Montezuma's Preemptive Strike

After spending two nights in Fortuna, at the base of the largest and most active volcano in Costa Rica, Arenal, Robyn and I left Scott and Ashley to spend Thursday night in Mondeverde. Mondeverde is known as the Cloud Forest Town and it didn't disappoint as the misty clouds rolled right down the main street, covering everything in a fast moving fog that constricted escaping views and gave the sleepy town an intimate feel. One night in town turned out to be enough, especially when our sleep was interupted by the couple next door who paid no attention to the latex-thin walls and forced us to endure their rapture. After a short night of gagging and fitful sleep, we left early Friday morning, bound for Montezuma. Upon our arrival in Mondeverde we were told that the only highway that would allow us passage to the necoya pennisula had crumbled just the day before, thus making the voyage difficult and convuluted.
In order to avoid paying $100 US for the two of us to take a shuttle, we needed to catch the first leg of a public transit bus at 6am Friday. Waking up, we both knew that we were in for a long day. We carried our bags on our backs and under our eyes and boarded the bus, which was typically old and musty. The first hour was uneventful until we started to approach the downed bridge, at which point the bus driver performed a grand 3-point turn and drove in reverse for about 3km, which was quite impressive. All of the passengers were baffled as to the reasoning for the manuever but we later realized that, as the road narrowed in order to feed the bridge, this was the only place at which he'd be able to turn the bus around, so he was preparing for his drive out of the area. We backed up to the crashed structure and got out of the bus. Surveying the damage and the cleanup efforts we walked over a catwalk and were on the other side. There we waited for another bus to saddle up, also in reverse, and hopped aboard.
This was a rather short ride because the bus was bound for San Jose and we needed to get off in order to catch the connection that kept us on our route. As we were getting out of the bus I met an older woman named Victoria who spoke fluent English and Spanish and was also on a similar path to us. We stayed close to her in order to avoid getting ourselves mixed up. The connection bus in Barranca drove us the 45 minutes into Puntarenas, where we could find the ferry to the peninsula. In Barranca all of the gringo travellers got off and basically formed a line behind Victoria, who seemed to know her way around. It was as if the seven or eight younger travellers were her kindergarten class on a field trip. Fortunately Victoria did know exactly how to get where she wanted, unfortunately she was destined for another bus stop and we were going to the ferry station, which were on opposite sides of the town. Despite my repeatedly mentioning our need to get to the ferry, she reassuredly guided us to the bus station doorstep before informing us that it was nowhere close to where we needed to be. The large group then split, with us being joined by a solo Japanese traveller named Yuza who also wanted to get to Montezuma. Yuza spoke little English and only slightly more Spanish, so you can imagine the silly scene of the three of us trying to navigate our way through a foreign city, unsure of the direction we needed to head and barely able to speak to each other. While walking as a group, with the map out and awed, confused looks on our faces, we finally tired of the laughter from the locals and asked for help. When it became clear that we were far out of walking distance we hailed a cab and hopped in.
The driver let us know that the ferry departed at 11am and not again until 1pm, and we were 5km away at 10:52. Needless to say, we needed to hurry. The cabbie proceeded to do his best Andretti impression, screaming down the sleepy streets of Puntarenas as fast as his old Corolla would take us. He was downshifting with a vengence and even used the handbrake on more than one occasion to take a turn at speed. It was an exhilirating ride and we luckily snuck in right at the ferry foghorn. We hustled onto the boat and found seats with about 45 seconds to spare.
Off the boat and the public bus is waiting to take us from the ferry town across the coast and into Montezuma. What we thought would be a 45 minute bus ride ended up taking another hour and a half, and me being the gentleman that I am, I allowed others to take seats at the outset of the trip. By now (2:30pm) we'd been on the move for 9 hours and was fading fast. Luckily the bus finally came to it's destination and we hurriedly exited the vehicle. WIth bags on backs we strode confidently into town - only to quicly realize that we'd gotten off the bus too soon and were not in Montezuma. We watched the bus continue on without us and hailed another cab. Twenty more billed-by-the-kilometre minutes later, and we finally arrived. Luckily Montezuma's been a great place with varied cuisine, natural attractions within walking distance, good surf, and a fun night life. We've enjoyed our time here, which was made even sweeter by the (typical) tribultations we endured to get here.