100% of the journey today from Montezuma beach to Paquera was blacktop! Well, there was some occasional potholes, and a nasty headwind all day, but I am happy to take those! I will not complain again about those small things ever, as long as there is pavement under me!
My hotel room was right next to a busy road last night, so I didn't sleep well, and was woken up early. But that was okay, because I wanted to go out and see the Montezuma waterfall, since I didn't have time yesterday by the time I got in to my hotel, ate lunch, showered, did daily laundry, then the 4:00 boat tour that came back about 8:00 . I had the whole waterfall to myself! It was real pretty too, but the water was just not all that blue. I got back and did some bike maintenance - cleaned off some dirt off the chain and lubed it, adjusted the back brakes, and then I noticed a couple of screws loose, including the bottom, right rack bolt. That's important one. I'm actually surprised there wasn't more things that loosened up over the past few days. On the blacktop, I was able to tell if anything else was wrong and I didn't really hear anything out of the norm. It's going to need a full servicing when I get back though, it is so dusty inside the cables and everywhere.
It was a short ride today and I went pretty fast being all on blacktop, so I went four additional kilometers past my planned hotel to check out the ferry that I was going to take tomorrow morning. As I passed my hotel I was going to stay at, I realized it was in a town with just absolutely nothing to do, and hardly any restaurants. So when I got to the ferry landing, I saw that the ferry was there, and it left at noon, and it was 11:10 when I got there. How convenient! So I called an audible and decided I would just take the ferry today instead of tomorrow morning. It would save 4 km back to the hotel, and it wasted night. I don't know what all is in Puntarenas, but I had a 70 minute ferry ride to figure it all out and look for a hotel. Getting a ticket was about as confusing as a border crossing. No signs, employees just walking around from car to car collecting money. A big tour bus came and dropped off a bunch of people, so I just followed them and did what they did. When I got to the window to pay, the employee said I needed a little bicycle ticket thing that I needed to get from a man outside. So I went outside, found in employee, and he gave me a ticket to use at the window. That was easy. I'm not sure why it was so bureaucratic though.
I was the only cyclist on the ferry. You would not see that in the Pacific Northwest! I had a bite to eat on the ferry, and planned the rest of my day, which was mainly just finding a hotel with a restaurant nearby and chilling for the night. I need to do some work on the computer, including making a YouTube of some random videos over the past couple of days. I hope you like it!
I definitely made the right move to stay at Puntarenas. The town is actually on a very long spit of land that jets out from the mainland, so it makes for a very long beach. Lots of hotels, and I have not seen this many restaurants in a row since playa Del Carmen. It is awesome, I just walked from place to place and look at the menu at all the restaurants! I had some fish ceviche for lunch. Just something small, as the place next-door to it has a picture of some really good super nachos that I might get to go later. I found another gem with my hotel. I was just riding by and looking at the outsides of them, then checking the Google reviews while in the street. My hotel last night did not have a TV, which I did not notice at first. But not a big deal, as I didn’t have a whole bunch of time last night anyway, but I do hope to sit in an air conditioned room on my bed with the laptop and just chill later on tonight.
I just noticed this morning the mud on my water bottles!
