Nov 17- Time to put our bodies to the test….will we make it?!

Woke up early because HOWLERS at 5am.  Sooo angry in the morning…..(them, not me) This loft is sweet, you barely have to life your head off the pillow to see the ocean down below.  I was wondering if Jay would wake up covered in ants because I had the bug net up here and he didn’t have one. The fan down there must have kept them at bay, he was fine;)

We decided to visit the Montezuma Waterfalls while we were here, as it’s nearly free to do. There are 2 different ways to access the falls as there are 3 of them. Check out this link which explains that with photos: Montezuma Waterfalls

Since we were at the top of the mountain, the easiest access point for us was the Canopy Trail.  Our host Peter, gave us a lift to Sun Trails about 6 minutes away.  It cost us each $4 to use the self-guided trail of hanging brideges/steps.

It was about a 15 minute walk until we reached the first waterfall at the top.

Smallest waterfall and shallow, but we got in the cold water!  We hung out for 20 minutes or so, then we climbed all the way down the steps to the big waterfall. I definately wouldn’t walk back up the stairs, but it was fine going down.

Once you got to the bottom of the steps, we had to then go up the river, hopping along the rocks about 5 minutes to reach the big waterfall. There were a few other tourists there as well as some locals selling a few items. We swam for a bit to cool off and met some cool people. More tourists started to arrive from the Riverbed Trail after 15-20 minutes or so, so we decided to head into town.It was probably around 10:30 when we left, it gets busy there and it was Saturday. It wook about 15 minutes to find our way through the trail back, you have to start on the left side and at some point cross the river on some rocks until you reach the end. Wasn’t too difficult, there were some older folks that made it through. My legs were like jello from the stairs so I was happy when we made it back to the town. At the end of the river walk we were thirsty, and there was a guy there selling coconut water for $1000 colones. We each grabbed one and walked 10 minutes back into town for lunch.

We decided to pop in a cool surf shop, where Jay found a hat and a tank top he liked. We only brought some money for lunch and our debit cards. THe machine didn’t like the debits and we had just enough cash. I figured we could use that for his shopping and hit the ATM up the road. Of course the ATM was out of money after we made the purchases, so now we were stuck with no money, and you can’t get cash back anywhere. The closest town was Cobano that has 3 banks but we had no car to get there. The bus was possible, but that would take all day, so we decided to take a taxi;we could pay him once we got to the bank. Luckily our taxi driver that knew us was there at the taxi stop (Francisco), so he took us to Cobano where we had to try a few different machines but finally got some cash. It cost us $20 to go to Cobano and back but it saved us a lot of time.
So we headed to lunch at the cafe by the beach (it was now 1:00pm) we had some cervezas and we both ordered shrimp/rice. They were huge portions so we were able to get takeout boxes so we could eat it for dinner later.

We decided to look around at a few more shops since it was around 2:00 and we had no plans for the rest of the day. I also needed to hit up one of the tour kiosks to book our taxi boat to Jaco for Monday. We went to Cabo Blanco tours and they were also pushing a tour on us to Tortuga Island. We were going to just do nothing the next day (Sunday), but this tour was only $35 each. It was an hour boat ride to the island, it included snorkelling, bbq lunch, cervezas, a few hours to hang out then the boat ride back. The offer was too good to pass up, the island looked nice too. It was $100 each for the tour and the $65 taxi boat/shuttle for Monday. We didn’t have the credit cards so now we needed more cash, luckily the guys were filling the ATM across the street. A security guard with a giant gun was standing there while the other one was filling it. We decided to wait so we grabbed a beer at Chicos…..which turned into another beer. Hey, look at what everyone drives here

So it took them an hour and a half to fill the ATM…like what the hell are you doing?? It better be full of cash, as there were 3 people waiting to use it. The machines are finicky with how much they give you and only have certain amount of US cash and colones. It will tell you that you don’t have enough in your bank account but it just doesn’t have that much to give. SO you have to fuck around with denominations and different currencies and holy hell. I ended up getting 100us out and 100,000 colones or something just in case.
We booked our stuff then got a taxi back home at 5:00…

We hung out on the porch for a bit, Luna came by to hang with us.

We went in around 6, did some work and ate our leftovers…back in town tomorrow morning around 9 for our Island Adventure!