Puerto Viejo: animals and mud and weed, oh my!

This weekend I visited the Caribbean town of Puerto Viejo. It was about 4 hours away by bus. There were less people on this trip so we had a slightly smaller bus. I paid another $110 and I definitely got more bang for my buck this time. I think there are a variety of factors, but probably the most significant is that the Caribbean side of Costa Rica isn't nearly as touristy and is much more underdeveloped. It has a somewhat shady reputation but according to a guidebook I have, it's no more dangerous than the rest of Costa Rica. There were definitely more visible locals in Puerto Viejo ("Old Port"), and a more colorful mix of the typical tan Latin look, a smattering of American expats, and a dash of Afrocaribbean people with heritage in places like Jamaica.

Speaking of Jamaica... In Puerto Viejo I felt like I was on an island in the Caribbean. While I've never been to a Caribbean island, at least Hollywood has shown me what it should be. The buildings were colorfully painted, with red, green, and yellow of the Rastafarian rainbow prevalent. The streets weren't paved and so there were many potholes, and since this is the rainy season, they were full of water and squishy around the edges. I would have taken more pictures of the town itself but I did feel a teeny bit uncomfortable waving my camera around so I just looked with my eyes. You will have to use your imagination. The central area of town was kind of square-shaped with the beach gently curving around two sides. There was a road that went through town that followed the beach on its way in and out and we drove in both directions for different mini excursions. There were shops and restaurants on most of the square. For dinner Friday I went with some girls to a Jamaican jerk-style restaurant. I had two soft-shelled tacos with chicken, lettuce, beans, cheese, tomatoes and avocado. It was good but paying for it was a bit of a fiasco. They wouldn't take cards, so right off the bat three girls left because they didn't have any cash. When it came time to pay, they wouldn't separate the check for us and refused to exchange larger bills for smaller ones. I got kind of lucky as my tacos were c3800 (less than $8) and my share of the water pitcher (yep, they charged us for water) was c200 (less than 50 cents). [Colones > Dollars review: c500=$1, c1000=$2, c4000=$8] So I just paid with two c2000 bills.

Later on in the evening I went for a walk with one of the other girls. Her name is Kendra and when I first met her I thought she was 25 and she's actually 35. We walked around the square looking at the shops and what they were selling. We stopped when we heard some neat live music coming from a bar/restaurant on the second floor above one of the shops we were browsing in. Kendra saw people from our trip that she knew so we went upstairs. There I met Nancy and Charles, who are old enough to be my parents. They even have a son my age. The four of us sat at the bar for two hours. I had one beer, Imperial, which is the national beer of Costa Rica. While there, some other patrons lit up some joints. Don't worry dad, nobody was being creepy or crazy, and I didn't feel super uncomfortable because it was a small bar with a very low-key vibe and only a few people were smoking. But I definitely don't like the smell of weed and I don't really feel like I'm missing anything because I don't smoke it. I got home about 11:15 and went to bed. It was a little difficult to sleep because a bar around the corner was blasting music sooooo loud!

Saturday we woke up early and had pre-paid breakfast at a cafe down the street. I had scrambled eggs, gallo pinto (rice and black beans) and bread with juice called guanábana. We all piled in the bus and drove north a few minutes for snorkeling. We were a kind of large group, so we split up and I went in the boat with the first group to a nearby beach. This beach was small and at the end of a peninsula. The sand was the most interesting sand I have ever seen in my life--it was mostly tiny pieces of shells and coral. We stayed there for about two hours, just hanging out, swimming, and some people sunbathed (not me of course!). Then it was our turn to go out and snorkel.

Snorkeling has been the single most amazing experience of my life. Even though the water wasn’t crystalline clear, or that the coral wasn’t super vibrantly colored, or that I didn’t see a bajillion types of sea life, I still was entranced the whole time. It was an amazing experience and when I can afford a vacation, maybe sometime after I graduate, I want to go somewhere that has snorkeling. Getting into the water I had a few trepidations because we were going to swim for about an hour and we wouldn’t be able to rest other than to float on our backs. But I didn’t have to worry about that. They gave us flippers which made swimming so much easier. The water was also incredibly salty and I think I read somewhere that a higher saline content in water gives you more buoyancy. Anyway, I had nothing to worry about. I had a mini, tiny freak out when I was first in the water because we started where it was deep enough that we couldn’t see anything below us. That kinda scared me. But I made myself take a chill pill and spit out the water I had almost swallowed and tread water and adjust my mask. It took me a while to feel comfortable. We started swimming and I experimented with my mask to see how far down I could look without getting my air tube into the water. It was surprising. I kept waiting for water to get in my nose like when swimming in the pool with goggles. But since the mask covered my nose completely and had a super strong bond to my face that didn’t really happen.

So we started in deeper water and began swimming. While looking down at the ocean floor through my goggles, I began to see the floor come closer to the surface of the ocean. I could make out the shapes of the coral. As we continued on, the coral was about 10 feet below us. In some places, it was only 3 feet below and I worried about accidentally kicking it. The shapes of the coral were really interesting. One kind looked like giant red potatoes, uneven and reddish with spots that looked like potato eyes. Others looked like a tiny British garden with those uber-manicured bush mazes. I saw lots of dark brown sea urchins. Sometimes I would catch them moving a bit and they looked like they were undulating or vibrating. I also saw a few different types of fish. The prettiest were striped up-and-down with electric blue, yellow, and white. Later on in the expedition I found myself floating above a school of maybe 50 fish, sleeker than the others, and mostly greyish with a bit of yellow. they were fascinating to watch. I found myself continually amazed and interested in what I saw below me. With the snorkeling goggles, I didn't have any peripheral vision. A few times when I looked up I couldn't see the rest of my group and worried that they were far away and I had gotten myself lost, but it always turned out that to see them, I needed to turn my head and change the direction I was swimming.

Eventually, after probably an hour or an hour and a half, we found ourselves swimming near the boat. Our trip was done but I could have easily stayed out there for another two hours. I wasn't tired at all. The boat took us to a different beach (with more regular sand) and dropped us off. The pathway go back into town was a little walk away. Some people stuck to the beach but there was also a that ran parallel through the "jungle". I went on this path with my new parent-like friends Nancy and Charles. We saw a huge grasshopper and some monkeys. The grasshopper was literally 5 or 6 inches long. The monkeys were fascinating. I didn't get very many good pictures of them because I didn't realize what my camera settings were. But here's my favorite:

It was also hard to get pictures of them because they were hanging out a ways away from the path so there were always lots of branches in the way. And since I don't have a super-cool zoom lens it was impossible to get a close-up photo. And here's the grasshopper:

After snorkeling, I walked around the little town with my friend Liz. There were a bunch of little stores selling jewelry, clothing, hats, bongs, postcards, indigenous art, and whatnot. It was kind of like an open-air farmers market minus the fresh fruits. And only along both sides of one road. The vendors had their wares laid out on tables with some kind of tent to protect them from the rain. A few of them were situated in actual buildings. I didn't buy anything til we got to one of the very last shops that we stopped in. I bought these gorgeous grey, red, and yellow feather earrings for c4000 ($8). The feathers come from a bird (I can't remember the name) that lives in the national forest preserve. Certain people are allowed to go in and collect the feathers that these birds shed naturally. Then they sell them to artisans who turn them into awesome things like earrings. I am really pleased with my purchase and am determined to buy and outfit that matches them that looks good with my red hair and pink-toned skin. I don't really have anything to wear the earrings with because yellow and red aren't really my best colors so I don't have many clothes in those shades. I suppose if I need to I can give them away as a gift but I would really hate to part with them!

Later I had dinner with some other people at a restaurant called Flip Flop. I had a yummy burrito (though it had way too much lettuce in my opinion). A few hours after that, I went out to a bar called Mango's with a few other girls. They had free daiquiris for women from 9-9:30 so we took advantage of that. They were super weak though. No surprise there. We hung out at that bar for a while, then just wandered around, then visited another bar called Johnny's, which was hoppin' big time, then back to Mango's and back to Johnny's. I tried a c500 ($1) shot of guaro, which is kind of like tequila but smoother and easier to handle. It started to rain and at about 12:30 or so I went back to the hotel with my friend Liz and another guy Mike who had a key to the gate of the hotel. It was fun to bar hop but I didn't want to stay out any later in an unfamiliar town. Plus I'm of the opinion that buying alcohol is a waste of money (especially at bars) AND I'm pretty stingy so I only spent a few bucks the whole night, including a $2 stick of grilled chicken that I bought from a street vendor. (yuuumm! And it didn't upset my tummy!)

The next day I woke up, took a quick shower and dressed. I grabbed my breakfast to go and hopped on the bus that was taking us to another beach a little bit further south. I didn't bring my bathing suit but I did take my camera. I was totally fine with that plan because we were only at this other beach, called Punta Uva (Grape Point), for an hour and a half. When we reached the beach I realized that my sandal was ripping. The part between my toes became completely detached from the part that went across my foot before I even got back on the bus 90 minutes later. The sandals are kind of classy flip flops from Land's End. I'm a bit peeved that they only lasted four months.

Anyway, I spent almost all of the hour and a half talking a walk down the beach with Charles, Nancy and Kendra. I got a few cool pictures. When it was time to go, we drove back into town, had a few minutes to grab our bags and some lunch, and then we were on our way back to San Jose.