Puerto Viejo

We arrived in Puerto Viejo on Friday, March 9th and stayed for an entire week! The shuttle bus that took us into town was better than the public busses we took in Panama, but only marginally. The ride was long and full of narrow, mountain roads, and the driver went way too fast the entire time. After switching buses and waiting for an hour, we finally crossed the border. We had to take our belongings with us off the bus, and without direction, had to make our way across a heavily guarded bridge. It was only slightly terrifying.

When we stepped off the third bus of the day in front of our hostel, the first thing we noticed was the heat. Or was it the humidity? They were both very high. By the time we checked in and set our bags down, we had sweat stains soaking through our clothes.

The hostel we stayed at, called Playa 506, was super rad. It was all outdoors, with a beautiful dining area, and it was right on the beach! The only drawback of having a fully outdoor hostel was it was just way too hot. We ended up showering two or three times a day just to cool off. At least most of the days we were there we showered. We went a full day without water at the hostel because the water company for the town was having problems. The second drawback of Puerto Viejo was the bugs. We quickly found out they were everywhere! Mostly it was small ants, but the place was also crawling with massive spiders. Yuck!

In addition to bugs, Puerto Viejo was crawling with wildlife. On our first day, sitting in a hammock right outside our room, we saw a sleepy sloth wake up from his nap and slowly make his way through the trees. So cool! We also saw a bunch of howler monkeys as well as a few more sloths the week we were there. Cool thing about Puerto Viejo number two is that it is a surfers paradise. Everywhere you look you can see stacks of surfboards, or dread heads carrying them while riding their bikes. Which brings us to cool thing number three, it's a super bike friendly community! We rented bikes with baskets on the front of them (which Hannah loved) for about $50 for the week, and we were able to easily avoid using any sort of taxi the entire time we were there!

We spent a good amount of time exploring the cool shops and restaurants in town. We found one in particular that was full of cool stuff. It was a unique art shop full of towels, signs, and furniture. We could easily spend a ton of time and money there, if we had any of either! We also spent a significant amount of time laying on the beach or in hammocks, reading, swimming, and playing on a slackline.

If you are ever in Puerto Viejo, there are two must-do activities. First, take a tour with Carribeans, a chocolate and coffee farm. The owner is actually a Minnesota native! He treats his workers very well and makes some of the best chocolate we have ever had the pleasure of tasting. At the end of the tour, we got to sample bits of chocolate with the raw ingredients they use to make their chocolate, making our own creations. It was really fun! The second thing you have to do is visiting the Jaguar Rescue Center. No, there are no actual jaguars here. The story is, these retired veterinarians owned this property, and people kept bringing them injured animals. Pretty soon they had a little rehabilitation sanctuary for animals who were injured, and they even took in a jaguar, who has since passed away. Today they have sloths, monkeys, a sassy pelican named Pistachio, and many more animals! This was an awesome way to see the wildlife that lives in the surrounding area without trekking deep into the hot and sticky forest.

All in all, our time in Puerto Viejo was fantastic, but we were ready to get out of the heat and humidity as we made our way inland, to San Jose for a quick stop before going to La Fortuna.