Montezuma

This little hostel provided breakfast so I was up early to partake of coffee beforehand. After a generous serving of pancakes and fresh fruit, I wandered down to the tour office to wait for departure.

We walked down to the beach and piled onto the awaiting boat. Then, we were off zipping along the pristine, palm-clad coastline at a good rate of knots. We stopped midway to see the El Chorro waterfall, one of only seven waterfalls in the world that plunge directly into the sea. As it was dry season, the flow wasn’t immense, but it was still pretty impressive to see from our little boat out at sea.

We continued on until reaching a jungle clad islet with a little rocky outcrop next door which was sporting an archway. This being a cool tourist stunt of driving the boat through before continuing along further to Isla Tortuga.

Isla Tortuga, contrary to popular opinion, does not derive its name from having anything to do with turtles, other than it is shaped roughly like one. Still, it is a popular tourist destination for snorkeling or just chilling on the beach. I had booked a snorkeling tour, so we were dropped off at a nearby rocky outcrop with strict instructions of where we could and couldn’t go. Unfortunately, the coral here is sporadic and badly bleached, however, the brightly coloured fish provided sufficient entertainment. At the second snorkeling site, I even saw a large spotted ray swimming past.

It was lovely swimming in the cool, turquoise water, but eventually our time was up and we putted over to the island for lunch. Fresh, panfried fish, accompanying by traditional rice and beans and salad, washed down with not so icy beer was just the ticket after a couple of hours in the water. Afterwards, one of the other girls and I decided to be most decadent and ordered Pina Coladas in pineapples to drink in the sea after our lunch. It was nice and cool in the water and hot out so it really was a no-brainer to just stay there until we got the call to get back on board the boat for departure.

A nice, brisk pace back to Montezuma had us back late afternoon when it was time to clean up and change for dinner. I found a little local bar some Canadian ex-pats were drinking at, so joined them and had a great time learning about their time living in Montezuma and the changes they had seen over the years. One of the girls from the snorkeling tour and another girl from her hostel popped in and I ended up going out with them to a lovely restaurant for dinner. After a big day, it was not a late night.