Saturday, July 23, 2016

Day 154 - Relaxed queuing

Monteverde to Montezuma

Our time in the mountains had come to an end so we spent the morning driving to Punta Arenas, where we were to catch the ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya. We planned to catch the 2pm ferry, but as we arrived around 11:30 we thought we had plenty of time to check out the town and get some lunch.

First thing we needed to do though was to check to make sure the ferry time was correct - lucky we did, because there was already a long line of cars all the way along the esplanade waiting to board. We had to drive around again to find the end of the queue a long way back, and it was very hot by this time as well.

The ticketing system is unusual, drivers have to wait for a staff member to come to your car and give you a laminated card, only then can you go to the ticket office to buy your ticket. Then once you have your ticket, you need to wait near your car until it's time to move.
Queuing for the ferry (that's our car)
We were fairly lucky that our part of the queue was across the road from quite a nice restaurant/pub where we could cool down with a drink while keeping watching on the car. Enterprising locals were serving food and drink along the way, so lunch was some quite nice pork kebabs with tortillas cooked on a barbeque on the footpath.

We had our ferry tickets and were in the pub finishing our drinks around 12:45pm when we saw the car line starting to move, so M sprinted to the car to drive it on to the ferry, while K sorted out the bill and met him at the entrance of the boat.

The hour or so trip on the pretty packed ferry to Paquera on the Nicoya Peninsula was very pleasant, and from there we drove to the small beach town of Montezuma and checked into our house on the hill overlooking the beach.

The house we had booked ended up having three bedrooms with a huge upstairs veranda, with plenty of comfy chairs and a hammock, as well as a great kitchen and eating area downstairs. The house was similar in style to what we'd call a Queenslander back home.



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