Tag Archives: Waterfalls

Jumping in at the Upper Waterfalls in Montezuma

Posted on February 17, 2011 | 2 comments

I got some other traveler I’d been talking with to use my camera to video me jumping in at the upper falls in Montezuma. I’m guessing this is 30 feet(?) up, I worked out the people behind me are about 40 feet up (did some GPS based calculations a few trips ago), so maybe a little higher than 30 feet.


Watch in HD.

The water really hurt my face when I went in the water. I guess my head is tilted a little forward but I’ve jumped from the higher spot (where you can see the people) a few times before and never noticed anything. But then I can see it took me longer to come up than from the higher spot (which makes no sense either).

He tracked me pretty good for a fast as I was going and he’s way zoomed in, here’s some other video of the upper waterfalls in Montezuma.

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This isn’t the most exciting photo of the upper falls
but you can see the whole falls and the ledge where I jumped from
(the ledge on the right that looks even with the top of waterfall).

Someone else in his group got a picture of me with the SLR, but she never e-mailed it to me, which isn’t a huge surprise, but since I actually got him jumping in on hidef video I thought they’d at least e-mail for that…

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Me jumping in at Lower Montezuma Falls

Posted on December 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is me jumping of a BIG rock at the lower falls in Montezuma Costa Rica. It’s not very high, but you really need to get out past the rocks below (and the water is WAY deep).

Watch in full screen HD!

My videographer (German tourist) shot a bit of the falls after, and them me swimming back, so after the action it kinda slows down…

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The Upper Falls of Montezuma Falls

Posted on December 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Just a quick pan of the upper falls in Montezuma. I’m thinking they’re about 40+ feet, but looking how tiny the people at the top looks I want to say it’s taller. Next trip I’m bringing a ball of string to drop over the edge and then I’m just measuring it…

The thumbnails is small but the video is bigger or you can watch in a larger window.

FYI, The guy at the end of the video (above) is standing right at the top of the lower falls (130 feet is).

Actually, the (video) is of the second falls, right above these falls is another pool with some 20 foot falls.

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This was just a quick update since I haven’t done much of an update lately…

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Alien Pyramid Training Grounds found in Costa Rica

Posted on December 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

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…

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Don’t tell my Mom I did this!!!

Posted on April 24, 2009 | 2 comments

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.

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

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Heights of the Waterfalls in Montezuma

Posted on April 23, 2009 | 1 comment

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).

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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.

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My first day in Montezuma

Posted on April 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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6.1 Earthquake in Costa Rica (updates)

Posted on January 9, 2009 | 2 comments

Costa Rica had a huge earthquake yesterday (Thursday, January 8th, 2009), 6.2 on the richter scale (I’ve seen reports that say 6.1). Just north of the San Jose area. This is the biggest one that I’ve heard of in Central Valley. The Tico Times has a lot of the earthquake coverage (you do have to do some clicking and scrolling, they’re mostly a subscription service).

costricaearthquake-2009bpba.pngThey’re reporting about 23 dead with 11 still missing (at least that’s how I’m piecing everything together, I’ve seen numbers all over the place; as high as 30 dead). Lots of damage, mud slides and people trapped in various areas. 1,000+ people relocated and another 1,000+ stranded. If you check out the news stories from around the world there are definitely conflicting reports (especially on the death toll). Lots more earthquake details here and if you’ve got Google Earth installed there are some additional visual details if you click on the spot of the earthquake.

I can’t imagine the chaos and devastation that something like this causes. My thoughts an prayers go out to everyone affected by this…

I’ve been having a hard time getting my head around some of the damage, I found some photos at Inside Costa Rica and a video clip (in Spanish).

You can see many of the areas that felt it on this map, people can actually report it and that’s what feeds the map (don’t know how long they keep these on-line).

How many people are affected by this that I’ve met on my various trips down there? Places that I’ve visited or stayed at the I don’t recognize the names. I wonder how much it freaks out the tourists, imagine if they didn’t speak the language. I don’t speak Spanish well enough, in a crisis, without my translation book, I don’t know what I’d do…

There was a slightly bigger one (6.5 richter scale) in November when I was there, but I didn’t feel it and I don’t remember this much death and damage, but it was way at the south end of the country (I think it might have been in Panama) and if it was a few of my more isolated days I wouldn’t have gotten much news. My biggest earthquake ever was also in Costa Rica (4.3 richter scale) but most people didn’t even notice it (it was just after midnight).

A slightly erratic post but these thoughts have been in my head and wanted to share them…

I’ll add more links below:
Pictures from the Tico Times newspaper (more landscapes and buildings are towards the end).
Photos from al Dia from La Cinchona de Sarapiquí, Heredia
La Paz waterfalls had to close down. I believe some people took shelter there when the roads got cut off (I might be mixing the location up).

FYI, I’ve been updating the details in this posting daily, it was originally from January 9, 2009 but some of the details might be from up to a week later.

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