Merry Christmas Eve everyone! I was down by the ocean this evening and the colors in the sky were looking great and I shot some video so I’m sharing my Christmas Eve with all of you…
Sadly, Montezuma is on the wrong side of the peninsula so this is all that I can see from here. But I still think the colors looked excellent tonight!
Posted in holidays + events
Tagged Christmas Eve, Costa Rica, Montezuma, Montezuma Beach, sunset, videos
I always feel like these stacks of rocks are something the aliens left behind; you know, like they did with the pyramids.
When I went to the waterfalls in Montezuma, I saw the aliens had been very very busy…
Also viewable in HD (of course).
Actually, later I did notice a few people adding some smaller rocks to the tops of some already existing piles. I was too high up to get some good footage though. Some people calls these piles “cairns” or “ducks”; personally, “cairn” makes me think of something religious or a memorial.
I was really hoping that zooming in would change the rocks scale to make them look huge, but no such luck. Not sure if it’s the plant life or that everything looked in focus (or something else) that made it look so different. But I still thought it was fun enough to share…
Tagged cairns, Costa Rica, ducks, Montezuma, Montezuma Falls, rocks, videos, Waterfalls
Just kind of beast crawling around making a lot of noise on the roof. At first I thought it was someone (I say “he” in the video) up there fixing a leak or something (it’d just been raining). But a little while later I spotted this. The video is a little slow in the middle but it does pick around 53 seconds.
And it’s watchable in 1080p HD, so be sure to watch it full screen! Can anyone tell me what it is?
The next morning I was eating breakfast on the balcony and this guy was up in a tree nearby. It’s something different, doesn’t appear to have the spiky things on it’s back.
The image is a little dark, but you can see better if you click to enlarge it. FYI, I don’t eat breakfast without some kind of camera nearby, you never know what might be nearby. Usually we have the lizards and monkeys, but I’ve not seen any monkeys by the hotel yet.
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.
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..
Tagged Costa Rica, map, Moctezuma, Montezuma, Montezuma Beach, Open Street Map
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.
Tagged Costa Rica, jumping, Montezuma, Montezuma Falls, videos, Waterfalls
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.
Tagged Costa Rica, Montezuma, Waterfall, Waterfalls
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.
Tagged Costa Rica, hiking, Hot, Montezuma, rain
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
Tagged Costa Rica, fire dancing, Montezuma, videos
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