I didn't take this picture, but here is the waterfall:
Here's the view from the top of the second waterfall- it's hard to get perspective, but it's really high up- you can sort of see what it's like if you can find where the first waterfall begins:
So life here just continues to get better and better every day. Every single day is a surprise. Something unexpected but awesome happens all the time. For example, this past week I was supposed to be helping a lady who they call Tita teach an english class for Costa Rican college students, but she wasn't there, so my Tico conversation partner (Juan) brought me to his class instead, and it was really fun! It's awesome to sit in- the teacher is great, and I actually learn a lot of Spanish from it. So now every Tuesday I help teach, and every Thursday I sit in on a class. Random things like that are an every day occurence. One way or another you're going to end up doing something you never even knew could have been a possibility.
Life in Puntarenas is starting to settle in. Classes are decently easy and some of them are fun, particularly the dance class! Kristin and I have been learning salsa, bochata, and... another one which I can't remember, and it's a blast. It's every Monday, and I look forward to it every week. The weeks are flying by- I can't believe it's already February! I thought time was going to pass a lot slower here, but it's going way too fast. Every minute is definitely full, though. We haven't been wasting any time not doing something new and exciting.
Speaking of new and exciting, this weekend was AMAZING! Saturday was easily the best day I think I've ever had. I'll start from the beginning- on Friday afternoon, we caught the ferry to the Nicoya Peninsula and took a surprisingly inexpensive taxi to Santa Teresa. Santa Teresa is an interesting little town with a beautiful beach of rolling waves as far as the eye can see, and it is all the way west so it is a prime location for a beautiful sunset, but other than that, it didn't have a lot going on in my opinion. It was really touristy and there were very few locals, but we did stay at a neat little hostel and had a bunch of fun! We traveled with our friends Peligro, Michelle, Zak, and Andrecito.
The next day we woke up very early, got an amazingly delicious breakfast, and headed to Montezuma, which is the most amazing place in the world, I'm convinced. It is a lively town on the cove of a breathtakingly beautiful white-sand coast. The waves there crash on rocks where the cove winds in to the right and left, but the center is sandy and perfect for swimming. There are also tons of vibrantly colored seashells and beach glass pieces. The town is tiny but it feels bigger than it is because of all of the cute shops and street vendors, and the locals there are awesome- it's a touristy town, but they will continue to speak Spanish to you as long as you don't switch to English!
The best part of Montezuma is the waterfall area. I guess I should add in that Montezuma is at sea-level, but you drive down some extremely steep roads to get there. The surrounding area is pretty mountainous, so when you walk towards the western edge of town, there is a dirt road that leads to a great hiking path, which eventually leads to a waterfall. I didn't bring my camera, so I didn't get any pictures, but I know Kristin has some from the bottom of the first waterfall! The waterfall is gorgeous, and it has a little 10-foot thing that you can jump off of to swim around in the basin, which we all did. It was weird to feel some cold, fresh water, since we've only been going to salty beaches!
Peligro, Zak, Andrecito and I hiked up this crazy path where you need to grab onto tree roots and random cords to pull yourself up, and it was a really fun adventure! At the top of the first waterfall is a second one, and you can jump into the basin, but it's a 30-40 foot drop (the actual number of feet is heavily debated). The top of the second waterfall also has the basin on the third waterfall, which is a small one that's maybe 15 feet tall if you jump off of it. The top of the second waterfall also has a rope swing. After using the rope swing, Peligro and I decided to explore past the third waterfall, and we walked for a while barefoot on a bunch of rocks, and it was beautiful. It's kind of like walking around Kid's Kove, but more extreme and with more amazingness.
After we were done exploring, we turned back and found that Andrecito and Zak had already left, so being extremely overheated and dehydrated, Peligro decided to jump off of the really, really big waterfall and it looked terrifying but I wanted to do it too, so after cowering in fear for about 5 minutes, with the persuasion of some Ticos and Northeastern students that know Becca (small world!), I actually jumped! It's really impossible to describe the adrenaline rush that you feel before and after, and how far away the bottom looks before you close your eyes and jump, and how badly your feet sting after you hit the water below, and the view from where you're standing in general, but it was easily one of the amazing experiences I've ever had.
We didn't take the same trail back to the bottom because some people told us about a different way, and we got lost, but thank god we did, because we stumbled upon the most amazing cliff ever ever ever and I hate that I didn't have my camera with me for any of this! But I guess just try to picture being completely drained and exhausted and shaky from crazy hiking and jumping off of waterfalls, and having sore muscles and not having a whole lot of energy left but being too excited about the feat you just accomplished to care, and then you're walking through a tiny, dusty little path trying to find your way to the bottom of a giant hillside in the middle of the forest, when all of a sudden you decide to go straight instead of left. And you don't realize it's the wrong way until there is a huge clearing in the sky, and the trees open up into this tiny field of grass and flowers, and for some random reason there is a geodesic dome sparkling from the sun. And it's right at the beginning of twilight so everything has that amazing orangey-yellow hue with the contrast of shadows and a piercingly blue sky, and you walk up to the edge of the opening in the woods, and you look out to see miles and miles and miles of ocean with little rocky archipelagoes with waves crashing over them in the distance, and you can see so far right and left that you see the curve of the earth, and you are so high up that you can see the cables of ziplines below and the tops of all of the trees lining what feels like the edge of the earth, and all you can do is stand there in amazement and wonder how you got lucky enough to get lost at the top of a waterfall in Montezuma in January. Nothing I can say to describe it, or pictures I could have shared if I had my camera, would effectively capture just how amazing that piece of time was. I don't think I've ever felt quite so full of life, though. And for that reason, Montezuma is the most amazing place in the world.
The rest of the weekend was kind of a blur. We spent the night in town and on the beach drinking wine of questionable quality and met up with some other USAC-ers. Sunday we went to the beach all day and jumped in the waves and just enjoyed being there. It was beautiful! Overall it was an awesome weekend, and I definitely plan on returning to Montezuma more than once.
Sorry that this post is a million miles long! Pictures soon! Miss you guys and hope all is well :)
Here's the view from the top of the second waterfall- it's hard to get perspective, but it's really high up- you can sort of see what it's like if you can find where the first waterfall begins:So life here just continues to get better and better every day. Every single day is a surprise. Something unexpected but awesome happens all the time. For example, this past week I was supposed to be helping a lady who they call Tita teach an english class for Costa Rican college students, but she wasn't there, so my Tico conversation partner (Juan) brought me to his class instead, and it was really fun! It's awesome to sit in- the teacher is great, and I actually learn a lot of Spanish from it. So now every Tuesday I help teach, and every Thursday I sit in on a class. Random things like that are an every day occurence. One way or another you're going to end up doing something you never even knew could have been a possibility.
Life in Puntarenas is starting to settle in. Classes are decently easy and some of them are fun, particularly the dance class! Kristin and I have been learning salsa, bochata, and... another one which I can't remember, and it's a blast. It's every Monday, and I look forward to it every week. The weeks are flying by- I can't believe it's already February! I thought time was going to pass a lot slower here, but it's going way too fast. Every minute is definitely full, though. We haven't been wasting any time not doing something new and exciting.
Speaking of new and exciting, this weekend was AMAZING! Saturday was easily the best day I think I've ever had. I'll start from the beginning- on Friday afternoon, we caught the ferry to the Nicoya Peninsula and took a surprisingly inexpensive taxi to Santa Teresa. Santa Teresa is an interesting little town with a beautiful beach of rolling waves as far as the eye can see, and it is all the way west so it is a prime location for a beautiful sunset, but other than that, it didn't have a lot going on in my opinion. It was really touristy and there were very few locals, but we did stay at a neat little hostel and had a bunch of fun! We traveled with our friends Peligro, Michelle, Zak, and Andrecito.
The next day we woke up very early, got an amazingly delicious breakfast, and headed to Montezuma, which is the most amazing place in the world, I'm convinced. It is a lively town on the cove of a breathtakingly beautiful white-sand coast. The waves there crash on rocks where the cove winds in to the right and left, but the center is sandy and perfect for swimming. There are also tons of vibrantly colored seashells and beach glass pieces. The town is tiny but it feels bigger than it is because of all of the cute shops and street vendors, and the locals there are awesome- it's a touristy town, but they will continue to speak Spanish to you as long as you don't switch to English!
The best part of Montezuma is the waterfall area. I guess I should add in that Montezuma is at sea-level, but you drive down some extremely steep roads to get there. The surrounding area is pretty mountainous, so when you walk towards the western edge of town, there is a dirt road that leads to a great hiking path, which eventually leads to a waterfall. I didn't bring my camera, so I didn't get any pictures, but I know Kristin has some from the bottom of the first waterfall! The waterfall is gorgeous, and it has a little 10-foot thing that you can jump off of to swim around in the basin, which we all did. It was weird to feel some cold, fresh water, since we've only been going to salty beaches!
Peligro, Zak, Andrecito and I hiked up this crazy path where you need to grab onto tree roots and random cords to pull yourself up, and it was a really fun adventure! At the top of the first waterfall is a second one, and you can jump into the basin, but it's a 30-40 foot drop (the actual number of feet is heavily debated). The top of the second waterfall also has the basin on the third waterfall, which is a small one that's maybe 15 feet tall if you jump off of it. The top of the second waterfall also has a rope swing. After using the rope swing, Peligro and I decided to explore past the third waterfall, and we walked for a while barefoot on a bunch of rocks, and it was beautiful. It's kind of like walking around Kid's Kove, but more extreme and with more amazingness.
After we were done exploring, we turned back and found that Andrecito and Zak had already left, so being extremely overheated and dehydrated, Peligro decided to jump off of the really, really big waterfall and it looked terrifying but I wanted to do it too, so after cowering in fear for about 5 minutes, with the persuasion of some Ticos and Northeastern students that know Becca (small world!), I actually jumped! It's really impossible to describe the adrenaline rush that you feel before and after, and how far away the bottom looks before you close your eyes and jump, and how badly your feet sting after you hit the water below, and the view from where you're standing in general, but it was easily one of the amazing experiences I've ever had.
We didn't take the same trail back to the bottom because some people told us about a different way, and we got lost, but thank god we did, because we stumbled upon the most amazing cliff ever ever ever and I hate that I didn't have my camera with me for any of this! But I guess just try to picture being completely drained and exhausted and shaky from crazy hiking and jumping off of waterfalls, and having sore muscles and not having a whole lot of energy left but being too excited about the feat you just accomplished to care, and then you're walking through a tiny, dusty little path trying to find your way to the bottom of a giant hillside in the middle of the forest, when all of a sudden you decide to go straight instead of left. And you don't realize it's the wrong way until there is a huge clearing in the sky, and the trees open up into this tiny field of grass and flowers, and for some random reason there is a geodesic dome sparkling from the sun. And it's right at the beginning of twilight so everything has that amazing orangey-yellow hue with the contrast of shadows and a piercingly blue sky, and you walk up to the edge of the opening in the woods, and you look out to see miles and miles and miles of ocean with little rocky archipelagoes with waves crashing over them in the distance, and you can see so far right and left that you see the curve of the earth, and you are so high up that you can see the cables of ziplines below and the tops of all of the trees lining what feels like the edge of the earth, and all you can do is stand there in amazement and wonder how you got lucky enough to get lost at the top of a waterfall in Montezuma in January. Nothing I can say to describe it, or pictures I could have shared if I had my camera, would effectively capture just how amazing that piece of time was. I don't think I've ever felt quite so full of life, though. And for that reason, Montezuma is the most amazing place in the world.
The rest of the weekend was kind of a blur. We spent the night in town and on the beach drinking wine of questionable quality and met up with some other USAC-ers. Sunday we went to the beach all day and jumped in the waves and just enjoyed being there. It was beautiful! Overall it was an awesome weekend, and I definitely plan on returning to Montezuma more than once.
Sorry that this post is a million miles long! Pictures soon! Miss you guys and hope all is well :)
4 comments:
I am so happy to read your posts AFTER you have found your way back to civilization alive - with all fingers, toes and limbs still intact and functioning! How did you know it was safe to jump? YIKES...
Be careful, my child. There are many, many more sunsets to see, waterfalls to witness and oceans to explore!
I love you,
MOM
PS. I am loving your posts :)
dont worry! the locals can tell you what´s safe and what´s not. and when in doubt, danger goes first!
It really sounds like a magical place, not even somewhere you can actually get to. Your writing captures it well.
Post a Comment