Starting the Follow-up Year of Fabulousness

I always find it incredible when I log back in here and realize it´s been a week since my last blog. Time flies when you´re lying on the beach or swimming in waterfalls. I guess that´s why vacations always seem to go too fast. I know that the majority of my friends head back to work after a nice holiday break and are dreading it. My sympathies are with you.

My days in Montezuma were some of the most relaxing I´ve probably ever had. I usually got a late start after breakfast, around 10 or 11. Monday I had planned to dive, but the divemaster was ill so it was postponed. Instead, I trekked to the first of three Montezuma waterfalls. I missed my good hiking sandals, but I have to give props to my $5 Panamian flip flops for making the almost 40-minute trek. I swam in the waterfall and soaked up the sun and afterwards spent the remainder of the afternoon on the beach in the shade reading.

Tuesday the divemaster continued to be ill, but Project Montezuma, with whom I had booked--more about them later--had booked me in with another company to save another postponement. We headed out to Isla Tortuga, a most gorgeous, gorgeous location. On dive #1 we encountered numerous fish obviously as well as an eel and lobsters. It was a good dive, and it felt good to be back underwater again even if the visibility wasn´t awesome. We took an amazing lunch on the island of fresh fish, vegetables, rice, and fruit before going out for dive #2 which was even better. A shark, lobsters, an eel, a turtle, a puffer fish, which the divemaster held up for us, and a trigger fish, which he also held up for us. Later there was an underwater cave. The ocean surge was quite strong and would literally push us back several feet, so I was wary of entering the cave and hung back. The other divers disappeared and all I could think was, Is the divemaster not worried? I finally decided to follow because if they were gone that long, it had to be cool. Twice the surge grabbed me and threw me backwards and I felt the coral on my right arm and leg, unaware of the actual damage. But I discovered that there was actually a second opening and I swam hard to avoid the third surge. I´m sure I used a lot of air in the 30 seconds or so it took to go through the cave, but as always I was glad I did it. When I climbed in the boat, I surveyed the damage to my body--about 10 cuts on my right forearm, a few on my right hand, and another 20 or so on my right calf. I was really grateful that the divemaster persuaded me to wear the short wetsuit or it would have been much worse. As it is, I´m almost healed.

Every day in Montezuma I would think, maybe tomorrow I´ll leave, and several days I kept saying, oh, one more day. One day I hiked two hours along the beach to El Chorro waterfall where I hung out with a Tico couple, the only other people there. The walk back proved to be slightly more arduous than the getting there, partly because I was tired, and partly because the tide was coming in and shortening the beach. The following day was a good day to do nothing but hang out on the beach and watch the surfers.

Finally on Friday I made the trek out of Montezuma. I opted to splurge for a $40 water taxi, which would shorten my overall travel time by about 3 hours and save me the 1.5 hour rickety bus ride. We saw about three pods of dolphins on the ride to Jaco, which helped make up for the beating that my ass took in that one hour on the ocean. After a shuttle ride, two buses, and two long waits for buses, I arrived in Dominical (just south of Silencio) at about 5 to find the town packed out due to a 12-hour music festival.

A Canadian guy I met on the bus and I headed to Dominical Backpackers, where I knew rooms were cheap. Fortunately, they had beds. The guy on duty asked us if we wanted a double, and I promptly replied, We just met on the bus, we´re not that close yet! We actually took separate dorm rooms and got lucky that no one else checked in, so we actually had private rooms at least for the night. Which was about the only saving grace about this hostel. It´s definitely the worst I´ve stayed in, but as I´ve said before, I can deal with just about anything at this point. I shared my room with three other people last night, two of whom got up early and headed to a different hostel this morning. Wimps! There is one other nice thing about this place: it´s only 100 meters from the beach. I spent all of yesterday on the beach or in the ocean. The waves were cranking yesterday afternoon and the ocean was riddled with awesome surfers. I spent hours watching them, even as the sun went down.

I´ll pass another day on the beach today, and then I´m headed for Quepos tomorrow. Anyone who knows Quepos would wonder why I´d give up Dominical for it, but then they don´t know the hostel the Wide Mouth Frog. In one word: pool. I only have a few more days until I return to my difficult volunteer work in Silencio, and I really want to pass it lying beside a pool.

As for Project Montezuma, here´s the scoop. A 31-year-old American named Kerri Bowers came to Montezuma two years ago on a summer vacation and fell in love with both Montezuma and the guide of one of the companies she had booked a hike with. She decided to stay and ended up marrying him. Together they founded Project Montezuma, which offers free English classes to the local children as well as enrichment classes that volunteers design and it´s all funded from the tours that they sell, like the dive trip I booked. The children receive only about 3 hours of education a day due to a teacher shortage, so the work of the project is greatly needed. Unfortunately, they are always in need of supplies. If you´d like to help out, let me know as I´d like to organize a school supplies drive for them. The link to their website is http://proyectomontezuma.com/.

I´ve dubbed 2010 the follow-up year of fabulousness (since 2009 was the year of fabulousness), and it´s started out strong. Here´s hoping that you have your own year of fabulousness this year.