On our first day in SJDS, my travel buddy Aimee and I noticed the Jesus statue at the top of the hill on the northwest end of the beach and decided that we wanted to walk up there one day.   The short hike is meant to take about 45 minutes from town, so we left the hostel around 4:15pm in order to arrive before sunset and before they closed (official hours are 8am-5pm, but I think it’s more or less adjusted for the sunset time, we had heard from others that they close at 6pm)  We were both wearing flip flops, but I had brought my Nikes in my backpack.   A local had told me a few days before that you can walk along the beach and once you pass the white hotel with the red roof, you need to exit the beach and then follow the streets all the way up. But for some reason, I forgot about this advice or just chose to ignore it. I guess I figured we could exit somewhere else. We kept walking all the way to the end of the beach where we were met with a rocky shore and what looked like a closed hotel or vacation property. There were two security guards at the gate to the hotel. “Pasamos por aqui?” I asked him, pointing at the hotel, wondering if we could pass through the grounds to get to the other side.   They asked if we were going to the statue, we said yes, and one of them pointed at the rocky shore leading around the hotel and said we could go around that way. We thanked them. Without looking back at them, knowing Continue Reading