Puerto Viejo de Limon

While I've done a lot of traveling on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, I had yet to visit the Caribbean side, which everyone says is quite different from the life/culture on the Pacific side.  Since my last class was slated to be on December 15th, but my family wasn't coming for Christmas until December 24th, I had a little over a week to travel!  A few months before classes ended, I began planning a trip that would take me from Liberia up to Tortuguero (in the northeast corner of CR) for a few days, and then down through Limon to Puerto Viejo (in the southeast corner of CR, just a few hours from the Panama border).  While I knew I'd miss seeing the sea turtles in Tortuguero (the big attraction for that area) because they've already laid their eggs, I've heard it's still incredibly beautiful.  And of course Puerto Viejo's Caribbean, laid back, total beach/surf town culture totally precedes it.  Needless to say, I was super excited for my trip.

However, as the time to go got closer, I started realizing how sad I was to leave Liberia and all my friends here.  It didn't help that it would mean I'd miss hanging out with Emilio, so when he mentioned he might have four days off in a row and would be willing to come to Puerto Viejo to hang out with me, I was super excited! (On the down side, he wouldn't know his actual schedule until Friday night...after I was already gone).  Unfortunately the timing meant I wouldn't really be able to keep my two days in Tortuguero in the itinerary, but that was okay because I kind of wanted to come home a few days early to see my CR family and help/eat the tamales my host mom would be making.  In the end, I headed down to San Jose on Friday afternoon to spend a final evening with Kristi before taking off for Puerto Viejo on Saturday morning.

San Jose
I thought I had done a good job of packing for my trip to Puerto Viejo, but as soon as the bus was turning the corner out of Liberia, onto the highway, I realized that I had forgotten to pack swimsuits!  Swimsuits!  Of all things, what a lame thing to forget!!  Thus, when I arrived in San Jose five hours later, Kristi was kind enough to take me swimsuit shopping.  I was thinking that the suits in PV would be more expensive than anything we'd find in SJ, but actually, the suits were pretty expensive there too.  After hitting up a few different stores, making a trek to the mall, getting sidetracked by the most delicious churros of all time (is there a better combo than eating churros and then swimsuit shopping?! hahaha), we found the perfect store and $60 later, I was the proud owner of a decent swimsuit.  Pfewf.  After that, we headed to La Kreme for a yummy dinner and some drinks:

 We had been driving around all evening in Fede's awesome car, which made Kristi nervous to drive in SJ (which is reasonable since it's a wild free for all!).  Anyway, she wasn't super excited about driving it up the hill to get out of the complex we were in, so I offered to give it a go.  This was probably the nicest care I've ever driven, and it was a little more nerve-wracking since it's not mine!  After stopping half way up the hill to figure out how to roll down the window, I opted not to stop again to hand the guard our exit ticket and instead grabbed it from Kristi's hand and kindly threw it out the window to the guy on our way out.  hahahaha, that still makes me laugh.  It actually was decently graceful (it was a nice toss, not like I threw some random ticket like a crazy person!), but also kind of pathetic. hehehe

After such a nice night on the town, it was quite the bummer when I found out from Emilio that he did not have four days off in a row and would therefore not be able to meet me in Puerto Viejo.  On top of that, I would be back in Liberia in time for his days off, but his dad had asked him to go work up on their family farm and wouldn't be in town to hang out.  Major bummer.

But the next morning I got up and started my trek to Puerto Viejo.  The plan was to grab the 10am bus to PV, and since the ride only takes 4-5 hours, I'd be at the beach by early afternoon.  As I was saying goodbye to Kristi at the bus stop, it hit me that I wouldn't be seeing her again before I left, and we had to say our final goodbye!  That was quite sad.  (Although I know we'll keep in touch).  

The Long Road to Puerto Viejo

After standing in the wrong line three times, I finally figured out where to buy my ticket to Puerto Viejo, only to learn that the 10am bus had been sold out, and I'd have to wait for the bus at noon.  Great.  Fortunately I had my Kindle handy and while the book I was reading was a drag, at least I had something to do.  At noon sharp, I was on my bus and we were headed to PV.  Yay!  Except... about an hour and a half in, we were stopped on the road.  At first I thought it was a normal construction stop, but we learned later that a tree had fallen across the road and they were in the process of removing it to start traffic again.  Turns out that the constant trickle of rain we had been driving through since leaving SJ was a torrential downpour the closer you got to the coast.  Forget a swimsuit!  I needed an umbrella (which I also forgot)!!  In all, it took five and a half hours just to get to Limon!!!  OMG!

I was keeping my fingers crossed that the remaining trip from Limon to PV would go more smoothly.  Around the time the bus started driving through super flooded streets, I let that hope go.  But it wasn't until our bus driver just gave up that things got really bad.  We had apparently reached a point where we could go no further, but also couldn't turn around.  After an hour of waiting (and not being quite sure why, since other cars and trucks were going.  Was he worried about the luggage in the hull getting wet?  If so, why couldn't we just move it into the bus with us?!) I started fearing that we would be sleeping on the bus.  I also had visions of people stuck in cars or buses in areas hit by a flash flood....with water swirling all around.  After 7.5 hours on the bus, I was for sure getting a little stir crazy.  It was at the point where I knew it would be a funny story once I was safely in my hotel, but at the time, I was not a happy camper. 

FINALLY our savior arrived.  A dude wearing shorts and walking under an umbrella approached the bus and told the bus driver we could make it through.  And so we were off, literally following behind the guy in the umbrella as he lead our bus through ten minutes of knee to waist deep water.  Along the way, we saw that water levels were more or less equal to the doorway to homes on the side of the road in addition to abandoned vehicles and (eek) even buses!  Needless to say, a cheer went through the bus when we made it to the other side of the lake that had overtaken the highway!  And our guide got a nice, hefty, much deserved tip!  

At just before 9pm we made it to Puerto Viejo, my bag (aka computer) was still dry, and I hitched a ride to my hotel with the very nice Italian couple who was sitting behind me and happened to also be the owners of my hotel, which I didn't know until we hopped in the cab together! ha!  Actually, the husband had been extremely calm and sweet through our whole adventure.  He had the only cell phone that was getting any service while we were stranded and he would let people use it to call whoever they needed to call to say that "they might be a bit late."  Needless to say, I developed a special bond with my hosts for the week!

My first order of business after finally arriving at the hotel was to find some dinner.  I was starving!  I ended up at a place called flip flops where I devoured some food.  As I was finishing up, two girls came in to also grab some food and we ended up chatting for a bit.  They were in CR on vacation from Los Angeles and PV was pretty much their first stop.  We sort of became insta-friends and decided to meet up for breakfast the next morning to hang out.  Cool.

Waterfalls and Chocolate Farms

I ended up meeting up with Meg and Stephanie (the LA girls) at a yummy restaurant called Bread and Chocolate where I did indeed have french toast (bread) and chocolate (and butter and jam) for breakfast.  It was AMAZING!!!!  Kristi had told me about a chocolate farm and waterfall near PV that I should check out, so the girls decided to join me.  We hopped in a cab to the Chocolate farm where for $4 you get to see a demonstration and try all 11 of their different flavors.  Yum!

Here's my first look at PV in the day:  (notice the water is brown from all the rain!  bleh!)

 At the chocolate farm:  (the lady gave us this dye they use for lipstick. hehe) Me, Stephanie, Meg

 Coco tree!

 Awesome demonstration!

 Eleven delicious types of chocolate!

 After the chocolate farm, we walked about a mile up the road to the waterfall.  Here's a pic from the road:

 It looks far less intimidating from down below, but actually there's another tier above this one....

 There was also this little mini waterfall near the river that we climbed up a bit.

Cute little artsy shop across the street from my hotel.  It also gives you a good idea of how bright and painty everything was in PV.  Very Caribbean feeling!

After our little trip to the chocolate farm and waterfall, we all went back to our hotels for showers and naps and met up later in the evening for some dinner and drinking (okay, well the girls don't drink, so I did it for them).  We "bar jumped" from place to place and it was fun to see all the different types of nightlife PV has to offer, though nothing was crazy.  Actually quite a few places felt like frat parties, which was sort of odd.

A Day of Nothing...and then a Bike Ride
Since I was feeling a little sad that Emilio couldn't come hang out with me in PV and because I was just bummed that I would be leaving CR for good in a few short weeks, I realized I just needed a day to sort of be a bum and not do anything.  I went to breakfast with the girls and then spent the rest of the day in the hammock (heaven!) outside my hotel room, looking at a beautiful green garden and watching movies/working on my computer.  It sounds lame, I know, but I kind of needed it and I felt a lot better after indulging my case of the blues for a day.  And honestly, I was feeling a little homesick for Liberia...I guess since I knew I wouldn't be able to call it home for much longer.

The next day, it was back to vacation mode.  The girls and I met up earlier in the morning for some breakfast and then rented bikes to make the 12 mile trek down to Manzanillo.  The girls had been told there was an animal reserve in Manzanillo where we could hold monkeys and sloths but they only had tours at 9:30 and 11:30.  The plan was to book it to Manzanillo (the southern-most beach) to play with baby animals, and then to beach hop our way back up to PV.  Unfortunately when we got to Manzanillo, we were told that the animal shelter was at a beach we had passed on the way down...about 30 minutes back up north....the one we saw and considered stopping at but didn't b/c we didn't want to miss the 11:30 tour in Manzanillo....dammit!  Oh well, by the time we got to Manzanillo, the sun was finally starting to shine and the ocean was calling our names!

 Sloth!  Meg has great eyes and caught this little guy hanging from a tree!

 Howler monkeys!!  We heard these guys well before we saw them! (haha, can YOU see them?!)

 Manzanillo!

Bleh!  While the beach was so refreshing, the waves were coming in at all different directions, and the bossy waves kept trying to push us down!

After a while, we decided to walk down around "the point" which was surrounded by a gorgeous protected nature reserve.  The views just kept getting more and more beautiful!

 Lots of tidepools, hermit crabs, coral, etc.

As we walked on, we saw a sign pointing up to "May's Point" and decided to hike up.  (The hill up was covered in mud and I immediately slipped on my first step.  cool).  But the muddy trek up was well worth it. Look at these views:  (holy crap!)

On our way back down, the trail took us right over a random grave stone, which felt weird to walk on and was more weird because the headstone was written in English, which I never see.  The ants on the tombstone started to bite our feet, so we got a move on.  It wasn't until later that evening we found out it's the tombstone for Captain freaking Morgan!  OMG, can you imagine the photo ops we missed?!?!  Sort of a bummer we didn't know that when we were there.  Oh well.  (There's always next time)

To get back to the beach we crossed a river that fed into the ocean that was this really bright rust color, I guess just from all the sediment getting washed up in the rain.  Crazy!

After our stint in the ocean it was time for fruity drinks and lunch!  Yum!  (Caribbean gallo pinto uses red beans and coconut milk!  Delish!)

Then we hopped back on our bikes to do the 12 miles back up to PV.  Since we had to turn in our bikes by 5 we didn't end up having time to do any beach hopping on the way back up, which was kind of a bummer since Kristi said Punta Uva is gorgeous, but I guess I'll just have to save that for my next trip to CR ;) hehehe  Also, it gave us time to stop and look at more monkeys and birds and horses and rivers and other good stuff.

When we got back to PV and turned in our bikes, we headed down to our beach to watch the sun set and take in the sights.

As we were leaving, we were told that Tasty Waves was "the place to be" on a Tuesday night.  So to Tasty Waves we went.  We had a decent time, but really, it mostly just felt like an LA college party...in Costa Rica.  We ended up heading back into town to another bar, and then I called it a night.

Instead of staying until Thursday, I decided to go back to Liberia on Wednesday to spend a few extra days "at home."  I figure that anything else I feel like I need to see or do in CR can be saved for another trip in the future.  Overall though, I feel like I've done a pretty damn good job of getting out and seeing and doing things here!  And I've met a lot of really great people along the way, which has been amazing.  (I mean, after spending a few days with Meg and Stephanie I feel like we're already old friends!  It always surprises me that I take "solo trips" that really pretty much never entail me doing much "solo" which is pretty freaking rad man!).  

Stephanie and Meg kept asking me what the most kick-ass thing has been about being in CR, and honestly, I've seen a lot of amazingly beautiful things and I've done a lot of fun stuff, but the best part of my time here has been the people, hands down.  The locals I've met, my students, my host family, other volunteers and the random people I've met on my mini-trips, many of whom I think I'll probably keep in touch with.  THAT is what this trip is all about.  Incredible!