Montezuma, CostaRica

A blog without photos? With this new ipad bought to save weight in my packing, it appears there are issues with incorporating photos not only in blogs but e mails as well. I can only keep trying but the routes are circuitous and fraught with formatting peculiarities. So much of Central America is viscerally visual with riotous color that it seems tragic not to include images. But the trip goes on.
Montezuma. A frozen snapshot in time. It's a tiny village really, only a short "L" shape main street with the usual vendors squeezed and jammed atop one another in a claustrophobic melange.
The street is a two way but with space enough for only one direction. This is a real fishing village crowded with shuffling hippies lost in time along with the dreadlocks, yoga parlors, beans and rice and with the preferred way of travel being the ubiquitous quads. Ah, Tico, Tico, Tico.

We check into our hotel and trudge up a narrow flight of stairs that use to be an exterior set based on sections of the original roofing glimpsed at dead end sections of halls and wells and faded corrugated plastic panels over the stairwell. The rooms are tiny an garreted with windows that do not open. There are however air handling ac units that will chill you out placed 4' above your sleeping heads. The second night I alternated between freezing and sweating. The paperback I read had its upper edges wrinkle saturated with condensation! I'm positive it all caused me to catch a cold.

The next morning We took a walk up the beach road to find the trail to the local waterfall. After a few minutes we felt it was probably too rough, slippery, and root strewn for our flip flops. As we were debating a turnabout, along happened a local guide, Carlos, that talked us into continuing. After 15 minutes we began to question the efforts with the return slog on mind. Aroung the last bend down trails one had to sit and slide down, we came to the falls. About 80 feet of refreshment.
The signs were dire, "No climbing, No jumping, There have been deaths here!" And what were the tourists beefs doing? I guess since the signs were in Spanish they didn't apply. We lucked out, no split skulls today. There was one local that dove from 65'. That pretty much put a stop to the boisterous Haoles leaping from 10 feet. Loved it. JoAnn did go for a cooling dip. She's always game when it comes to water.

Later that day we walked 15 minutes down the beach in the other direction to one classy resort where the Eurodollars were spent at a yoga retreat. Great coffee milk shakes and a sweet little waterfall swimming pool.
Back to our little windowless cubicle with stucco walls with grit that could scour your flesh if not careful.

Tomorrow its northward along the dirt roads with streams to ford to Samara to meet Jerry who will guide us to his rental unit in the hills above Playa Camoronal. It is an undeveloped bay with only 3 or 4 homes spaced about the surrounding hills inspite of the fact that it is one the best surfing beaches in Costa Rica with 2 1/2 miles of empty beachfront. Perhaps because it is also a prime turtle nesting reserve accounts for its protection from overdevelopment. Ah but we can always get around that can't we? Just prefix our words with "eco," such as eco-lodge, eco-eats or eco-fuel station!
An Eco-adios