Em on Nicoya Peninsula

We came straight from the border to Tamarindo, a seaside town on the Nicoya Peninsula (John has covered this with affection I believe, so I will leave it except to say they have the best sushi restaurant in Central America – and I do mean that as a compliment!)

If you want to travel all the way down the Nicoya Peninsula there are two ways to do it: by obscenely expensive private shuttle buses ($40 each to get 30k down the road!!), or by 4x4. We decided to hire a jeep, given that the buses don't even cover the whole peninsula (there are weird gaps between towns, and hitching on these 'roads' isn't possible because nothing less than a 4x4 can do them and no one in their right mind is driving down them anyway). Good old Lonely Planet describes this drive as for the 'adventurous', and given that it's the end of the dry season and the rivers are currently at their lowest level, therefore ford-able, we thought it'd be a really really good idea. According to the Planet, 'For very good reason, the Costa Rican tourist agency recommends against undertaking this journey.'

Five river crossings later – one involving driving 100 yards upriver to find the way out of the river – and four hours of bonecrunching three-metre wide dirt tracks ruttted so badly we might as well have been driving up and down stairs (the hills were vertiginous altitude-sickness inducing rollercoaster inclines with killer bends), we reached the first of the towns on our list, Samara. It was touted as the next-most developed tourist destination after Tamarindo, but as John pointed out, they still had horses on the town football pitch (they still had a football pitch, which obviously obstructs prime beachfront real estate) and the beach was practically empty.

We spent 2 days in Samara, then headed down the coast with no real plan but to end up in Montezuma, praised highly by LP. They must have been on something because we found it expensive, tacky, LOUD (one dodgy disco pounds out crap music at incredible volume all night) and full of crackheads. Plus the beach was little more than a rocky patio and you have to go up or down the coast to surf.

So we set off in the long-suffering 4x4, enjoying the gorgeous countryside (cattle and ranch country, lush with trees on rolling hills, yellow meadows and full of baby horses we had to stop to coo over every few minutes – I could have got two on the backseat but John wouldn't let me). There are no road signs but there's only one road so that's ok. And after a few succesful river fordings we decided it was time for me to have fun with the 4x4 so I did some driving and sploshed through a few rivers myself, which was so much fun!

When we arrived in Tambor, another town given very bad press by the Lonely Planet Fun Police, we were not surprised to find that it was a lovely town with a mile-long empty beach set in a pretty bay. There is one large resort set back in (what used to be) the mangrove swamp, which through ruthless development did a lot of damage to the local ecosystem, and this is why LP bitches about the place, but we didn't even notice the resort until we drove out of town and passed some large gates on the highway, while the 'town' itself has a football pitch and two bars. We hiked down by a waterfall on the beach, walked through the woods to see the howler monkey colony that lives in town and saw the purple and orange crab population explosion.

But what I will always remember about Tambor is that it was where I met Isaac. He was gorgeous; six and a half foot of lean muscle and long legs, with huge brown eyes and dark glossy hair. He was sweet, funny, could wiggle both ears at the same time and would have done absolutely anything to make me happy. He also loved bananas. We spent two perfect mornings together while John waited for me on the beach, and leaving him was tough. But there's no place for a horse his size in my backpack, and I don't think he would have liked aeroplanes.
But seriously, we found a stable at a hotel in Tambor and my knee held up for a couple of treks along the beach and woods with Isaac, and his trainer Elizabeth, a really fun German woman who chainsmoked while we rode and introduced me to the pleasures of drink-driving a horse.