Experience the best of Santa Teresa

Santa Teresa stretches for several kilometres along a single road behind a wide beach on the southern part of the Nicoya Peninsula, in Costa Rica's Puntarenas province. Steady beach breaks have made it a surfing base, and the neighbouring village of Mal País shares the same coast. Forest runs down almost to the sand, the beach faces west for sunsets, and tide pools appear among the rocks at low water.

At the peninsula's southern tip, Cabo Blanco Absolute Nature Reserve, the country's first protected area, has forest trails down to a quiet beach. Montezuma, east around the cape, has waterfalls and rock pools, and a ferry from Paquera crosses the Gulf of Nicoya to Puntarenas. Howler monkeys, whose roars carry through the trees at dawn, are common here.

Beach cafés serve ceviche, fresh fish, gallo pinto, a mix of rice and black beans, and casados, a plate of rice, beans, plantain and meat or fish, with fruit smoothies to follow. The dry season runs from December to April, and the green season from May brings showers in the afternoons.