Montezuma's Revenge

Friday we set out early for Montezuma, a beach town on the Nicoya Peninsula in northwestern Costa Rica. Our plan: take a bus to Puntarenas on the Pacific coast, take a ferry across the gulf to Nicoya, then take another bus to Montezuma. We arrived to Puntarenas just fine but went looking for the ferry at the wrong dock. A quick lunch and taxi ride later, we arrived to the ferry just as it was departing. A couple of the officials hurried us through the ticket booth and shouted at us "Run!" and "Don't Run!" as we sprinted up the dock. The ferry took off right after we got on, and we enjoyed a one-hour cruise across the gulf.

Upon landing, we boarded a full bus (literally full, as in there were about as many people standing as sitting and there was no space to negotiate down the main aisle) and rode about 60 km (36 miles) over the next two hours. The journey was marked by sweat, potholes, discomfort, frequent stops, and tears of desperation. Luckily, I made friends with a shiatsu massage therapist from Boston to pass the time.

We arrived at Montezuma to find everything I hate in a beach town: lots of American tourists, lots of hippies, lots of Rastas. In fact, Costa Ricans refer to the town as "Montefuma", a play on words referring to the amount of pot that is smoked there. We rented a cheap room in a pension from an American ex-pat and walked outside to the beach.

Unfortunately, it wasn't really worth the six hours spent in transit there. There were two beaches. The main beach was crowded and dirty, with a line of twigs, fish bones and bottlecaps marking the wave line in the sand. The other outside our pension was a small inlet with lots of fishers and seabirds. In fact, the highlight of the weekend may have been watching the pelicans dive for fish in the water.

I spent the night out with friends, got sick in the middle of the night due to the heat and was ready to head home in the morning. Kind of a fail of a trip, but it was nice at least to get out of the city. One more image from this weekend, coming from some Frenchmen's RV parked outside our pension:

Very Dada. I'll head to a different beach soon and hopefully come back with better stories.

Pura vida,

Eric