Montezuma

I just had breakfast with an iguana. Our hotel - and the new room - is actually pretty nice and we now have two beds (I am in the twin and Beth is in the queen), and it includes breakfast. There is a back patio where you can sit in a little garden and have American or Costa Rican breakfast, and there are two gorgeous blue birds who are constantly flying around trying to steal the sugar packets, which they take into the trees and rip open and eat. This morning I heard a small noise on the gravel behind me and when I turned, a huge iguana was sauntering by. It stopped and looked at me for a second and then disappeared down the side of the hill and into the little creek.

Montezuma is a funny little town full of hippies and ex-pats and locals, and is about one or two blocks long. Our hotel is right in the middle of it, which is nice because we can walk to everything. To get here from the airport the cab ride was about 30 minutes over mostly-paved but very potholey roads, and the last leg into town is a dirt road that descends steeply to the coast. Montezuma is tucked into a little cove that until about 40 years ago was only accessible by boat. There are ordinances against developing near the coast here, so the town will probably stay just like this for a long time. It's a bunch of little shops and restaurants, one grocery store, and lots of beaches. Beth and I had dinner at a restaurant in the sand our first night here - great seafood, great local food, nice people. There are tons of dreadlock-wearing people selling handmade jewelry and other fun things all along the street, dogs are everywhere (so Beth is happy), and there is a constant stream of ATVs, motorcycles, Jeeps, cars, and taxis crowding the street. No one here wears a helmet and they get v-e-r-y close to pedestrians. Kind of scary!

Yesterday we spent the morning at the beach. We set up camp underneath a little tree (the sun here is intense and I burn easily!) and hopped into the ocean - great waves, good body surfing, and I swear the water is like 80 degrees. It's almost too warm! The coast is stunning - jungle right up to the water, white sand beaches, not super crowded. After we were appropriately cooked we had a nice lunch at a little bakery/cafe outside on their patio and then we were off to our afternoon surf lesson!

The lesson was with two locals and a few other people who had been out the day before with the guides (Rolando and I forget the other guy's name). Beth and I were the newbies, so we were with Rolando. They walked us to a secluded beach you can only get to on foot, where we climbed over rocks and walked from cove to cove. One of the small beaches we walked through was covered - I mean covered! - in driftwood. It was low tide so not too scary. The beach we ended up surfing at was stunning - trees almost to the water, excellent waves, and of course that warm water. The guides took us to where the boards were stored in a little cluster of beat-up houses where the locals who live there rescue turtle eggs, incubate and hatch them, and help the little guys into the water. There was a HUGE spider - the spiders here are humongous, no joke, and they look kind of mean - one of the guides tossed a little acorn into the web and she pounced on it, spun some silk around it, realized it was not a bug, and dropped it. I might have nightmares about that.

Anyway, surfing! Rolando gave us some good pointers, and by the end of the afternoon both Beth and I had officially caught a wave! At one point, Beth came running over (I was in the shade as I could feel my face getting pink, even with SPF 70 applied and reapplied!) waving her arms about something - she'd seen two stingrays (non-dangerous we were assured) in the surf. One of the guys in the group actually ran into one and said it felt slimy and gross - lovely! After the lesson, we walked the boards back to the spider-haven and there was a troupe (herd? Seriously, what's a group of monkeys called anyway?) of monkeys hanging out in the trees immediately above us. Lots of babies - very cute! The male monkeys make these great "hoo hoo hoo" noises when they hear something weird (like the surf guides imitating them), so we spent a good bit of time getting a rise out of them.

The walk back was crazy - the tide had come in and the driftwood beach was seriously frightening. When the waves went out we sprinted across the sand, and when the waves came back in we made a break for the jungle because a sea of driftwood was coming right at your legs! No injuries though. Today our knees are bruised and my ribs are pretty bruised, but it was really, really fun.

Dinner last night was at a place called Cocolores and one of the guides came with us - amazing beef fajitas and a couple of cocktails, and then back to the local bar to finish off the evening. Beth is still sleeping (it's 10:40 and I am trying to type loudly to get her moving), and we're supposed to go to a series of three waterfalls this morning but I'm not convinced we're going to make it at this rate!

Tomorrow we're taking a boat to Tortuga Island to go snorkeling and spend the day playing on the beaches - should be fun! We're in Montezuma until the 7th, then we head to Drake Bay on what should be another exciting set of flights!