Friday the 13th

We made it to Montezuma, barely. Yesterday morning, we were up at the crack of dawn (7:00AM) to go rafting in a river near Quepos.

We quickly got up, got ready, checked out, had breakfast, and made it to the car in time for the van to come and pick us up.

Once we were picked up, we headed off to the river which was roughly a 45 minute drive outside of Quepos. We stayed on the main road to Quepos for quite some time before veering off onto a long and unpaved road. We were bumped around, left and right, as we made our way up the mountain to the river.

When we finally got there, we all unloaded off the bus and received a 10 minute crash course in rafting. We learned all the basic commands like 'forward', 'backward', 'stop', 'lean left', and a variety of great spanish swear words. Our capitan, Antonio, was the only person our boat to fall off, and he did it more than once, which we all found incredibly entertaining.

While rowing down the river, there was a friendly rivalery with the other boats of the tour. We rammed the other boats, splashed them with water, sweared at them, it was GREAT fun. At one point, one of the captains for the other ships threatened to pull me off our boat, that binche. :)

After we were done with the rafting, we headed off to the beaches of Manuel Antonio. Once we got there though, we realized that Sharon forgot our pasports and money at the hotel's bathroom, so we jetted back to the hotel to recover them. Finally, we made a second attempt at the beach, which was well worth it. It was the most gorgeous beach I've been to, maybe. It rivaled the beaches of Morea, for sure. We spent 2 hours there, swimming and playing in the sand. During the last half hour there, Koko and I attempted to crack open a fallen coconut. We threw and banged it against the ground multiple times until finally succeeding. Unfortunately, the girls outsmarted us and came back to us with *cold* freshly opened coconuts from nearby.

Once we were done with the beach, we realized we were running late so we darted down the coast trying to get to Puentarena. This is where the ferry left to go to the penninsula where Mal Pais and Montezuma were. Once we got there, we realized we missed our ferry, but foruntately were early for one nearly an hour later. We caught that ferry and after 2 hours across the bay we arrived at the port.

When we docked, it was nearly 9:00 and extremely dark. It took us well over an hour to get to Montezuma. On the drive, we pulled over for five minutes to appreciate how many stars were visible due to the lack of light. As we watched the nights sky, we were greeted by many fireflys all around us. I'd never seen fireflys before and they were nothing like the ones in cartoons.

We headed back on our way, at which point we got on the road to Montezuma. This road was thin, long, and unpaved. It took us a very very long time to get there and on a few occasions we thought we were headed the wrong way. Fortunately, we arrived and pulled into the first hotel we saw. The hotel was really, really beautiful. With that beauty came a high price. We decided it wasn't worth it and headed down to downtown Montezuma.

We found a small little hotel near the beach. This place, at first glance was heaven. It was situated right on the beach. Sharon and Adriane were able to wake up the man who runs the hotel and convince him for a room. The man seemed VERY friendly... TOO friendly. He put Adriane in a room near his with one that shared a window with his room.

We checked in, headed off to dinner. The restaurant shared the space with the hotel that we were staying at. The seating was all on the beach. We all ordered some delicious seafood dinners. The gracious restaurant employees stayed open just for us so we could order, we were very grateful. Once we finished dinner, we headed off to showers than bed. As we were getting settled, Koko and Adriane decided to swap rooms. That put Adriane in our room with us.

As we prepared for bed, we were greeted by many... many... insects. This was pretty scary to say the least. The most noteworthy insect was a fly about five times the size of a regular fly. Fortunately, Adriane had brought her friends large mesquito net. That night, Sharon, Adriane, and I all shared a bed together under the net. It was a tight fit, but worth not getting stung or bitten. Poor Koko got the shit end of the stick that night. His room was CRAWLING with insects. He was unable to sleep and spent probably 1 hour in his room that night. He spent most of the evening outside walking around and being curious.

The next morning, we decided to check out of that hostel and head for another nearby hotel that Koko had scoped out for us. This new place had hot water, a first on this trip thus far. We're all sharing this room tonight.

During the day, we climbed up to nearby waterfalls. The first waterfall we came to had a glorious swimming hole where we spent about 30 minutes. We then made our way to the top of the first waterfall. We walked through the woods up the side of a hill to get to the top. When we finally got there, we were greeted by two waterfalls, one smaller one that was rougly 4 meters tall, another that was about 12 meters tall. We swam around in the watering hole of the 4 meter one for quite some time. We were then coaxed by a local to JUMP into the 12 meter waterfall from nearly the top.

Adriane was the fearless one jumping in multiple times with much hesitation. Sharon followed suit and made her jumps as well. I on the other hand did it, but after much debating. Koko ended up not doing it at all. We spent most of the day there and had a blast. These waterfalls were probably the most entertaining part of this trip thus far.

Anyway, I gotta get off this thing. Using the Internet in these cafe's are PRETTY expensive.