Adventures on land

Buenos Tardes, my friends and family!

I´m contentedly exhausted, typing here from the teeny internet cafe on the ´main street´, Montezuma. It´s easy to see how people wash up on these shores and never seem to leave. The air is so sticky and hot, anything faster than a sultry walk is too rapid, and any industry too far removed from the beach is simply ignored and forgotten.

But, being ambitious tourists, this morning Robert and I were up at o'dark early, beating the heat and the crowds, to hike to the waterfalls above town. Advertised as a 15 minute wander, we spent an hour scrambling over boulders, wading in the river, and picking our way over slippery moss and under hanging vines, before we finally made it to the falls. We saw plenty of wildlife: iguanas, lizards of all sorts, spiders and other creepy-crawlies, plus fish, birds, and weird looking squirrels. We snapped tons of pics.

In need of refreshment from our walk, we indulged in a repast of fresh coconut milk served roadside by a guy with a machetti: he choped off the top of the coconut, inserted a straw and handed it over -- surprisingly yummy! We chucked the coconut into the bushes when done (it´s compostable) and wandered into town to rent an SUV, hoping to make it to the famous Mal Pais beach on the other side of the penninsula, for a lunch on the beach and folick in the waves. Unfortunately, our goal was elusive as we kept getting delightfully lost along rutted dirt trails and pathways through the trees and hills. Finally unwinding our way back to Montezuma in defeat, we devoured a delicious lunch I can´t even remember and our hotel welcomed us back dusty, dirty, sweaty, windswept, bumped and bruised, and completely, completely spent. Wonderful.

For tomorrow´s industry, we are booked on a boat tour to the nearby Tortuga Island. Supposedly you can rent sea kayaks there for just $10, or go snorkling, fishing, all kinds of things. And you can even just sit in a hammock and let the gentle breeze rock it back and forth. It´s going to be tough deciding which :-)

Love T