I was looking at the Montezuma Beach web site the other day and I found the best map of Montezuma that I’ve ever seen. The town is mostly just those two blocks at the center of the top. Montezuma really isn’t that busy, it’s the names of all the places that take up space. It even shows the start of the path to get to the waterfalls (at the bottom).

It’s one of the few maps that shows both roads in and out of Montezuma; the split at the South end of town that goes to the North always gets left out (even my Costa Rica purchased GPS maps don’t have that road!). There is an “Open Source” Open Street Map of Montezuma. I’ve actually added a lot of the items on the Open Street Map of Montezuma. If you look at it and zoom out you can see how small Montezuma really is. I’ll admit most of the locations are estimates based on the few roads already in the image, but they’ll get you there. I’ll use the GPS next time I’m there to make it more accurate.

View Larger Map

I’ll (probably) tell more about the Open Street Map project in a future post, but it’s one of the few maps only zoomable map with all the roads in and out of town that actually shows some detail of “downtown” Montezuma. This is all that Google shows and I’m not even sure where that (nonexistent) road the goes North-East up the coast goes..

So I finally got a decent video of me jumping at the upper falls. I played with the GPS today and I’m figuring they are about 40 feet high.

Direct link to HQ video

I like this jump even though it’s kinda high because there aren’t (m)any rocks below you so you don’t have to push out as far. It’s not that I mind the pushing, it’s just I worry about not pushing enough.

This is a view from the side of the same falls.

It’s always a debate to how high the waterfalls in Montezuma are. It comes up almost every visit to the falls. So today I specifically took some readings with the GPS (location just isn’t longitude and latitude, it’s height too!) and came up with the following numbers –
Water level of first waterfall: 82 feet (above numbers see level)
Waterlevel of second fall (which is top of the first fall): 238 feet
Top of second falls: 280/313 feet

If you don’t want to see how the numbers work out and the how whys of my rounding (and I rounded way down for the first one and a little for the second one). I’d say the first water fall is 130 feet (40 meters) and the second is 40 feet (12 meters).

Here’s the way I did the math and the “rounding”:
So 238-82=156 and rounding down I’d say this makes the big falls about 150 feet (47 meters). That’s higher than I thought it would be and there is error in these GPSs so lets round down to 40 meters and say it’s 130 feet. I’m hoping that’s generous enough to where people wont’s say it’s an exaggeration. This is mostly consistent with some readings I took last fall.

The next falls up, where people do a lot of jumping was 42 feet when I took the readings, I did the math then and I know that’s what it said. The bookmark on my GPS says it was at 313 feet, but maybe I moved when I wrote the bookmark, I know I started talking about it so if I stood up and went to a higher rock I easy could have added another 12 feet. From last fall I recorded 303 feet, but at the time I was looking for long/lat and not height so I have no idea where I was standing (and all my readings for fall were about 18-20 feet higher but it was extra cloudy). So I’m going to stick with 40 feet for this measurement (12 meters) since every thing else says it’s actually higher (I would have guessed it’s more like 30 feet, maybe 35 but what do I know?).

Yes, I know there are many variables in the GPS so these are estimates, but it’s better than how it’s been discussed before which is a bunch of people standing around looking at it and guessing. Also, the water levels change here, but only by a few feet. It’s particularly low right now.

It just started to rain out. It’s really been looking like it’s wanted to for a few hours now, the waves have been pretty rough all day (I didn’t go into the ocean, even though I planned to) and there’s been cloud cover and extra humidity all day. I dashed into the Pizza Parlor in Montezuma. I’m now sitting upstairs under the steel roof and it’s coming down pretty hard right now and it sounds great. I can see the waves crashing in and I’m pretty happy about it.

It’s been pretty long since they’ve had rain in Montezuma. It’s been drier and a lot dustier than normal since I’ve been here. I’m hoping for at least a 1/2 hour of this (if not hours more), I can see it’s pretty clear in the distance. Although I’m looking more south than west; hmm, do the weather patterns go NW here? And I meant to bring a plastic bag for my stuff

Everything has just been so dry. I’ve really been missing some of the greenness I saw on my last visit (there are leaves, they’re just kind of wimpy/sad looking). Hiking has been a little tricky since there is gravel and pebbles everywhere making the hills a little slippery, some rain would help wash that away.

So I’ve got a great slice of pepperoni and a glass bottle of Coca-Cola for 1,800 colones (the exchange rate isn’t great right now, so I’m guessing about $3.50). Actually, it’s dos (2) bottles of Coke (they’re only 12 ounces). And if I’m trapped here in the rain for a while I might need more.

Direct link to video.

The other problem is they tore up the road to put some new draining piping in. I’m not sure how far they got before the rain started. It’s been inconvenient for people driving who drove into town and a few minutes later there was no road. There’s only two ways in and out from that section of town and it’s probably ten kilometers around the long way. That’s really annoying if you don’t know your way around.

It’s cut in and out a few times since I’ve been typing this but I think it’s go for a little bit longer. I’m not sure if it’ll be enough to cut through the forest and clears the paths, but I guess I’ll know tomorrow. There was one big flash of lightening/thunder when it started and while I’ve heard some thunder I haven’t seen more lightening. It’s by far the coolest for this time of day since I’ve been here.

Later: It’s stopped (maybe 45 minutes of rain?) but I can hear lots of thunder in the distance so maybe we’ll get some more later.

So here’s a few videos of the Fire Dancing in Montezuma that I put some photos up the other day. FYI, they’re both available in large HD versions if you follow the direct link and click the HD icon.

This one is a little dark but gives you some idea better definition of how the fire moves.

Direct HD link to the first Fire Dancing Video.

The second one is a little brighter but streaks the fire more, giving a different effect.

Direct HD link to the second Fire Dancing Video

So it’s actually my second day in Montezuma, but it’s my first full day so I made the most of it. I picked up a sandwich first thing in the morning and I hiked up to the waterfalls and stayed for hours. It’s really hot today so I took 5 bottles of stuff to drink (2 water, 2 gatorade and 1 coke).

The water level was low in the river. Not too low just lower than the last two times I was just (at the beginning and ends of rainy season). Many of the rocks in the above photo would be covered with water, causing it to be (almost) like rapids. It made for an easy walk. It’s not hard to navigate the rocks or even step in the water, but it the water isn’t clear it’s hard to tell if it’s 6 inches deep or 6 feet deep.

I jumped around into the pond at the bottom of the falls; it’s hard to see the big rock on the left (since I didn’t get it in the photo) that I was jumping off of but I’d have landed in between those swimmers (but I waited until they were gone). I tried to climb up into the falls themselves but the rocks were too slippery today, after three falls I took the hint and gave up.

Then I went up to the upper falls, if look at the above photo you can see the where the water runs over the far edge, that’s the top of the waterfall from the previous photo.There were multiple groups of people up there and everyone was pretty social today, it was pretty fun up there. Lots of people jumping, with everyone encouraging everyone to jump. I actually jumped from the spot where I took the above photo (I need a better one to show how high of a fall it was).

Obviously, I had a hike back down so I post more later (with some more photos)…

FYI, I ended up drinking 6 bottles of fluids, I stopped at the butterfly gardens hotel (at the top of the hill on the way back) and picked up another drink. They had cold sodas and my last was pretty warm by then, but I still managed to finish the warm gatorade before I made it home.

So I always love when I get to see some fire dancing in Montezuma. My first night was no disappointment.

All the photos should be clickable for larger versions. I’ll try and post some video later.

This is one of the shorts that I saw at the Montezuma International Film Festival. A very cool (stop animation) wall painted animation done on the walls of buildings on the streets of Buenos Aires.

More info at Blu’s blog.

It was kinda gloomy out and I didn’t want to hike far and get trapped in the rain. I saw a few people gathering for the bus so I asked what time the bus was, I was told 11:30 so I grabbed my stuff from the hotel and went back to the bus stop.

A few people showed up at 11:30 but no bus. A few more show up at Noon but no bus. At 12:10 the bus showed up and lots of people showed up by 12:30 (which was the correct time). Turns out this is the one time of day the bus is generally on-time since they stop to get lunch when they arrive here. Why all those others thought it was 11:30 and 12:00, I have no idea, they said those times with no hesitation. I really wish “I don’t know” was part of the Costa Rican vocabulary.

And now that it’s all uploaded, I realize the ocean looks kinda washed out. But I swear it’s right there…

(FYI, I am not in Costa Rica)

Just some photos of some of my meals from the lower Nicoya Peninsula. I thought they looked and/or tasted nice.

Sesame Chicken (Chicken dipped in Lime and Honey and rolled in sesame). La Narango resurant in Montezuma, Costa Rica. $7.50-ish

Big breakfast from the Soda Monte Sol in Montezuma, Costa Rica (2200 colones, just under $4). There is cheese in them Scrambled eggs! Server very fast!

Shrimp and Rice (Camarón y arroz) from a place in Cobano, Costa Rica (right next to the “big” grocery store). It was delicious, had lots of shrimp and it was cheap ($5 if I recall correctly).

So Cobano is a nearby town of Montezuma it’s about 7 km away. It’s kind of the centralized place for the bus transfers, a few more restaurants, way faster Internet and some larger stores. Also it’s the nearest bank, ATM, pharmacy, gas station, hardware store, appliances, bicycles, etc. Even with all that, it’s pretty small. I was waiting for the bus the other day and shot this time lapse footage of the main intersection.

Here’s the direct link to the above video.

I also shot this photo of the sky as the sun was setting. I thought the colors were great!

So riding the bus in Costa Rica is cheap and it’ll take you anywhere. The problem is figuring out when the bus is going to be running.

In the bigger cities this doesn’t appear to be a problem, if you miss a bus another one will be by soon and if it’s not the right bus it’s still heading in the correct direction, just hop on. In the more remote areas (such as Montezuma) they probably don’t come more than every two hours so if you miss the bus it’s a pain.

The people closest to the bus stop seem to have the most reliable information. Restaurants and internet cafes have it written down, but they wrote it down ages ago. My trickiest problem is asking “when is the next bus?” and they tell me “it’s in 20 minutes” but that’s too soon for me so I try to find out about the bus after that and it’s no good; I have to come back in 25 minutes and ask again to get the info for the bus after that

The appears to be no schedule posted, even at the bus station in Cobano (a central town in the lower Nicoya Peninsula). I did notice the bus that goes from Montezuma to Cabuya to the National Reserve does have a schedule taped to the window (4 trips a day) with pricing and everything; as an added bonus, it generally seemed to be leaving Montezuma at the correct time! More info below.

Pricing is cheap though. In San Jose I took a bus for about 150 colones (28 cents) but honestly I don’t know far that would have taken me, it was in front of me heading the right way and it kept going once I got off. In Montezuma, it’s 300 colones (55 cents) to go to Cobano which is 7 km. away (a very hilly/dusty walk).

You can get a direct bus all the way to San Jose from Montezuma, but you might not get a seat and there isn’t any A/C but I think you can do it for about $8-ish (maybe $10 including the ferry ride).Montezuma to Cabuya to the National Reserve info: When I saw the schedule it said 600 colones to the Reserva and 500 colones to Cabuya (just over or under a $1.00). It leaves Cabuya for Montezuma at 7:20 am, 9:20 am, 1:20 pm and 3:20 pm (not sure what time it actually leaves the park). It Montezuma for Cabuya at 8 am, 10 am, 2 pm and 4 pm. Obviously they get a long lunch hour or maybe it doubles as a school bus?

Just me getting into the water and climbing the big rock in the background and jumping into the water. Nothing ultra-exciting but should give an idea of the pool and jumping area…

I’m not the first person you see. I’m the guy who walks in front of the camera a few seconds into the video (and gets in). There is a larger version of the video if you go to the direct link (below). It’s not the best quality, it must have lost something in the encoding to YouTube

Here’s part two of the video from the waterfall video from last Saturday (Nov. 22, 2008). This is the view from the top of the falls taken a few minutes after the first video. I’ve since learned that the waterfalls are named El Chorro (and the adjacent beach is called Cocolito).

Here’s the direct link to this waterfalls video (sometimes the embed codes don’t work); be sure to notice that under the right-hand side of the video you can “watch in high quality”.

Haven’t been doing much the last few days. I’ve been experiencing the other Montezuma so I’ve been under the weather. Here’s a few recent photos all from the Montezuma, Costa Rica area.

This was my view from where I sat and had my lunch.

One of the water outlets to the Pacific Ocean.

I always like trying to catch photos of birds flying, but I’m never close enough.

A new canyon that I found

The El Chorro waterfall two hours up the north beach.

You can’t click to enlarge these, larger versions will probably show up in some other album later…

So here’s a photo of me at the waterfalls North of Montezuma, Costa Rica. The walk to get there is to walk along the beach of the ocean (maybe this is technically the bay?). I’ve since learned that the waterfalls are named El Chorro (and the adjacent beach is called Cocolito).

This was a long hike, about 2 hours each way with stops, snacks and quick swims I was gone about 6 hours. I brought seven bottles of water, gatorade and Fresca (the one bottle of Fresca for when I ate my sandwich) and drank six-and-a-half bottles so I judged that pretty good. Although I cheated and when I was 20 minutes from the hotel I stopped at the Ylang Ylang on the beach and got a mucho frio (very cold) Coca-Cola in a glass bottle (the rest of my drinks were pretty was pretty hot by then) so I still had a 1/2 water and a gatorade; Ylang-Ylang is the last stop on the beach so don’t expect much after that. So my bag kept getting lighter but it felt like it was getting heavier.

This is a 20-30 foot waterfall there is a waterfall/stream you get to early (after 45 minutes?) that some people think is “the” waterfall but it is not the waterfalls you see here. Here’s the longitude and latitude that my GPS gave me when I got to the final destination this was about 6 km from the center of town as the bird flies (I’m sure I walked farther since it wasn’t close to a direct route, plus it was on the sand and rocks). It’s N 9°41.157′ and W 085°01.530′ or at least that’s what it was about 100 meters away in the shade when I made the marker on my GPS (please note that this is the corrected coordinates as referred to in the comments).

Here’s some video that I shot when I got there.

And in case the above embedded video doesn’t work, here’s the direct link to this El Chorro Waterfalls video; be sure to notice that under the right-hand side of the video you can “watch in high quality”.Tips for this hike: Lots of liquids; comfy shoes for water, rocks and sand; some uphill climbing in the woods; take a swim when you get hot; it’s totally deserted so tell someone where you are going. I liked going in the afternoon because as the sun went down it cooled off. Be sure to check when high tide is, you don’t want to get trapped out there. Bring a flashlight, if the sun goes down it gets dark quick. If the beach area looks hard to pass, look for footprints (or horseshoe prints) in the sand since they probably lead to a path in the woods.

The power has glitched off and on the last few days. Just for a few seconds generally but it’s enough to turn off the A/C unit in my hotel which kept waking me all night long when it kept kicking off…

Today we lost it for a few hours but it eventually came back on. But it’s always a worry that it might not come back on (most hotels with A/C don’t have windows that will open) that means no A/C and no hot water (it’s electric).

Boring post, but that was out of the ordinary part of today…

I hiked up to the waterfalls too! It’s such a nice view!! But since I do this almost every day it’s really not out of the ordinary any more

Here’s a video of the fire dancing from the other day in Montezuma.

And (of course) the direct YouTube link.

So I’d really been looking forward to the fire dancing in Montezuma. I haven’t seen it done as much the last few trips and I knew it was on the schedule as entertainment for the Film Festival. It wasn’t the local group that I’ve seen do street shows before but they were excellent. Most had some kind of costumes or makeup on which added to the whole effect.

It’s hard to capture but I think these turned out pretty good. A few of the ones in the woman in costume I pulled from video I took so the quality might not be so great but I wanted you to see…

I only show a few photos here, the other dozen are here (including larger versions of them all) or click for the fire dancing slideshow (same photos).

If your display is set to 1024×768 or larger you should be seeing my new background. That’s a shot from Montezuma up by the waterfalls, I hike up there every day that I can when I’m in town….

Does it fit okay? Does it load to slow? It’s the first time using an image, so please give me feedback!

Weather great!

Internet is extra awful (I guess an actually satellite the good places use are broken). So it’s computer labs sharing two dial-in phone lines.

Don’t expect much in terms of posts and photos the next few days. But scroll down because I did get a few things posted in the last 24 hours…

So I scheduled a shuttle bus (a large van) from San Jose to Montezuma. Last night I confirmed all the details:

Here’s a very short movie of the Waterfall in Montezuma! Click for the higher quality Montezuma Waterfall version. But people always have problems with the movie files from my Dimage XT camera for some reason so here’s an YouTube version too…

I don’t have much more to say (other than it was awesome) since I talked about it last week when I was there…

Is it “an YouTube”?

Here’s a random batch of photos from the past few days in Costa Rica. These mostly have some titles or captions to go with them.

Just an assorted few that I enjoyed and I hope you will too!

It was a much nicer day today! It was mostly sunny but drizzly on and off but looked stormy so I didn’t want to walk up the the waterfall (a real hike) and get caught in a storm; later I hear the water that you walk next to (through at some parts) were pretty wild so some people turned around and came back, which must have been all the rain from yesterday/last night.

I got to spend some time at walking the beach and relaxing. It was nice to not be running around too much. I just walked for a while and read and talked to some people that I’ve run into more than a few times this trip. I started to go farther up the beach but it started to rain again and since there was a (fancy) hotel on the beach so I popped in there for a deliciou$ lunch (and stayed out of the rain).

I did try to catch the sunset but it just got cloudier and cloudier as I got closer so that was a bust. But on the way I did pick up a couple of guys from Argentina on the road and gave them a lift for a few kilometers they were interesting and spoke great english. Just to be clear, they were from Argentina, not on the road from Argentina…

It’s pouring out now but that’s okay since I’m inside and have nothing else to do but grab some dinner and sleep. If it’s nice I’d like to get up early so I can play in Montezuma more before I head to San Jose tomorrow.

So Chico’s Bar and Resturant has the best Penne Pasta with Tomato Sauce and it come with a small bowl of parmesan cheese. They were too busy saturday night and the restaurant wasn’t open when I came by yesterday so I wanted to get a chance to eat this again.

Again? Yes, I had this last trip and loved it. We actually saw the waiter eating it at a different restaurant and it looked so good and he looked like he was really enjoying it so much Mark & I both tried to order it so he had to confess it was from down the street. So we came here a few days later to try it out ourselves. That’s not how I usually get my restaurant recommendations but it worked.

I guess it’s like the old barbershop brain-teaser: “There are two barbers in town, one has a great haircut and one has a bas one. Who do you go to get your hair cut at?” And you need to say “the one with the bad haircut, because he’s the one who cut the other barber’s hair (the one with the good cut)”.

I just wished they had Fresca in a glass bottle instead of the can; I really like drinking out of a cold bottle…

One of the bad things about Montezuma is it’s on the east side of the peninsula so you don’t get any sunsets. So last night I dashed over to Mal Pais to catch the sunset; remember when I say “dashed” it might mean 5 miles an hours over some of the treacherous roads. But I was in a hurry because I couldn’t get them to bring me my “la quinta” (the check) where I had a late lunch (going faster didn’t help settle my meal).

Here’s a dozen photos of the Mal Pais Sunset.

The below map should show you where Mal Pais is. It’s near the bottom of the peninsula; you can click the “-” to zoom out an see where that fits in to the rest of the country (world). You can see Montezuma to the right and above it a little.

View Larger Map

It was raining so hard this morning it woke me up but I think part of that was due to the noisy roof of where I’m at. It’s beautiful outside now and the early rain will help keep all the dust down. I want to go for a ride and it’s so much nicer with the windows down but the dust really ruins the ride.

I just had breakfast in an open air restaurant down by the water. It’s a nice place but they’re really slow on the service at this place but that let me monopolize their table a little more

I’m going to head over to Cabano (a central town in the lower part of the peninsula) and run some errands and then over to a restaurant on the beach in Manzanillo for dinner and catch the sunset.m

The weather was amazing all day. Sunny and warm but very humid. We didn’t get any afternoon rain at all.

But, regardless of the wonderful weather, the first thing I did this morning was find a new hotel, the other one wasn’t that great but I was too tired to look around any more last night (I did check two others that were full). I found one that is nicer and cheaper, $30 a night which includes A/C and hot water. Don’t laugh at the “A/C and hot water comment”, some hotels have 4 prices based on which combination that you would like. As long as I sleep okay here, I think I’ll stay here until I have to go to San Jose on Wednesday.

So after I moved I went up to the waterfalls which was a little more exciting than usual, with all the rain the current was really flowing. When I got up there to swim it was pretty quiet (in terms of people) the the falls were raging with all the extra water. I tried swimming but the current was too much for me, I’m not that great of a swimmer and certainly out of practice. Hung out there for a while, for as dead as it was when I got there, I think it got the busiest I’ve even seen it. Not the best picture of me, but it’s the only one I have of me so far.

So since I didn’t wear myself out swimming I decided to hike it up to the upper falls. Another difference because of the rain a few recent downed trees and lots of mud. But I got up there just fine. Unfortunately, right when I got up top I dropped my bottle of gatorade! So that meant I really had to ration my other bottle of water on the way back; I usually take 3 bottles total (of water or gatorade) I was so thirsty on the way down but I made it. It fell pretty far and I’ve climb that part before (to get to the lower fall of the upper falls) but where I usually climb had loads of water running down it.

Here’s the cRaZy spot where you have to climb down to the upper falls. This is while I was halfway down rope looking down and looking up (fuzzy), it’s really not as bad as it looks

Stats according to my GPS: I climbed from 97 feet altitude to 572 feet, but I actually ascended over 600 feet and it was a total of 4 miles for the round trip. (But now I need to go double-check since none of that was meters or miles and I thought I had all that switched to metric; I’m certain it was “feet”, maybe it was 4 kilometers?)

All photos should be clickable for a larger version (but not very large, the ‘net is really slow here).

I left for the Airport before 6 am and didn’t get here until 7:15 pm (9:15 my time); that’s factoring car rental time and immigration and a short stop for lunch (no other real stops) so it was a long day. I ended up renting a car because it was cheaper to rent for five days than to take a taxi and it was WAY too hot to try public transportation (taxi then bus then taxi then ferry then another 2 buses or a taxi) and I couldn’t find any kind of shuttles. I rented some little wind up 4×4 which ran really well for me. I really didn’t think the drive would be that long from the airport but it was.

The view was beautiful for the start of the ride. But while it was great out I knew from the clouds the afternoon showers would be starting. After a while it started to rain so I thought it’d be a good time to stop for lunch since it might be a while before the next town (especially since I was starving). But then after I got back on the road it poured for a really really long time. I wasn’t concerned about the rain affecting my driving, I was worried about the road farther up ahead. I was afraid the road might get washed out on the stretch that kind of separates the lower and upper sections of the Nicoya Peninsula (between Narango and Paquera) they’re actually in different providences (or something like that). The roads weren’t too bad when I got up there, but remember my expectations were it would be “washed out” so it was still pretty bad, didn’t have to drive through any actual rivers this time (yet!).

The sun set around 6 PM (5:54 at this location according to my trusty GPS) so I drove the last 75 minutes in the dark but it was mostly paved so the night driving wasn’t so bad but the last 4 miles were awful (as always). The rain really slowed down my total drive but I think that way isn’t optimum even if it was sunny, the other airport (San Jose) is better for Montezuma.

I did get to see some really great scenery earlier in the day

Town was really hopping, the bar they always say is the hot spot (Chico’s) was packed. But I was so pooped from my long day I went to be early…

Normally when I travel I like to stay put for a few days (at least a few days) and not keep repacking and moving to another place. I personally don’t find that very relaxing and that’s generally the point of vacationing, IMHO.

This past spring when we went to Costa Rica we (my friend Mark was with me) didn’t sit still. We moved hotels almost every night and probably saw an additional town or two each day while we traveled. Not exactly my preferred way to travel but that’s because we had a mission for this trip…

I love the small town Montezuma, located at the south end of the Nicoya Peninsula (just above Cabuya on the map to the right), but the mission was to find some other towns that I might like. I wanted someday to spend a few months in Costa Rica, my concern was that I’d rent a place for a few months and then realize that I liked the next town over since I hadn’t done much exploring from that perspective.

So we drove around like cRaZy checking out towns and staying different places and checking out different areas to see if there was anything I liked better. Montezuma was still my favorite but it’s definitely more isolated than some of the other towns. Tamarindo was a large town but a lot busier than I was hoping for but it pretty much had everything you need. Samara was a medium to small town that I didn’t get to explore enough. But comparatively Montezuma was a tiny town, but for some reason seems to fit me just right…

So Santa Teresa is supposed to be this beautiful place in Costa Rica (I’m referring to the town in the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula) and while the beaches are beautiful (it is just sand on the ocean) so are a million other areas along the coast. The beaches are great for surfing too, that’s really the appeal for some people. I think there is a few surf camps and lots of lessons when we were on the beach.

But the town is mostly just a bunch of spread out stores spaced out along a very very very dusty road. You can see from this Santa Teresa Map how everything is spread out (that main road is a “city block” or two from the beach).

We stayed at the Beach Break Surf Hotel, nothing fancy on the inside (2 beds, A/C , TV and a bathroom) but perfectly clean and functional with a nice porch (I think we got it at a good rate), I’d definitely go back. This was the hotel with the great staff that came around with flashlights when the power went out in twon. Actually, the only reason we stayed in that town was it was the day we had to backtrack because we hit the river that we didn’t know how to cross ()read that as we didn’t know where to drive to get across the river).

I’m sure there are a few more hotels on the beach if you drive down a driveway, but I need a town (even if it’s a tiny one) to wander over to to eat and do some people watching. Some people love Santa Teresa but so far, it’s just not for me…

But I will give it another try next trip, it is just “around the corner” from Montezuma….

So it’s a beautiful morning, went for a swim on the beach and it was dead, now the beach is getting busier. Nice little restaurant on the beach for breakfast, they only serve a limited breakfast/lunch menu and are only open from 7am-11am. That’s the life, assuming it’s their only business. The name of the place is “Restaurante Sheriff Rustic”, that’s because it’s next to the Policia Station on the beach.

We’ll hang out here for a few more hours and drive up the cast and hope to find another nice town. The two attached pictures are from this morning on the beach.

I like this place, it’s bigger than Montezuma, but way smaller than Jaco, still pretty touristy though. (I think Montezuma is still my favorite and a few other people that we’ve run into on this trip seem to agree.)

In the time that we’ve been sitting here for breakfast, it’s really gotten busier on the beach.

FYI, for anyone traveling down to Samara, they’ve got great internet access at Samara Computers, big “internet sign” by the soccer (Fut Bol) field (no wireless but they have spots to put your laptop if you have a wired connection).

I originally posted a bad link to the second photo album. It’s now corrected.

Here’s another dozen photos (with descriptions). It’s mostly up by Montezuma Falls.

The photo to the right (click to enlarge) is me jumping through the falls (from climbing behind them). This photo actually makes it a Baker’s Dozen.

So after a very long ride today we made it to Samara. It just starting raining (it’ll stop soon, it generally does) so we popped into this internet cafe. And here’s some info on Samara Beach (boring site). I really like the town so far, it’s like a big Montezuma, although the beach is facing south so no sunsets here either (I’m really cheating myself on this trip).

We indulged on a fancy Villa, two rooms, two bathrooms, ceing fans (inside/out), pool, kitchen and all sorts of other $tuff we won’t use. The hotel is called Villas Kalimba (nice site). That’s all for now…

Well, we didn’t make it as far as we hoped. We made it to the sand castle festival in Manzanillo (that’s a different story) and tried to head up to Coyote (because someone mentioned it as a close town we could get to). We followed the “maps” and we were going the way that we thought and we eventually hit a stream that was a good 30 meters across and we probably could have crossed it, except that they was no road on the other side of the stream (the photos are of the stream)! So we tried a few other roads but no mater what roads we headed north-ish on, we couldn’t get much father. So we back tracked to Santa Teresa and grabbed the first hotel with A/C and crashed there for the night

Later, we did find out that the stream was the correct way to go. But I’m not sure our little 4×4 would have made it (I think so) but we didn’t even know which way to go.

We did get to catch a sunset here, Montezuma is on the other side of the peninsula so that’s the first on this trip. It was really nice even thought there was cloud cover over parts of it.

Today we’re going to head back north, but the very very long way around. So we probably won’t get near Coyote (we’ll end up way north of it) and see what’s way north of it.

Later: I did find out that was the correct way. But I’m still not sure if it would have been east or west. And you’re supposed to do it at low tide. Maybe next time.

So far I’ve only explored the southmost point of the Nicoya Peninsula and stayed in Montezuma. I want to explore more of the Pacific coast next trip (later this month).

I’m looking for tips on where to travel and places to stay. As requirements for places to stay go: walking to beach distance, hot showers and air conditioning (not fancy, cheap is better). There was a pullout section of the TicoTimes a few weeks ago but it only seemed like it covered the ultra fancy hotels and resorts.

I just want to wander around the towns and the ocean and find some waterfalls and stuff like that.

So I’m using some Costa Rica photos to test the new free on-line edition of PhotoShop. It’s very cool, does more than what most desktop packages do, but while limited, I don’t need much more. They give you 2 GB of free storage. It’s got cool slideshows (full-scren if you like) but I’m sure it breaks some browsers…

Costa Rica Dec 2007
These photos are from when I was in Costa Rica in December 2007 and left Montezuma and took the ferry from the Lower Nicoya Peninsula (Paquera?) to Puntarenaas.

Looks like you can even download your photos in their original size. They’re still in beta so who knows what they’ll charge for more storage (or features?).

They do give you a way to put thumbnails and links to photos with having to use their viewer. Although it seems to be a 2 step process (thumbnail then link) for each photo. But it’s cheap, high-res and the flash interface is great.

If you love PhotoShop, I’m sure you’ll hate it. It’s pretty as spplications, but since I don’t use any features past version 1, it’s very nice and easy to use. Here’s a link to the palette with all the main options on it. It’s even easier to use than I need it to be (and it has more features to use too). It e-mails a really nice graphical html link to your friends too.

I hiked back up the Montezuma Waterfalls Monday. I made good time since I remembered the route better this time. Some local Ticos were jumping from up high, the jumping wasn’t so dangerous as the climbing up the front of the waterfall, that was pretty amazing. Puts where I was jumping from to shame, but I still had fun jumping and swimming (and that’s the point, right?)

This guy jumped from a higher spot but I missed the shot, I couldn’t get the camera out fast enough, the video of this jump is still pretty high though.

At the upper falls I started chatting with a few groups up there so I didn’t stay long and headed back with them since they wanted to try the way I was going to leave by. I was going a bit different direction since it was supposedly more direct back so I had to make some of it up as we went along (they knew this). It was certainly an easier way back (although you don’t se any of the falls) and I saw a few animals and a few sights I hadn’t seen before. I did get to see a huge iguana, an odd bird, and a monkey of some kind that I hadn’t seen before (a howler?).

And of course there is a sixth set of photos to see (with some labels too!).

So on my first night in Montezuma I was out on the beach in Montezuma watching the stars and it was perfectly clear. After a while I realized I hadn’t seen any shooting stars. I thought, “If I saw a shooting star, I’d wish that I could move down here”. At that instant (I’m not kidding) a huge one goes across the sky, coincidence? I think not! Technically, I can’t tell you what my wish was since it won’t come true, right? (or is that candles?)

And after that I easily saw another dozen over the next hour, but none as long and bright as that one….

Saturday, I did the long hike to the bottom of the main Montezuma Waterfalls. Then I did the even longer steeper climb to the top of falls and to see the other falls that are way up there. This is where we almost last Mark a few times on the last trip.

This was a chunk of the day since after getting there I spent some time at the lower, upper and back and the lower again. I also got to test my new lockable backpack (see my other post from slightly earlier today) as I left my stuff (camera, video camera, keys, etc.) locked to a tree.

I’ve got photos posted of the waterfalls and a few other shots (see set 4 for the latest as of this writing), Again, I’ve (mostly) got titles and captions. I’ve noticed a bit of my photos are kind of dark lately but I can’t figure out if it’s the lighting or something odd set on my camera.

So I hear it’s cold back in Michigan! I’m glad I’m getting my money’s worth from this vacation. I had to explain to a local it was freezing and he didn’t get I literally meant freezing until I clarified with “zero degrees Celsius”.

It’s definitely getting cooler on some of the evenings. I was actually chilly down on the beach last night.

I can’t believe it’s Saturday already.

I wandered down to the Ylang Ylang resort to use their internet, they have the best in the area. I”m in a hammock in the dark posting the old stuff and typing this short post. It’s not as comfy as it sounds.

It’s really humid this evening.

I think I’m staying in Montezuma (or at least this peninsula) for the rest of the trip.

The time you see on these posts aren’t necessarily when posted them. The time is closer to when I wrote them. Whenever I finally get access to the internet I can post them and they retain the original dates.

This also might get confusing since I may have typed something and not posted it but when I’m out and see an internet cafe and post something new. Then later I might actually get around to connecting my computer and posting the older note. So you might miss something, sorry about that but I generally try to keep them chronological to when I wrote them.

For example (actually, specifically), I wrote the entries about arriving in Montezuma and the phones yesterday but didn’t have a way to post them. Then I wandered by an internet cafe to check mail but it was SO slow I posted the slow internet message and left. But today I have reasonable access so I’m posting all the entries I wrote yesterday (and the photos) but they’ll appear before the slow internet message so you may miss them…

You better go find it since it does link to more photos!

It’s unbearably slow so this is all that I am posting at this time

Today was just a travel day. Packing, travel, checking in, unpacking, eating and picking up supplies. I’m in the same room as last time I was at the El Sano Banano, it’s the place with the awesome air conditioning. Here’s a street map of Montezuma, the map is kind big, but you can see most of the stuff is in the middle. Sometimes they spell Montezuma as Moctezuma, so I switch it around a bit too (mostly for the search engines).

It’s evening now and nice and cool out. I’m getting dinner (at L’angolo Allegro), some homemade pasta (no meat, I accidentally picked a vegetarian place), bread and a glass bottle of Fresca. It was very nicely presented, I should have taken a photo.

This is the town where they do the fire show (dancing and breathing) in the streets so I’m hoping for a show one of the next few nights. Tomorrow morning there is some kind of market (Saturday) that I want to check out before I hike up to the waterfall.

I’ve got some more photos posted (see set 3 for the latest), They’ve even (mostly) got titles and captions.

I have no idea when I’m actually going to get this entry and the photos posted. ‘Net access around here stinks and while internet cafes are abundent, no one seems to have high speed (that would be some kind of satellite hookup).

I finally got the phones in Costa Rica to work again. I’m sure they worked before I just couldn’t get them to work last trip. The trick is to get to an AT&T operator, or at least that’s what I wanted since my calling card is AT&T. So from a phone you just dial

0-800-011-4114

and that gets you an AT&T tone/message and you can dial your 1-800 number that’s on your calling card. Now these are the same notes I had scratched onto my card so I’m not sure if I misread them last time or the new pay phones they put in work more like the much older ones.

Now in the past (when it worked) it always used my minutes conservatively, it said it would use my cards at a 12 to 1 ratio (a 60 minute card would last 5 minutes) but it lasted much longer in the past. Not this time, I only got my 5 minutes that I had on that card (I got the cars from Sam’s Club).

Actually, I only got this to work in Jaco, I tried in Montezuma but no success (yet). I bet they want me to put money in the pay phone, but I’m not certain. Whatever it is, it’s probably the same problem I had last time.

I made it to Moctezuma. The taxi ferry was much nicer than the last time.

I met two american surfers from opposite directions heading to the same destination (Snata Teresa). They were fun to chat with and made a beautiful ride even more fun.

I’m staying at the El Sano Banano, I got all settled into my room and ate already. I made a mad dash to their sister resort, Ylang Ylang, but I was too late to catch the Monkeys do their daily swing down the beach

Although I am taking advantage of their free Internet to give you this update…

So I’m off to Montezuma this morning. You can see the ride by car would take forever. The water taxi, pretty much some guy on a boat that’ll hold about 8-10 people/luggage, will take about an hour. If experience holds, it’ll take longer since it’ll be way late. I sure hope it doesn’t rain…

I’ll be at the El Sano Banano, it’s a little hotel (in a little town), but I have access to their resort way down the beach. I’d consider staying down there but there is no A/C in their cabanas.

That’s all for now I’ve gotta shower and finish packing and get a taxi to get me to the water taxi (it’s actually at the next town north).

These Chicken Nachos are delicious! I’m at the Restaurante Tabacon in Jaco, it’s right across the street from Planet Food (closed for years but still a landmark for giving directions). They come with everything, including sour creme, beans and guacamole (I did not get the latter two). It’s a huge bowl for 3,000 colons ($6), it’s not a appetizer, it’s a meal.

I think I really enjoyed my food lat time here too. They used to be a pizza parlor and I think that was really good too, if I recall back 3-4 years correctly…

Other details:

Another photo-meme. Today the Thursday Photo Challenge is Wildlife so I’m using this White-Faced Monkey photo from Montezuma, Costa Rica.

If you look very close (just below/by the neck) you can see there is a (very tiny) baby on the back of the monkey!

Speaking of Costa Rica, here’s a information page from Time for Kids about Costa Rica…