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After a few days of unpleasantness of varying degrees of seriousness (some of which I will relate here, other parts will go with us to the grave unless they become amusing in the far future), we are now in another paradise. The hotel Amor de Mar in Montezuma to be exact.
We travelled by bus and police pickup truck and taxi and ferry and bus and mini bus from La Fortuna to Montezuma on what we found out was the Saturday of a three day weekend in Costa Rica. It was Labor Day weekend and everyone had Monday off, so lots of people were travelling. We got into Montezuma after dark, tired and hungry.
Every bar and restaurant seemed to be playing different music, loudly. After a horrible dinner of was supposed to be fish in coconut milk and curry, but tasted like fish in mushroom gravy, we went back to our hotel and slept fitfully in the heat. The next day, we hoped to take the noon bus to the next town, Cabuya, which was said to be very quiet. The bus didn't come til 2 pm...
We got to the hotel a fellow traveler had recommended
Leaving Puntarenas
On the ferry to the Nicoya Penninsula and checked in...Our room was an A frame above an open sitting area...our bathroom was behind the sitting area.. and had a resident land crab and a few geckos....But it was very quiet. And very hot....We tried swimming at the rather menacing looking beach across the road, accessed by crossing the neighbor's yard (he was inside getting quite drunk with a bunch of friends) and got attacked in the water by tiny sand shrimp that clung to us and bit us!
The best thing besides the quiet in the little village was a great restaurant run by a family in their home....after eating dinner there, we walked home in the dark and silence (except for the howler monkeys in the distance). It was so hot that night, that I gave up sleeping and went down to the sitting area to read til I got really sleepy or dawn came... About 1:00 am something caught my eye...I had my glasses off to read, but I could see an animal the size of a medium dog just to my right, outside the sitting area. I slowly put on my glasses and saw that it was a spotted cat about three and
a half feet long and two feet high. It stared at me with golden eyes for a second and disappeared silently into the dark....!!! I looked it up the next day and am quite sure it was a "manigordo" or ocelot! It is very rare to see one.... Here is link to a photo if you want to see what it looked like...
http://www.nicoyapeninsula.com/wildlife/wildcats.html
The next day we headed back to Montezuma, looking for a hotel with either airconditioning or a swimming beach...we walked to the next place to find it closed and then hitch hiked the rest of the way back to Montezuma..wondering if we should just give up and go somewhere else...instead, we found Amor de Mar....and the pictures will tell the rest!
We have been swimming in the tide pool, hiking on the beach, reading in the hammocks, and visiting the surf towns of Malpais and Santa Teresa by ATV. The roads are very dusty here since it is the end of the dry season and few areas are paved. We will stay here til Sunday, then head for San Jose and from there on to Panama...
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fran
non-member comment
can't wait
I hope by the time you return, those untold stories finally seem funny to you and you'll share! Glad you and Bill are staying safe Lynn. see you soon! fran