Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Day 12 - Matapalo and a day of debauchery

After waking up I took a walk to the bank to get some more cash from the ATM. The machine wouldn't accept my card on the PLUS system even though the sign said it would. This made me a bit nervous as we were low on cash. I went back to the hotel and got my only other credit card on the Cirrus network which worked and withdrew about $400 in colones.

We met Pablo at about 9am and headed to Matapalo stopping at the store on the way to get some water. The road was pretty bad and required crossing about 6 streams/small rivers. Once in Matapalo we stopped at some beaches and Pablo seemed to know everybody we saw walking around. We stopped to visit some people, one of whom was a caretaker for an incredible house owner by a very wealthy family form Santa Barbara who only comes to visit once/year. We were able to walk around the grounds and took some pictures.

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Pablo and I at the mansion


We then drove a bit further to the end of the road and started our hike up the river to the waterfall. It was an easier hike than getting to the waterfall in Montezuma but it required wearing shoes to get wet as you need to walk in the river in some places. About 20 minutes later we reached the falls - about 30 meters high and spectacular. Underneath the falls was very rocky and not very deep so we couldn't really swim but it was nice to sit underneath and get pounded by the water - like a massage!

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The waterfall




After hanging at the waterfall for about an hour we hiked up the opposite side to the top of the falls and saw some incredible trees that looked like something out of Lord of the Rings. Pablo pointed out some trees that a crazy friend of his likes to climb. He had a hammock strung up about 200' high in a tree!

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After hiking back to the road Pablo was able top score us some cold beers from some Ticos who lived nearby and then we saw someone he knew from the Encanta La Vida Hotel who invited us back here for some cold beers at the bar. We met some more of his friends including a guy, Adam, who is part of the US snowboard Olympic team. As the beers and rum flowed we played ping pong (the bartender, Bernie, was the Matapalo ping pong champion) and got a little crazy.

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Bernie the Matapalo ping pong champion


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Bernie and Adam paying ping pong

Adam invited us back to his house for dinner but first we had to drive back to the hotel to clean up and change. We made the drive back to Puerto Jimenez and, since we hadn't eaten any lunch, were hungry so we stopped at a local friend chicken restaurant for a few pieces of chicken to tide us over until dinner.

We got back to the hotel at 6pm and showered and changed. We met Pablo and headed north to Adam's house about a 20 minute drive from Puerto Jimenez. Once there we had some more drinks and Pablo cooked us an incredible dinner with salad, pasta, beef, and fish.

Pablo the cook

Pablo even brought his guitar and played some music after dinner. We were getting pretty burned out after all the fun we had and left at about 10:30 dropping off one person at Iguana Iguana for a poker tournament . We were back at the hotel at 11pm and immediately went to bed

1 comment:

  1. I remember those water falls very well, I was getting ready to get into the water and fell. Freak out my wife a bit.

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