Montezuma

Edit: ... And now for a real entry. (ahem-hem-hem)

More Pictures

Costa Rica is so beautiful. We arrived in Montezuma Friday afternoon after a long bus-ferry-bus-another bus ride, and we did so much in just the first day and a half that I felt we'd been there for a week. On the ferry there, I chatted with a Tico and watched for ocean animals. There were schools of manta rays and several flying fish, but no dolphins. It rained in the afternoon on Saturday and felt very peaceful.

When we arrived, after the final bus ride (a school bus rolling down a steep, winding road with potholes a foot deep every few feet), the first order of business was finding a hotel. I just wanted to grab a bed in the first one we saw, right by the bus station, but Adam and the others wanted to look around a little bit. Courtney, Lyssa, Ainsley and Sean had reservations at some hotel, but they didn't know if they could find it. Adam and I ended up at a hostel called Cabinas del Toucan, which was okay but had flat mattresses. It was close to town and only $10 a night, so it worked for me. The others ended up at a nicer hostel called Hotel Lucy, in a 4-person room with a bunk and a double bed. Hotel Lucy was further from town, but still just a short walk along the beach, and had nice beds, places to sit (including hammocks), and a kitchen for guests to use. I stayed there the second night.
This street is one of two (you can see, it crosses) in town.

After finding hotels, everyone was starving. Adam and I were still waiting for the others to get back from searching for their reserved hotel, so we went to a little cafe called Pizza Connection and had casado and a cheeseburger. The cheeseburger wasn't very good, because they put three huge slices of the white cheese they use for everything here, and the cheese didn't melt - it just slid off the burger. It was very messy. Adam seemed to like his casado. After lunch, we went looking for the others, since we had seen Sean and Courtney pass the restaurant and figured they must have found a place to stay. We walked down the eastern beach for a while, realized they weren't there, turned around and checked the western beach, and at the rocky edge of the western beach found the rest of the group. They took us back to see their hotel, and then started getting ready to go out.

I imagine this is normal for most people, but their idea of "getting ready" seemed strange to me: not just showering and putting on somewhat nice clothes for dancing, but also drinking (among them) about half of a very large bottle of Vodka, mixing it with juices and soda water. They wanted to try to see me drunk, even though I warned them it would probably be very boring since I tend to get sleepy even with a tiny bit of wine, so I took one shot of vodka (and sure enough, became extremely sleepy and had no more). We went to the only club in town a little while later.

The club was very loud, but I found that I didn't mind. A few people were on the dance floor, but not that many. The group went to get some drinks, and I stood by the dance floor sort of swaying to the beat. A few seconds after Courtney and Ainsley started dancing (drinks in hand), one of the guys who had been dancing to start with came and pulled me out onto the floor. He twirled me around a few times with a big grin on his face, then let me go dance by myself (I think he continued pulling people in). Soon the whole place was dancing. I danced by myself with the girls for a while, until we got too hot and went to sit down. While sitting, another guy came and took my hand to go dance, and I went, thinking it would be as fun and casual as the last one. Instead, this guy kept trying to pull me in really close to him, even after I repeatedly made it obvious that I wanted to stay relatively apart, so I ended up stopping, glaring at him, and following Adam off the dance floor when I saw him coming with two beers from the bar.
The whole group got back on the dance floor for a few minutes a little while later, and then we all went outside to cool off. This was fine with me, since I was getting really tired again and wanted to leave (but not by myself). Adam didn't want to wait in line to use the restroom in the club, so he ran off down the beach to go pee on the rocks. The rest of us waited for him and chatted for a few minutes, and then decided to go back inside to use the restrooms ourselves. We yelled a few times for Adam to hurry up, and then went inside. When we left again, this time to go home, Adam had found Sean at the bathroom and caused a ruckus - he kicked the door that Sean was holding, cutting Sean's hand, and yelled at him, and then disappeared again. When we got back to my hotel (the others were dropping me off on the way to theirs), Adam was there, and there was some more yelling. Everyone went to bed mad. In the morning, Adam decided to go back home.

On Saturday, we all slept in until about 7:30, and I met up with the group at Hotel Lucy at 8:30 to get breakfast. I ate some cheap granola bars and a box of Froot Loops, the others had sandwiches. Then we went to the waterfalls.
The hike to the waterfalls was intense. Rather than simply walking along a trail, maybe with a little incline now and again, we were clambering over tree roots alongside (and often in) the river. We were jumping from rock to rock, balancing on moss-covered stones, and often wondering if we were even still on the trail. There was a packed, obvious trail at times - just often enough to keep us going, really. We took a wrong turn once, and climbed up a slow cascade on some round, rough boulders. It wasn't until we got to the top and turned to take pictures that we saw the trail we had turned away from.
The first waterfall was beautiful, of course, and impressive in the dangerous way that the water tumbled over jutting rocks into the pool at our feet. It was hot enough that we were tempted to go for a swim, but we decided to wait until we found the upper falls, where we had heard there was a swimming hole and it would be safe to jump in from the rocks. Unfortunately, it seemed the trail had run out. The only way to go was up a nearly vertical hill - and this would only be possible if we held onto tree roots for dear life. Up we went, and several times I thought we must be going the wrong way - how could such a dangerous path be considered a hiking trail? About halfway up, we had a really nice view of a .. I suppose another cascade .. water was flowing over one very large boulder, but not splashing, just running down like the artificial waterfalls in casinos. Eventually, the climb opened up to a packed trail again. It was the right way after all! After another twenty minutes of wandering through the jungle, we found the upper falls. We had to climb down another steep set of tree roots (this time, mercifully assisted by a rope), and then we were standing on top of the middle fall.

The uppermost fall was fairly small - only about three-four meters, and people were jumping from it into the pool. A group on a canopy tour had stopped to rest and play in the pool, and their guides were doing some crazy stunts using the rope swing. I jumped (well, more like slowly slid) into the water and paddled over to the swing, since I didn't want to climb up the rocks to jump from the upper fall. I definitely didn't want to jump the ten meter high middle fall, though it was safe (we saw some other people jump later on). It turned out that using the rope swing also involved a slight climb up the slippery rocks, but it wasn't unsafe as long as you were attentive to your feet. The hardest part was holding onto the rope while climbing up. Once up and standing, all there was to do was to hold on with one hand, jump, grab the knot in the rope that I couldn't quite reach from standing, hold on as the rope swung me over the pool with surprising speed, and let go before the rope swung back toward the rocks. It was exhilarating, and I swung in several times. Eventually, I landed wrong, got a nose full of water, and stopped. I watched the others swing and jump in a few times, and after about forty-five minutes, we headed back up (and down) the crazy trail. We stopped at the lower falls to play in that pool for a few minutes, and then headed back to town. By the time we had climbed/hiked/waded back to the main road, we were scraped and exhausted, but very happy.

We ate lunch at a restaurant on the edge of town. While we were waiting for our order to arrive, a wild spider monkey appeared in the tree just next to the outdoor patio where we were seated. Naturally, tourists that we are, we took a lot of pictures (well, the others did. I didn't have my camera). One of the waiters came out with some cut bananas, and soon about twenty monkeys appeared. Some were mothers with infants clinging to their backs, one was clearly the pack leader (bigger and furrier than the rest), and many more were just ordinary monkeys. The waiter kept putting bananas out for them, and then bread, and later granola, and they put on quite a show for us, jumping in the trees, chasing each other, taking as much as they could hold and more, fighting over a stolen bag with a banana in it, and screeching. The food was pretty good, too. (Ironically, the restaurant had posted a huge sign that said "Please do not feed the monkeys" just under where the waiter put the monkey treats. We didn't notice the sign until after the monkeys arrived.)

After lunch, we went to the eastern beach. Sean and I played in the surf, bodysurfing and jumping over and into huge (well, three-five feet anyway) breakers. My bikini got very full of sand. The girls lay in the sun, tanning and drinking canned vodka and beer. After a while, Sean and I got tired and collected the girls to go back to the hotel and rest. I picked up some macaroni and cheese mix from a little shop and cooked it in the kitchen, where a couple from England was making some Thai green curry. They (Tom and Verita) had quit their jobs and been traveling the world for nine months, with three months left before they return to England to find a new apartment, new jobs, and hopefully stay with their parents for a month while they look.

After eating, I lay down in a hammock, listened to the waves and the rain, and read the hostel's copy of Jane Austin's Persuasion. This was a very pleasant evening occupation, and when it got too dark I went to bed. I had to tuck my mosquito net into the mattress of my bed to keep the very large ants which were crawling along one wall from investigating my bed, and occasionally the rain came in through the window and fell on my head, but otherwise I slept well.

In the morning, I wrote a little poem. It's not very good, but I felt inspired:

Beauty
Beauty: the clouds over the ocean after a storm
Beauty: the brilliant green of jungle trees
Beauty: the slow cascade of water over slippery rocks
Beauty: the mighty plunging water of a fall

Beauty: a million tiny shells and stones in my hand
Beauty: the ancient pitted rock battered by the waves
Beauty: a spider monkey mother with an infant on her back
Beauty: wide leaves to catch the rain

Beauty: the rush of waves against the shore
Beauty: the sound of pounding rain
Beauty: the chatter of a spider monkey
Beauty: Costa Rica, where I am
We didn't do a lot in the morning, since it was raining. We played some cards (BS) and wandered in the few shops in town. I bought a Costa Rica shirt that was perfect for Montezuma, where it was hot, and after a quick lunch we went to the bus station.

The ride home was long, somewhat frustrating, and increasingly cold (which was terrible for me, since I was in shorts and my new tank top). The bus left late, the ferry left late, and the bus home from the ferry was crowded and delayed by a lot of traffic. We didn't get home until about ten-thirty. I did meet a nice guy on the ferry, one of the workers, who told me that he used to be a great dancer - he was even on TV for a little while - but that was about ten years ago. We chatted about Montezuma, and I talked a little bit about being a student teacher and how I would like to learn to dance Merengue. This was all in Spanish, and I felt quite happy that I understood most of what he said, and was able to say what I wanted to say most of the time.