costa Rican countryside, and another river crossing - with Sam needing to add 'river depth checking' to her other roles as navigator, DJ and waiter:

That evening, we enjoyed a good typico Costa Rican meal in a soda (basic local cafe) in Liberia town centre - an appropriate end to our brief but very good trip round northern Costa Rica.