Costa Rica: Puerto Viejo
[Caribbean sea @ Puerto Viejo - for more pictures, go here]
Just got back from a weekend adventure to the Caribbean. As you'd expect, it was hot, humid, and when the sun was out, almost unbearable. Luckily, we were always a few minutes away from the water, so it was easy to just step into the ocean to cool off. My sister and I both got sunburned (not surprising) and had to buy $8 aloe that didn't work even close to as well as the free aloe vera plant on the Conversa campus. For some reason, I always forget to bring aloe with me when I travel. Subconscious wishful thinking?
Anyway, Puerto Viejo is basically a tourist town run by a combination of Costa Ricans and hippie ex-pats (mostly from the US). I brought my Lonely Planet guidebook and it really helped us narrow down where to eat (usually wherever we could get the best food for the lowest price). A lot of the restaurants advertise menu items made with locally grown produce, homemade bread and jam, and right-out-of-the-ocean-fresh seafood. Everywhere we ate was wonderful, though there was one little restaurant that I liked so much I took a picture of it. It was called "Bread & Chocolate." We went there for breakfast and I had wonderful French toast on homemade wheat bread for about $5.
[Bread and Chocolate on the right]
It was definitely one of the friendliest towns I've ever encountered abroad. Once we let on that we spoke Spanish, we ended up stopping a lot and talking to a souvenir vendors for around 15-20 minutes each. I even translated for two different people! One of them was a tourist, the other, an American transplant who just picked up everything and moved randomly to Costa Rica from Gary, Indiana without knowing more than a few words of Spanish. I just don't understand how that happens, but I definitely understand the lure of a tourist town on the beach with basically a year-long swimming/surfing/beaching season. I should also mention that lots and lots of marijuana is smoked in Puerto Viejo (though it is illegal in Costa Rica). Bob Marley appears on lots of t-shirts. The air has a perpetual someone-nearby-is-smoking-pot smell. That is, when you're far enough away from the restaurants/fishing ships where the smell of fish overpowers it.
Our last night, we went down to one of the bars on the beach, Johnny's Place. They had tables and chairs and candles set out. We faced the ocean, walked around in the still-warm midnight sea. The entire trip (well, and in our time at Convera), my sister and I usually hang out with three girls from NYC. They all like to dance and though my sister and I rightfully claim to be terrible dancers, they took us out onto the beach-side dance floor and we danced with them (and a whole lot of Costa Ricans) for a song and a half before wandering down the long road back to our bungalows. The last morning, my sister and I woke up early to go to the beach, then shopped around for an hour before the 3 hour bus ride back. But all in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend.