Jacó, Costa Rica. Ice bath for the Icelander!

When I was making my way to Jacó I decided to stop at Montezuma and see the local waterfall. It was amazing, after an easy but beautiful hike we enter this paradise surrounded by rocks, plants and a waterfall which formed a peaceful little pond where you could swim in and cool down. Me being the adrenaline junkie that I am, climbed on top of some rocks and jumped in, having all the people in the group wanting to do the same after me. 

The next day I take a water taxi to Jacó and see not one, but two whales! They were jumping out of the water and couple of dolphins decided to follow the boat, it was great. When I arrived to Jacó it kind of reminded me of a European city. It was an long walking strip that had all the main international food chains and quite the party town. I met up with Leo at his acai shop, he is one of the trainers at the gym, sadly he couldn’t train with us because of lack of staff but he explained that I would likely have to take a taxi to the gym. 

So the time is about 6:30, the training is at 7 and I order a taxi. I point the taxi at the place where gym is, supposedly. The look that I get from the driver is a look I’ll never forget. He thought he was getting a stupid gringo who wanted to go to middle of nowhere. When I said “BJJ” he suddenly smiled and laughed, then proceeded to drive onwards. He drives out of town and when he gets next to this gas station he drives into a dark alleyway with no lights or anything, except one building in the distance. He drives up to it and I see the Brazilian flag hanging in there and I knew I found the place.

The training starts, Kuba, a black belt from Poland and the owner of Manto, filled in as the coach and showed some really cool stuff. On the mat were 2 purple belts, 1 brown belt and couple of blue belts, I knew I was going to get some real good rolls. After that training and the one next day I can confirm that my suspicion was true. The second day we rolled for 8 rounds of 6 min, that felt so good and I was exhausted. Kuba, who had offered to pick me up, picked up some ice as well and had a tub of ice ready after training. Being an Icelander I jumped in as soon as I could and man was it good! A bit small but good, none the less! 

I knew however that this stop was just a warm up for San José which would be challenging.