Montezuma: Se sube y se baja

This past weekend my friends and I went to Montezuma. If you look at a map of Costa Rica, it is located on the peninsula all the way to the west of the country.  Montezuma is known for its waterfalls, or catarratas, beautiful scenery (including stars), and the go with the flow mentality. We left for the bus station right after classes. My backpack was completely full of clothing for adventure and food. My goal was not to spend any money on anything other than a hostel. We stood in line for about 2 hours to get on the bus because we couldn´t buy tickets ahead of time. We got on and rode the first bus for about 3 hours. My friends and I occupied the whole back seat of the bus and slept and told jokes. The bus was almost 40% filled with other gringos from our school. For some reason, we all decided to go at the exact same time. Next, we hopped onto a ferry that took us across the water. It was gorgeous. We watched the sunset on the upper deck with the mountains and foot hills in the distance. After that ride, we got onto another bus that took us a little bit closer. I met a guy that was from U of I and chatted with him for a while about his program that is located in Heredia. After about another hour ride, we hopped onto another bus that was the local bus that took us to our hostel. I talked with a man from Belgium and some girls from Germany and Holland. These girls told us about how they learned all of the different languages and how they were traveling together. I think that the US could learn a ton from Europe in the way that we teach languages at a certain age.

We arrived at the hostel which was called Luz en el Cielo. It was gorgeous. The owner was from Colorado and there was a girl there doing a work stay program from Minnesota. Due to some problems with reservations, I was only able to reserve a hammock to sleep in. I has planned with my friends to just keep my things in their rooms and just sleep outside. I was hoping that someone would not show up and I would just get their bed. I had to wait to see. We ate a little family dinner of all of the food that we brought from home. For me, refried beans, corn tortillas, and a ton of hot sauce. After, we walked down with our friend from Minnesota to see a fire show. It didn´t happen, but my friend Brittany and I ended up in a local bar that played a mix between Merengue, Salsa, Bachata, and pop music. I´m going to miss these bars were they do pair dancing so much when I leave. We laughed as we watched older travelers dancing the way that university students normally do in the States and as younger adults were dancing salsa. It was way different. After, Brittany, Josh, and I went for a walk on the beach to look at the stars. I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was increíble. En serio. You could see everything. You could even see the spiral galaxy stripe. I was in love. After, we went back and sat around the table in the common room and drank coffee. Brittany decided that she wanted to sleep in the hammock and so I slept in her bed. Funny enough, she said she didn´t sleep. Ademas, Shelby didn´t sleep either so they sat outside my room talking all night. Poor girls.

Since it was a hot room with bunk beds that creaked and moved, I didn´t sleep very much either. I woke up at about 7 am just ready to go. So we all got up and went downstairs to hang out. We made friends with a guy from Seattle named Mike and spent the morning telling jokes that in reality wouldn´t have been so funny if it weren´t for the lack of sleep. We ate a breakfast that was amazing for the $15 we paid for the night. We then went with our friend Mike to the waterfalls.

Let me paint a picture: We walked for about 10 minutes on the road and then cut off into the woods. We followed a stream and climbed over boulders and what not to get to the first pool. The first pool was rather large and had a waterfall that spilled into it. It was surrounded by rocks that you could jump off of. My friends and I immediately jumped in and swam out to the rocks to jump. We didn´t loose any time. It was a blast. Mike then explained that there really wasn´t a trail up to the others. We just had to climb and follow him. We climbed up a rather steep foot trail that took about 15 minutes. I was sweating bullets by the end of that work out. We arrived at the next two pools. The very top pool had a small waterfall that flowed into it from the stream. Then from that pool, there was a huge waterfall down to another pool, which had the huge waterfall that flowed down into the very first pool. In the top pool, there was a rope swing. Between the middle and bottom waterfall, there was a 50 ft. waterfall that you could jump from. We watched as Mike didn´t even blink before jumping off of the huge waterfall into the pool below. It was so high that I doubted that I would jump. So we swam around and swung on the rope swing. After a while, I worked up the courage to jump off of the waterfall. My friends explained to me that in order to land and not get hurt, you had to be completely straight and point your toes. I ran off and jumped down to where my friends Rosie and Chelsea were waiting for me. As soon as I jumped, I realized that this was actually really huge and I was probably going to get hurt. I landed in the water and felt a horrible pain in my lower back and butt. I apparently had my legs just a little bit in front of me and that was all it took. I came up and realized that I wasn't really able to swim. Thank God I had Rosie and Chels because they carried me over to the rocks to hold on while I waited to stop hurting. To make a long story short, I had to climb up the rocks and hike a trail with a sore back. Not the best but it was still really gorgeous. Some crazy guy that climbed like a monkey helped me across some rocks too.

We went back to the hostel and I took a shower and relaxed my back. Everyone else went to the beach. I spent the time doing some homework and hanging out with a girl I met from Australia. She was really interesting. She was taking a break from reality before she went to work full time for a new company. We talked and she gave me a scarf she bought in Morocco because she didn't need it in the heat of Costa Rica. After my friends came back, we all just hung out and talked. We played a little bit of cards and basically relaxed. It was just a big family atmosphere. We thought about walking down to a bonfire that was going to be on the beach but when the time came, my group decided that it would just be best to go sleep. So we packed up and got ready to leave at the crack of dawn.

Shelby, Brittany, and I decided to get up early and take the earlier bus that left at 6:30 am. We got to the station and waited for the bus. That bus took us to another bus. We we bought tickets, Brittany and I decided to be nice and let a 2 ticos go ahead of us. Wrong decision. We were told that we probably wouldn't have seats on the next couple of buses after the ferry. Awesome. So we hopped on the bus and sat in the back. Shelby and I began to eat a quick breakfast of refried beans and pb and j tortillas. I was sitting next to a tica woman and her daughter. They were super sweet. She even gave Shelby and me an empanada when she saw our pathetic breakfast. After than, while I was just sitting thinking about how tired I was, her daughter leaned over and gave me a pair of Hello Kitty earrings. Yea, she gave me her earrings. When I told her I couldn't accept them, she said I had to because she didn't have pierced ears. She also gave Shelby a pair of teddy bear earrings after Shelby said how cute mine were. People here are really amazing. After that bus ride, we boarded the ferry and I decided to splurge and buy a torta. My back was really hurting and the benches were hard to sit on so I just hopped that the ride went faster. When the ferry reached the land, Brittany and I basically ran to try and get seats on the bus. It was pointless because the man made us wait regardless. So we waited and by the luck of God, Josh saved us a seat. I sat in it first and Brittany took the floor. We promised to switch so that one person didn't have to always be on the floor but seat opened up after the first 30 minutes and a couple of stops. So we all had seats. We made it back in record time and I was home making guacamole by about 1 pm. Amazing.

This was a great weekend. I absolutely loved Montezuma. The people there are super nice and really understand the idea of solidarity. Nature is beyond abundant and beautiful. Even though I hurt my back, I think that this was the most beautiful weekend I have had. Sure, it has been about 4 days since my horrible jump and I am still having trouble sitting down, especially now as I write this blog, but it was definitely worth it. I just needed to relearn the lesson of what goes up must come down, or se sube y se baja.