I have been shamelessly saving this blog post title ever since I realized we were going from Monteverde to Montezuma in the same day. Monte to monte, mountain to beach, boy band leading the way.
All in all, the trip was a butt-rumbling five hours, complete with rest stops. We wound back down the steep gravel mountain road from Monteverde.
For the first 20 minutes, we were rumbling slowly down on our own, but then we became trapped behind a tour bus. A brave Tico driver came up behind us and passed it on a curve moments before an oncoming car zipped around the turn.
It was becoming more obvious that I would need to pass the bus or remain trapped behind it and have our transit take twice as long as it was also surely bound for the same destination. The mountain road is just turns, and there are no pull-offs for slower traffic.
I am going to have to be like a crazy Tico driver and pass the bus on a curve.
Without murdering us.
While staying on the mountain.
The back of the bus said “in God we trust” in Spanish. Given the nature of Tico drivers, I assume it was a literal prayer stamped on the back of the bus, and uttered by every single person who zipped past it unsafely.
I gathered up my nerves for a long while before finding a stretch of curvy road that allowed me to see no cars were coming for a short while. As quickly as we dared, we zipped past the bus (mostly while screaming “I’m passing the bus!”) safely and darted over to our side of the road before the next hairpin turn.
The drive down still had some beautiful views to offer as we rumbled back down to sea level! We also got stuck behind zero more buses.
Once we got back to the interamericana, the next few hours were spent on roads through dry countryside, passing cows and listening to a station that played a mix of latin american hits with some from the states. We heard the same Pitbull song a few times, and this atrociously catchy tick tock song by some dude named Sir Lawd. It consisted of a lot of grunting and saying “tick tock.”
The road stayed in various states of paved (this is now all relative to me) until we reached the ferry port, as our turn into the mountains took us on gravel and dirt roads. We held on to our butts: this road was definitely in worse shape than the road to Montezuma. I am pretty sure we were driving on an actual cheese grater for several miles.
After about an hour of cheese grater roads and rumbled butts, we finally found pavement as the towns started getting more touristy. Montezuma, finally!
Our villa is basically a treehouse not in a tree. The upstairs is entirely open (and not air conditioned). It’s 90 degrees, but dips down to 70 at night, and there are fans. Downstairs has a huge kitchen and three bedrooms, plus an amazing tiled bathtub which I wish to make my own. The hot water is currently smarter than us or broken, or both. It’s so hot it doesn’t really matter!
Montezuma is a bohemian surfer town, and has a wide range of restaurants that are surprisingly tasty. I tracked down the elusive green orange, which tastes like a lemon and an orange had mated. It was confusing and delicious.
The rest of our day was spent lounging in hammocks and reading by the ocean. Tomorrow, we will do some things.
