Standing atop a damp crag of a rock, peaking over the edge of Montezuma Falls as a stream of water swiftly plummets downward, violently kicking off the jagged cliff side and bucketing into the deep pool below, I felt something I hadn’t felt to expect in this moment — paralyzing fear.

All through the past 14-months I’ve been living in Costa Rica the famed waterfalls of Montezuma have been for me but a dream of a thing — a bucket list item charged not with emotion but with simple ganas, as they say in Spanish, or a desire to see. But from my new vantage point, 50 feet above dark, swirling water, the magnitude of water’s power struck me at full force. (more…)