Montezuma

It has been a while since our last post so we now have tons to talk about. During our unexpected but wonderful break from school we traveled to Montezuma a small town on the Nicoya Peninsula. After a long busride to Puntarenas we took a beautiful ferry ride to the peninsula and then another exhausting bus that seemed more like a suana to the small town of Montezuma. Montezuma was a tiny town right on the beach filled with chilled out ticos (costa ricans) and a small gathering of hippie backpackers. (I think im starting to sound a lot like the writers of my travel book maybe because Ive been reading up about a bunch about places we hope to go..) After crashing in a hotel with tiny dark rooms and unbearable beds we quickly decided to change hotels and found a nice little spot right on the beach called Hotel Lucy that had canopies over the beds that rachel was crazy about. The first two days we ate out but after realizing that this was no longer an economically sound practice we quickly took to the kitchen. A kilo of rice costing about 2 or 3 dollars ended up being enough food for the two of us for the remainder of the week. We also took our chances with a couple dozen eggs fried and scrambled. (The eggs in costa rica are never refridgerated which seems a little odd to me.) Then, we fried our first platanos which turned out to be the cheapest, easiest and most delicious meal of all. Pretty much we just spent the week lounging around the beach and cooking in the kitchen at night. (Kitchen and fridge space were difficult to get due to the high number of french canadian and german tourists who had the same idea as us (and cooked meals that smelled quite a bit better than ours)).

One night we attempted to hang out on the beach but quickly discoverd that as soon as the sun set the beach became alive with thousands of hermit crabs that had been still all day. We also saw our first tarantula crawling along. After running home to our hotel we decided the beach belonged to the insects and animals at night, we could look at the stars from the hammocks outside our hotel.

Montezuma was definetly a change of climate after spending nearly a month in the mountains were it is always a bit chilly and tends to rain every single day. A quick sunburn quickly made us realize that the sun was definetly a bit stronger than anywhere either of us had been in a while and so we spent the hottest part of the day reading in the hammocks and chairs on the porch of our hotel. Together we have probably read a dozen or more books and are almost completely out.

We also saw our first scorpion in Montezuma! It was crawling on the leg of one of the jewelery venders all over town before he threw it off before it could bite him. We also had our first pizza in almost a month in a nice small italian pizzeria. On the night of rachels birthday dinner we went out to the pizzeria but after having a piece of shrimp I quickly became sick and spent the night awake.

After a nice long break we sadly packed our bags and made the long trek back to the mountains. On the ride home the bus broke down an hour from home and we spent an hour on the side of the road watching the bus driver remove a wheel and take the rock that was jammed there out.