Montezuma, Saturday

Sat 25th 0815 Sitting at rather high table waiting for breakfast (I felt a bit lost but went and asked and they said they'd bring it). Feel a bit awkward but not too bad, not much chat except among one possible family.

Slept OKish. Feel slightly dehydrated but not insane. Couple of pisses in the night but all fine. Sat in bed listening to music a bit last night and quite enjoyed it, also oddly cool to see lights (presumably) from phones on other bunks and think of them like little capsules of light sailing through the night.

Plan for today is still to do that long beach walk from guide book. I may stick on at hostel long enough to drink a fair chunk of water and have a big piss before I go though. Plan is also probably to stay off the beer today if I can.

0829 Breakfast not bad, though haven't got any coffee yet so will hang on in hope. I half overheard something which may suggest there's a delay with it but far from sure.

I did see yesterday there is a water taxi to Jaco for USD50. I would in many ways rather get the "main" ferry to Puntarenas, which I also suspect is cheaper.

OK, I just went and asked about getting a cup (there's an obvious self-service urn) and they said there aren't any spare so I said I'd wait, which is annoying but at least I asked so I don't feel like too much of a sap, half suspect I won't get one but you never know.

OTOH by all accounts PA is not terribly nice and none of the places between there and Jaco from a quick glance at map and my memories of the guide book are tremendously "important" from a tourist POV either. So by the time you factor in the expenditure of time and the money spent on accommodation in not-that-interesting places, it feels like it might be the smart option to splurge on the water taxi to Jaco (which itself sounds a bit of an overdeveloped resort from guide book, but still) and save both time and money viewed from that perspective, and Jaco does at least look like a likely spot to start heading down the west coast from without getting stuck going into San Jose or whatever. And of course if the west coast plan doesn't pan out for whatever reason once I am on the non-peninsula I also have the option to head over to Carribbean coast if I want instead.

I don't have to decide this now of course, just jotting some thoughts down. Perhaps on a subsequent trip I might head from SJ (arrival) to Puntarenas and take the "normal" ferry westbound, perhaps en route to Nicaragua.

1836 Outside hostel with slightly chilled bottled water. Some guy doing solo guitar cover of "Sweet Child of Mine" from a bar/hotel across the road, which is sort of cool.

So about 1050 I set off to walk to the waterfall at the end of the stretch of beaches to the north. I did, with the odd pause for thought it took me about 2h 20 to get there. Climbed up onto the rocks to see the pool below base of falls, deserted though a small group of people sat in shade a couple of hundred metres before the falls, and a guy carrying what I think was a metal detector came up (we exchanged "hola"s) and went up onto I assume the top of the falls (I had a quick look but although I could probably have done it it looked like a set of iffy steps barely present in the side of a mostly sheer boulder face of maybe 2m high, so decided against it) and I didn't see him again. Pretty cool to be up there all the same. Modulo worries about UV I might possibly go up there and go into the pool at base, which looks small and fairly shallow, at some point.

Whole walk pretty nice really, bit hot but not too bad (incidentally not too hot in bed last night either, fans on and maybe it's not that hot at night or I'm acclimatising) with some decent breezes and quite a bit of shade.

Felt quite knackered (esp feet) towards end, for some reason got desire to get " ham" and bread and have some sandwiches for dinner. So I did, despite being a bit pricey at the non-wanky supermarket (deliberately didn't check wanky one) at 4.2k-ish, but not too bad. Not exactly healthy but not terrible. Came back to hostel, kitchen (which always seems to smell a bit) mercifully empty so had 9 sandwiches with all the ham and have a bit of bread left for which lack of obvious non-refrigerated storage in kitchen have shoved under bed.

Sorted out some clothes for laundry, couple of women in dorm at points (I said hola to one, not too awkward) and I was intrigued to infer from their conversation that one was doing her laundry in the sink (the other offered her some gadget she didn't know the English for - didn't see it myself, maybe a plug??) and I was surprised this was an "open" thing - I sort of assumed it was only me who would do hand washing and in particular that it was not "done" to do it when staying in dorms. If I ever end up in a suitable conversation I'll have to ask someone about this.

Had shower, put clean trousers on (slight shame the black ones are getting the proper laundry treatment again) and took laundry out to place had spotted down the road last night - only 1500 a kilo, not too bad, and touch wood it's OK and I can pick it up 9am tomorrow so can do after breakfast. This is a pair of trousers, two plastic tops (including maybe-iffy wood smoke one) and two sets of underwear.

Went and sat on nearby beach for sunset (or "things getting dark" really) for maybe an hour after that then came back here to sit outside and write this with my semi-chilled water.

Do plan to stay off the beers tonight but I may pop into town (ie round the corner), get a big bottle of soft drink (maybe one of those tea ones) and sit and drink in in that refugio place for an hour or so. Was yawning a bit earlier and could imagine going to bed earlyish.

Managed to leave powerbank on charge when headed out at 1050ish (was just sitting out front of hostel with water feeling surprisingly comfortable and earwigging a bit between end of breakfast and then - if I didn't say I did get a cup and had two cups of black coffee) so that should be fine.

Did see some people having surfing lessons on one of nearer to town beach as I was coming back - felt bit jealous, but as already noted there are solid (and non-permanent) reasons I can't do this now. Some of the beaches further up near-deserted, felt a tiny bit edgy about it for a moment when I thought about it but it all felt pretty safe and no one had advised me otherwise. Quite cool really for it to be so quiet.

Just overheard some talk about "local" waterfall. Gut feeling is I am going to go tomorrow (not to swim) and see if I can get up to the top on the intermediate path which is on the sign board but which the guide book (which seems rather confused tbh) doesn't seem to mention. I am not saying I might not at least have a look at the "hard" path, I am not doing anything stupid but it's undeniable it does intrigue me a bit and I do have a bit of experience of scrambling around on rocks, as long as it isn't actual climbing climbing. Roommates in Samara said IIRC it's really busy on Sunday but I'll probably go and have a look anyway.

Feel a bit bloated after all this water. Not exactly a bad sign. May still go get a soft drink, may not. Overheard something about a bonfire just down road later, which may be worth checking out or may not.

Blowing hot and cold over meeting people. TBH half the time I don't actually *want* to talk to people, or someone sits down next to me to smoke or something and I find myself hoping they don't try to talk to me. I'm utterly inconsistent here.

Looking at guide book, main other thing to do locally is walk up a river (bed?) to some other falls (4km up road to entrance, then 2km up the righer). Not entirely clear if this is a swimwear deal or not. Might give it a go though.

Dithering about "local" falls. Undeniably don't want to be unnecessarily "scared" but equally don't want to do anything utterly foolish. (Also "2-3 tourists die each year" is kind of meaningless without an idea of how many tourists visit the falls. If only 20 tourists visit a year that's a damn scary statistic, if 200,000 visit a year this starts to be kind of "crossing the road" deal.)

Guidebook praises my current hostel, although it seems frankly inaccurate even on the objective details.

Guide book says there is a Banco de Costa Rica ATM here. I haven't looked but it presumably must be wrong given what everyone else seems to tell me. (I don't need one.)

Two women next to me smoking and discussing the falls a bit. They half implied they did it themselves, but I think they're talking about some other people. Hard to be sure. One of them is enormous.

OK, the Lajas falls thing looks like you have to walk up the river and you need "water shoes" but you are going to get wet, the river isn't deep but there are pockets 5 feet deep etc etc. I dunno. Technically speaking I could probably wear my only shoes, my walking shoes, and swimming costume. However, this leads onto something I need to "sort out" for a future trip - apart from maybe some longer swimming trunks (and ones that don't worry me by being dead loose either through age or me losing weight), I ought to bring a short-sleeved "plastic" T-shirt (I already have one in red I could use) which I would wear when swimming etc - this would cut down UV exposure, sunblock requirements and avoid the practical issue of the difficulty of applying sunblock to my own upper back. However, I don't have that now, and do I really want to risk either going topless or wearing one of my three "good" long-sleeved tops to do this walk? I suppose potentially I could buy a cotton T-shirt here, but cotton really would be a bit shitty. (Likewise, less unsatisfactorily perhaps, I could potentially buy some sort of swimming-ish shorts here.)

It also sounds a bit of a "swimming" kind of deal in general. Not that you have to be able to swim, but that if you can't maybe you miss out on half the fun of being at the falls at the other end. I dunno, I really dunno. Hmm, re-reading some random web page about it it says when you get to the first waterfall the swimming hole is "beautiful and deep" and that you have to swim across before climbing up the waterfall. I assume (even the guide book doesn't whittle about it) the climb isn't anything major, but while I might get across at a push, swimming across a deep swimming hole (no matter how beautiful) as a mandatory part of the route doesn't exactly sound smart when I'm a shitty swimmer and would be there on my own (depending on how many other people are there, I really have no idea, but it would probably be folly to assume someone would be present, able and willing to save me if I got into difficulties). So I think gut feeling is this is a no go. (Also, I'm a tourist. How the fuck am I supposed to *drive* 5km out of town to the starting point? Potentially I could walk this, but even without the swimming concern it would make the whole thing a bit more of an expedition than might be fun - especially on the way back when I'm potentially knackered and have 5km of maybe hilly and/or dog-infested road to traverse before it gets dark.)

Anyway, while I feel slightly peeved, I think this is a no-go on swimming grounds alone.

2305 Bed. Will write tonight up tomorrow.