It was a nice place, and felt a lot more authenticate than everywhere else we had been in Costa Rica.  The coastal towns in Costa Rica feel a little bit like a tourist amusement park.  We thought this might be a good experience before we moved on the countries in South America where there would be far less tourists and English speakers than in Costa Rica.

Not much else to say about that. 

We took a bus from La Fortuna to San Ramon and it climbed up and up and up. A couple times we were so close to the edge of the road overlooking a cliff that even when I looked directly out the window it looked like the bus was flying. I watched as the altimeter on my watch climbed from 100ft to 3600ft. We took some pictures out of the bus window that don’t quite capture this, but I thought I’d post a couple anyway.

So here’s how we traveled: La Fortuna to San Ramon (4 hours), San Ramon to Puntarenas (3 or 4 hours), a ferry to Paquera (an hour or so and about $2US per person) and then another 1.5 hour bus ride to Montezuma.

Here’s some pictures from the ferry:

We met some people from Toronto and the States. It was nice to have someone to travel with and to be with while we dealt with a crappy situation to come…

Word of warning: don’t arrive in Montezuma at 9pm on a Saturday during Spring Break (we didn’t realize) and expect to get a room.

This place was hoppin’. People everywhere drinking in the streets having a good time. It seemed to only options we had for a place to stay were expensive room that had jacuzzi’s and all kinds of things we didn’t want to pay for. We spent hours looking for a place to stay – and of course, for the first time since the start of the trip, it’s actually sweltering hot.

Twelve hours of buses and boats, hungry and hot, running around with all our gear trying to find a room in the midst of a Spring Break mega party.

Long story short, we find this place (for about $30…):

Now this picture actually makes this room look pretty good.  It wasn´t that the room was that bad, but the whole experience of getting the room was something else, and a little sketchy. Plus, there were places for $35 with private hot showers and access to jacuzzis (had we known about the busyness and booked, or at least got there earlier).  Bri will talk about the experience more in her next Bri Says.

We got out of there the next morning and we got to see how beautiful Montezuma actually was. The mega party was over and it seemed a lot of people had left. We moved to a hostel called Pension Jenny.

Here is a weird nightshot for you because it´s all I kind find right now.

Montezuma is on a beautiful beach, and it’s hot.   Some of the waves really beat the shit out of us.

An awesome free thing to do in Montezuma is to go check out the waterfall. The start of the trail was about a 10 minute walk from our hostel. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the first waterfall, and it´s an easy hike over rocks along the river.

Here´s me jumping off a massive ten foot rock! I wanted to jump off near the top of the waterfall (at least 40 feet or something), but the climb up along slippery rocks beside the waterfall looked too much to me like an early ticket back to Canada with a broken head.

Next we trekked up the steep path to the next waterfall (which turned out to be the top of the first waterfall where there was another swimming hole and another smaller waterfall). In the heat it was a good little hike.

Notice the sweat.

Behind me is the second swimming hole at the top of the waterfall. That empty space to the right of my head is where the water is falling off. I didn´t see anybody actually swimming in there, but I think people do. In fact, I think that girl behind me was going to but chickened out.

Oh snap… full moon, evil-eyed giant toad… it must be time for a… FULL MOON PARTY!

This party actually happened in Santa Teresa, which is about a 30-40 minute drive from Montezuma.  We found a guy who had a van and for 3000 colones (about $6), he would take us there at 10PM and back at 3AM.  Not a bad deal, a taxi would charge $35US one way.  We had a lot of fun, although it was really just a big temporary club set up on the beach.  We managed to sneak our vodka in in water bottles.  I walked out onto some rocks in the ocean to have a thought and a few drinks before getting into party mode.  Needless to say, I fell in the ocean on the way back.  I was soaked for the whole party, and of course I had decided to wear pants and a long sleeve shirt because I thought it might get cold (it didn´t).

TIme to start making our way back to San Jose; the date for our flight to Colombia was sneaking up fast.

We stayed up in that room.

This is the room.

The only thing we really did was go to the Baldi Hot Springs with a couple from England and Texas we met at the hostel. There´s two options: the free hot springs, and the pay ones. We chose the pay ones because it was raining and we heard the free ones could be a bit sketchy, plus we would split a cab with the couple. It cost about $20 each, but we spent all day there. They have many different pools with different themes.

We had enough rain and decided to hit the pacific coast where we had heard the weather was much more dry, and a lot more sunny. So off to Montezuma we went…

I, of course, am looking like I’m going to kill someone because nobody ever taught me how to smile.

Cahuita is neat.  It’s like Puerto Viejo but there’s less tourists and definetely no Spring Break type party crowd.  Apparently, Playa Negra which is a long beach running along the shore here is suppose to be fantastico.  The sand is suppose to be black and surreal.  We rented bikes and checked it out, but it was all (for kilometers) covered in dirty driftwood and ocean debris.  Apparently they’ve have some mighty storms over the last little while.

No big deal.  We hiked a few KMs through Cahuita Nacionale Parque.  We saw some monkeys and a few slothes.  A park ranger even pointed out a yellow baby viper to us and kindly let us know that if bitten we would die in 15 minutes.  The snake really didn’t look like much though.  It looked like a yellow ball wrapped around a stick.  I think he may have bullshat us.

Here’s what our room looked like for about $20 a night:

It was called Hotel Belle Fleure or as the French would say: Hotel Pretty Flower.  Isn’t that nice?

It rained a lot here in Cahuita.  The Carribean (western) coast of Costa Rica can be that way whether it be dry or rainy season.  People ’round here were saying that the rainy season might not end this year and it might just keep raining.  We tried to make the best of it anyhow and got drunk and went swimming.  Brianna will report more on that… but here’s some pics of the hike we’d take along the beach and through Cahuita Nacionel Parque:

And even though I have the $500 DSLR camera, Bri always nails the nicer shots with her little Cybershot:

Some others things happened as well – I’m quite sure of it – but I’m going to skip ahead.  We talked to some people who said we must absolutely do this white water rafting trip down the Rio Pacuare.  We discovered that this company (Exploradores Outdoors) would pick you up from either San Jose, the Carribbean (Cahuita, Puerto Viejo), or La Fortuna and take you white water rafting, and then drop you off in a different destination if you wished.  The trip cost $100 each, but it was well worth it.  Anyway, we spent 4 hours on the river in Class 3 and 4 rapids, and they feed you breakfast and lunch and it was awesome.  We met two people that had done the very same trip 6 and 7 times and they said they had never fallen off.  This time, because of well the rain, the river was crazy and we all fell off.  Some other rafts flipped over right in the middle of Class 4 rapids.  It was pretty intense, and it raining a little most of the time.  Well worth it.  I don’t have any pictures of that though, although one woman we met with a waterproof camera might e-mail us some.

Here’s something funny: The first time we tried to go the van picked up and we got maybe 20 minutes down the highway before we got stopped.  Protesters blocked off the highway with logs and fires.  We had to turn around and go the next day.

After the rafting they dropped us off in La Fortuna (northern Costa Rica, not on the coast)… posts coming up…

We stayed in hammocks for the first 3 nights, at a place called Rockin J’s.  It was a bit of a “Spring Break” type party zone though.  It was however only $5 a night for a hammock and a locker, and it was a really cool place.  We had bonfires on the beach and got loaded.  You could check out a guitar and bongo drums.

All the picnic tables were plastered with items people had left behind.  There was never a shortage of things to look at it.  Apparently ALOT of Canadians come through here, and look, there’s a Canadian fiver:

Everything was pretty much along one big drag which hugged the ocean.  This is pretty much what it looked like, but it got a little more dense as you approached the center:

Brianna could change her clothes in her locker.  She probably could have slept in there too (cause she’s little).

We rented some bikes and tried to bike to Manzanillo (a town about 13km away).  It started pouring rain but we kept going.  We thought we had made it, but apparently we only made it half way.  It was a fun time though.

There was some serious surf spots along the way, we saw some people riding some pretty crazy waves.

There are dogs everywhere.  I assume they are stray, but they seem to be in good health.  I think maybe they’re community dogs (everybody kind of feeds them).  I think others have owners but they let them roam the streets all day.  The dogs come up to you looking to be petted.  They’re well behaved.

Sometimes horses are wandering along on the beach.

Oh, and how could I forget?  The first night we stayed in hammocks at Rockin J’s Brianna’s face got some serious bug bites that she didn’t respond to very well.  She got a big pussie wound on her check and her left eye was half closed like Thom Yorke when he was on heroin.  She couldn’t leave it alone and we happen to pass a medico who specialised in worm bites.  Brianna had thought she had seen a bug come out of her cheek wound, so we thought we’d get her checked out.  Turns out it was nothing more than some infected bites, so they charged us $50 to poke at it and another $10 for some anitbiotics.  She’s fine now, and we have insurance so hopefully we can get that back.

We took a death cab from the airport to our hostel downtown.  Everybody drives like maniacs, but I expected that.  Anyway, it was almost a 30 minutes ride, and cost us about $20, but it was defeintely the only logical way for us to get to the hostel.   Within minutes I was chillin’ in a hamaca:

This is downtown San Jose?  No way.  This the courtyard of our hostel surrounded by a bustling extremely noisy city (but interesting).  To keep the crazies out, they use razor wire.

Not that the city feels unsafe.  It doesn’t feel any more unsafe than Toronto, but with the amount of activity constantly going on in the streets (it’s hot, so I guess everybody spends most of the time oustside) I wouldn’t doubt they’ve had to deal with riots and things in the past.  Anyway, we walked around for a good while, the city was neat although we definetely were eager to hit the coast.  Here’s some pics:

And the hostel was pretty decent.  It was simply called Costa Rica Backpackers.  We met some people and got some advice on where to head next.

Costa Rica Backpackers also had a nice kitchen.  We would go to the Super Mercado and buy some Rice and Beans and some fruit for a few dollars (1500-2000 colones) and maybe some Tang.  A good way to save some cash and avoid some of the awkwardness that comes along with knowing little Spanish and trying to order food such as our experience at Taco Hoy…

At night we watched a young gypsy play with fire.  I got this picture of Bri with the fire girl behind her.  Bri would later lose these sunglasses (and ruin her mp3 player) while frolicking drunk in the ocean.

Later on, after a few more Pilsen and a happy-hour we decided to try and get pictures of us doing cartwheels… I personally suck.

Enough of San Jose…. let’s move on….

… we rolled a die, it read “11″, we chose Puerto Viejo…