It started out a little rough... up at 5:15 am to catch our 6am bus - which we almot missed because we didn't have the right tickets, and it was almost full - about half locals and half backpackers! Thank goodness for Dusan who speaks fluent Spanish - we made it on in time!
Oh yeah, and our "free breakfast" at the hotel was two pieces of bread and two pieces of pineapple...haha! Some breakfast! So anyways, it was a harrowing bus ride (on a dirty old rickety school bus) through the tiny and winding roads around the rainforest. If we would have slipped off the road, we all would have died for sure! ;) It took us 1 hour and 45 stinkin minutes to go abut 30 kilometers...that's like 18 miles roughly, if that tells you how slow we were going and we stopped like every 10 minutes to pick up some local on the side of the road. Very interesting. I always smiled as big as I could at the locals and let them sit by me so they didn't have to stand. I mean after all, this is their country. All of the other tourists had there bags laying on the seats and avoided eye contact so they wouldn't sit next to them, and it was just infuriating me! I mean who do they think they are? I got so mad when the bus was completely full and there were lots of people standing, that I leaned over across the aisle and glared at some punk German tourist and said can't you move your bag? And shoved it over. He sheepishly held his bag the rest of the trip and wouldn't look at me, but two more people got to sit down! Punk ass... So anyways, what seemed like an eternity later, we finally arrived in Puntarenas. Filthy little port town in my opinion. We got off the bus and caught a taxi to the beach, but had just missed the ferry to Montezuma. We bought our tickets at a little window in a hole-in-the-wall "restaurant" across the street from the port...
OH YEA, I forgot to tell you, I'm in Montezuma! We didn't go to Jaco today, haha! We really wanted to come over here to the Nicoya peninsula area, but the weather has been so bad, and we checked the weather and it was supposed to be rainy and bad, so that's why we were going to go to Jaco instead. BUT when we got to Puntarenas it was nothing but blue skies, so we decided to chance it and head to Montezuma via a ferry boat. We had to wait around for about an hour, but got the next ferry, which took about an hour across the water to another little port town.
We got on a bus and were told it would be aout a 30 minute ride to the village of Montezuma. Well, two hours later, after another terrible bus experience, we FINALLY arrived in the amazing beach side town of Montezuma! This place is so cool, just a really tiny (like two blocks) laid back lazy beach town with incredible beaches that lead right up to the jungle! It doesn't get any better than this!
Here is a map of the town...seriously, it's three blocks.
We booked a little hotel in the jungle, literaly IN the jungle, for $15/night. It is so cute, I can't wait to show the pics of this place, just built right up in the trees. In fact, as soon as we walked out of our room, there was a monkey just chilling right in front of our little bungalow! :)
Our first mission was to find a waterfall that I had read about. Supposed to be an easy 15 minute hike through the jungle to get to it. Well I don't know who wrote that or what there defintion of 'easy' is, but it was probably the scariest hike I've ever done - complete with water crossings! We all slipped several times, and if we would have fallen, it was straight down the rain coated mud into the ravine...way down. (And there were these hissing crabs trying to bite us everywhere!)
We hiked for at least 30 minutes and were all about to give up when we heard the waterfall, and it was TOTALLY worth it to be the ony ones around this amazing spot! I swam out to it and climbed up the rock wall around it to get a sweet pic! :) Did a little jumping from the rocks and just soaked in the beauty!
This little village is really a little gem...not near as touristy as all the other places we've been. It's almost all locals, which makes everything way better, including this hike! With no guide, it was a little scary because none of us knew exactly where we were going and there were plenty of water crossings, but like I said, it was TOTALLY worth it to see!
We hiked back a different way, down along the water almost the entire way since the other way up top was really hard. Found another cool vine to swing from!
So we were almost back to the trail head when we heard the weirdest and loudest sound ever coming from across the water. It literally sounded likea cross between a lion roaring, a dog barking, and a pig squeeling. We all freaked out, and we still aren't sure what it was, but it continued to do it on and off for about five minutes as we all sat there in awe. I think Max got it on video. I think it was like a puma or a jaguar or something, if they even have those here, haha! Right when we turned around to leave, an iguana jumped off the tree we were standing by, and then two monkeys were swining from the tree in front of us. Just insane to see this much wild life in it's true habitat!! :)
I am heading to Jaco tomorrow, just for the day to surf, then on to San Jose for my flight back on Monday! NOT ready to leave this place, but I am kind of excited to get home for a hot shower and big nice bed! ;) So, speed boat to Jaco tomorrow, and I don't know where I'm staying or if I'll have access to interenet, but if I do, I'll write more then!
Bye for now!
TK
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