Montezuma's Revenge

Cammi and I set out by local transportation for Montezuma. This Montezuma is not the one that was conquered by Cortez and the Spanish in the 1500's and spawned the "Montezuma's Cruse" term (that one was Moctezuma II, who was actually the ruler of the Aztecs at the time that they were conquered), but is rather a small hippie beach town in the northwest. Local transport to this little town required a 2 hour bus ride, a 70 minute ferry ride, another 2 hour bus ride before changing buses and then a final 30 minute ride down a crazy road. At the bottom of the mountain, and sitting on the ocean, is the town of Montezuma.This place is quaint, fully of gringos and ex-pat hippies (I hardly saw any locals), and has the nickname of Montefuma for it's 420 vibe. It's like going to a smaller version of Arcadia or Santa Cruz; cute, but without a Costa Rican feel.

We booked ourselves for two nights and had a day and a half to explore. Here, like everywhere in the country, is beautiful, but it's a different kind of beauty. It's a drier, but more hot and humid environment, with the Pacific ocean on one side and mountains on the other. The waters are calm (although they still have strong currents) and are a combination of lovely greens and blues. I liked it, but felt like it belonged somewhere in the States.

We had meant to hike up to a series of waterfalls our first afternoon, but after wandering around town for a bit and getting sucked into having a street artist make me an anklet, it was too dark to explore.

The next morning Cammi and I set out for a snorkeling (diving for her) all day adventure. This was kind of like the reverse of when we where in Bocas, instead of all divers and me, it was all snorkelers and Cammi. Snorkeling is much more popular than diving here. We were on an all day excursion that takes you by boat to Turtuga Island (named after its shape and not because there are an abundance of turtles there). There you get a morning session of snorkeling (or diving), a fish and fruit lunch (with beer if you so choose), and a second afternoon session of snorkeling (or diving). This was probably one of the better day trips we've taken.

The snorkeling was around these giant rocks/tiny islands about 800 meters from shore. I saw more of the blue fish with blue LED like sections, some puffer fish, crabs, a jelly fish, and schools of tiny and giant other colorful fish (too bad I don't know the names of any of them). I didn't get to take any photos since I gave Cammi my camera for her dives. She got some pictures of cool sea life though (but not the reef sharks that she saw).

When we got back from our water adventure, we decided to try and beat the setting sun and go see the waterfalls that we'd missed the day before. Everyone told us that it only took about 25 minutes to get up to them and we had a little over an hour before the sun set. The first small waterfall was about a five minute walked inland from the road and then it became a boulder hopping creek walk for another 10 minutes to the second waterfall.

From there it gos fun. You climb straight up using tree roots, rock outcroppings and the ropes that someone so nicely tied for you. I felt that the Chato volcano mud hike was actually a safer climb than this one, even though this one was way shorter. Once you'd made it to the top of the hill and thanked your lucky stars for not falling off the cliff on the way up, you walked along a path for another five minutes of so and ended up at the smaller waterfall above the one that you saw before you climbed up the mountain.

We were told that if you wanted to you could jump off the the waterfall into the pool below. I looked at the 60 foot drop and determined that that statement should be amended to, "if you're crazy". There was one other waterfall that you could hike to, but we realized you needed to swim across the pool at the base of the upper falls to get to the rest of the trail.

Since light was waning fast, we decided to head back. This was a good decision, as even with running back along the trail until the climb down, we ended up walking the initial 10 minute creek hike out of the woods in near darkness. I was glad that we left when we did or else we might have had to sleep on the mountain until daylight the next morning in order to make the climb back down the hill.

Over all, it was a great day; sunburn aside (apparently white ass chicks of Eastern European descent came actually tan....and burn on top of it).