Day 20 – Heading to the Montezuma Market

The day was to be centered around the acquisition of a certain macramé necklace. We had seen this necklace two weeks prior at the market in Montezuma. Every Saturday they have various artists and sellers of wares that come out and display their goods. This lady made some beautiful jewelry that mimicked things like the hibiscus flower or various butterflies. We were to pack our things and make our way to Montezuma.

We left the house around 8:30am this morning and made our way to the Hotel Caleja to talk to Marco about fishing later today. When we entered the gates of the Hotel, we ran into Andre and Cicely, the couple from Canada. They were planning on going into Montezuma as well. I checked with Corolla, Marco’s wife and she said we were all set for fishing today at 1pm. I just wanted to be sure before heading into Montezuma, because I needed to plan on coming back somehow. Since we got the okay, we started walking into town. Andre, Cicely and their kids walked with us. We figured we would keep walking until the bus came. A little after leaving the hotel, Marco drove by and asked if we could reschedule fishing to tomorrow. Glad we saw him. We continued on our walk and eventually with only 2km left to go to town, we hopped on the bus. Cost to finish the ride - $0.80 per person. Jen, Sam, Liz, Amber and Alex were on the bus as well. Turned out we had a full bus. We all jaw-jacked the remainder of the ride.

Once we got off the bus we directly made our way to the market. The mission was on. No sign of our lady yet. We looked at some other vendor’s items, purchased some bread pies and some hot sauce, and eventually noticed the macramé lady setting up her table. A few moments later Anna happened to acquire one of her pieces. It looks really good on Anna, I must say! She ended up getting one of the butterfly pieces. You should be able to see the necklace in one of the market pictures on Anna.

After we purchased some vegetables from the organic grower at the market, we decided to head to the bus stop and get back to Cabuya. Thomas wanted to go snorkeling. Jen and Sam passed by the bus stop about 10 minutes later and asked what we were doing. The bus was not to come back again to Montezuma until 2:15pm. I thought for some reason it would be coming back at 11:30am, but apparently I was badly misinformed. We tagged along with the ladies and head to the beach.

This was a termite mound we passed. Look at the very top. He's well camouflaged.

When we got to the beach, Thomas and I decided to walk back home. Anna and Olivia wanted to stay with the girls and wait to take the bus back. No way did they want to walk back 4 miles. It was around 12:15pm when Little Man and I started walking back along the beach. We walked on the beach for about 30 minutes before heading to the road to finish walking back to the house. Around 2pm we were passing the Café Coyote right beside our place, Thomas says, “Mom and Olivia are in Café Coyote”. I said, “Not possible. The bus has not even made it to Montezuma yet.”



If you look close in the center you will see an octopus.



Turns out Thomas was right. Anna and Olivia had grabbed a cab back with the ladies. We never saw them pass us. They looked well rested. We went back to the house to wring out our clothes and slide into our bathing suite. Grabbed the masks and snorkels and we were off to Cemetary Island.



Beautiful view from the beach as we were heading out to Cemetary Island.
Seemed like one of those postcard pictures.



We got to snorkeling right at low tide. It was a little before 3pm and we figured we had at least two good hours of snorkeling. Today was a good day for snorkeling. The sun was out, almost no clouds in the sky, and the water was the perfect temperature. We were two determined explorers ready to encounter some neat sea creatures. We saw tons of cool fish. I saw an octopus which at first looked like a sea star. Thomas saw another eel and also caught a blackspotted puffer fish with his bare hands. We saw several weird things, yet to be determined. We had a great time.

Looking out across the rocks.

Well deserved treat after walking well over 10 miles today.