Activity Summary
Friday 9th June - Day 281
Travel to Puerto Viejo
Dinner at Cocomar Comida Caribeña
Saturday 10th June - Day 282
Hostel chill day
Lunch at Tamara
Man City V Inter Milan Champions League final - Puerto Viejo Sports Bar
Sunday 11th June - Day 283
Cahuita national park
Chill on Puerto Vargas beach
Dinner at Soulsurfer
Monday 12th June - Day 284
Private transfer to Bocas Del Toro & Panama
Summary
Puerto Viejo
Of all the places we visited in Costa Rica, this was the most sketchy. There were a lot of people just hanging around dark and isolated areas that occasionally would say or offer things our way which was just a bit uneasy at night. Us or anyone we met had no problems but it was a safety in numbers sort of vibe and in complete contrast to the rest of the spots we hit in Costa Rica.
The town itself was alright, had plenty of restaurants that were actually reasonably priced for Costa Rica and apparently decent bars (not that we would know) but a lot of tourists in hostels make this a decent sociable place.
The nearby beaches weren’t amazing, with a lot of scortching hot black sand and didn’t look all that inviting. The best part of the area was definitely Cahuita that had plenty of animals, Playo Blanco and a nice walk through beach and jungle for not much cost.
Super warm and humid with a fudge ton of mosquitoes. The lack of AC hurts our precious little over privileged travelling souls.
Transport
Puerto Viejo
The local bus from around the corner from our San Jose hostel took us directly to Puerto Viejo town and we walked to the hostel.
Accommodation
Puerto Viejo - Kalunay Hostel
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £16
Really nice social area and there were plenty of people about and willing to chat with. The kitchen was fine and provided water & coffees which is always appreciated. The Hostel guys were super friendly and helpful which was great but the exchange rate of 570 $->C was a robbery and the cash only system after so long putting everything on card is a bitter pill to swallow.
The rooms were fan only and it was super warm and humid, making sleeping wholly uncomfortable. There weren't any rooms with AC in our price range however so this would have been a problem anywhere we went really.
The mozzie count was super high and this had the biggest impact on Luke who took a lot of the punishment.
Diary
We didn’t have tickets for the public bus to Puerto Viejo so expecting us to struggle to get a ticket we arrived an hour earlier than the 10am departure time, logic being if we couldn’t get a ticket we would secure the 12pm and if all else fails pay a load more money for the private shuttle.
Turns out they don’t care much for health and safety in these buses as a ton of gringos turned up about 30 minutes after we had secured seats to find about 6 of them would be sitting on the floor or standing. Wasn’t a particularly comfortable 5.5 hour journey for them. That being said, it wasn’t either for Nicola who, being split from Luke in the ticket allocation, was sitting next to a woman with some seriously honking breath.
The bus stopped for 15 or so minutes in Limon allowing a toilet break and the purchase of some nothing special pizza bread type thing.
Once we arrived in Puerto Viejo we collected our bags and had a rather long and sweaty walk to the hostel in mid 30 degrees sunshine with no airflow. This level of discomfort would stick with us the entire time we were in Puerto Viejo being warm, humid and plenty of mozzies out to kill Luke with Malaria (had been told there were some cases in Limon so had a slight concern about this). The only respite we had from this heat was a pathetic fan in our heat trapping box room or the hammocks in the social area that also had some fans but was right out in the open for all the biters to see Luke’s weakness. Not fun.
The social area was however pretty nice and we’re a lot of sociable people around.
We had a pretty early dinner at Cocomar Comida Caribeña for some Caribbean chicken, fish and fried plantain. Serious lack of sauce for the pretty dry and fried plantain (patacones - like a deep fried flat hash brown) meant Nicola struggled to polish them off.
Afterwards we went to the banco nacional to withdraw some safety cash after parting ways with almost all in paying for the hostel (pretty much everywhere in Costa Rica takes card, seemingly only the hostels that don’t) and go for a quick supermarket shop. It was dark and we had walked via the beach for a quick view and found that Puerto Viejo isn’t the most savoury of places. There were a ton of people hanging out in dark roads and bushes at night, some spewing gibberish and others peddling / taking hard drugs out in the open. While it didn’t feel completely unsafe, neither of us would want to walk around alone and the hostel worker when probed did say it wasn’t a smart move to be walking alone at night. The complete opposite of how we have felt in the rest of Costa Rica.
We spent the evening chilling in the hammocks as it was cooler outside than in our room. The hostel had a number of individual groups chatting and drinking, all of which ended up at Johnny’s Place on the beach but we had zero energy for this.
We didn’t wake up with more energy. The warm air that was circulated around the room left us both very sticky and uncomfortable and what felt like we were waking up every 30 minutes through the night. Luke ended up getting bitten in the night which were rather painful love taps across his knuckles which added to the poor sleep.
Nicola didn’t sleep much last 6am and Luke was bitten 3 times while taking his morning poop. The toilet is a sacred safe space and now he had the fear of going in.
At breakfast we got chatting with a load of people, Floris (Dutch) & Will (from Derby) which ended any plans we had of going to the beach in the morning but we were more than happy doing nothing. Either Luke had been talking about the football or he looked like a typical football watching gringo so a few people came up and asked what his plans were for the Man City V Inter Milan Champions League final. All of a sudden he became the group leader of 6 people and orchestrated a bar to watch the game.
Us and Floris went for lunch at Tamara before the game, Caribbean influenced food again but not as good as the night before.
Luke did scout over the two sports bars google had identified, after the pain of being let down in Ubud Bali and now in charge of a group he did feel the pressure to deliver somewhat, settled on Sports Bar Puerto Viejo. It was the right decision.
Hailey (from Sunderland) joined us as we walked over. As a result of our late lunch we were running late for the start of the game, and in his scouting no one was at the bar 30 minutes prior to kick off. Now 5 minutes post kick off the bar was full(ish) but the bar staff ended up pulling a table from the beach and gave us prime seats in front of a screen.
Luke and the rest of the group had a few beers, semi-enjoyed a very tame game for the neutral and then we went back to the hostel via the supermarket. The bar was going to horrifically undercharge him for drinks but being a Good Samaritan (beers are only £2) fessed up to having consumed more. They were kind enough to fetch us a table.
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening chilling and chatting in the hostel social area, cooked our spaghetti dinner (in which Nicola’s technical brilliance may have cooked the best homemade spaghetti possible from a packet) and did much of the same afterwards.
Nicola got chased inside when the hostel closed the gates and in turn gave all the smokers free reign to let loose inside the hostel grounds, which she despises. During the day this wasn’t allowed and would have resulted in a substantial hostel fine, but when the doors were closed this inspection clearly couldn’t go ahead. Luke, somewhat more used to the smoke, carried in chatting and playing cards outside.
It was another bad night's sleep for both of us and by this point Nicola hasn’t really had a decent one for well over a week. To give credit to her she still gave it her all to get up and out for the day, despite it being super intense heat outside.
We’d arranged to get the local bus to Cahuita national park with Floris the day before. We would have quite liked the day to ourselves, more so when we found out how slow he walked and he got on Nicola’s nerves with quite a lot of what he ended up saying the last few days. The most annoying being the implication only real travellers slum it on public buses - he came across as one of those snooty travelling guys. The day was fine with him but we were very happy to part ways at the end of the day.
The hostel gave us some decent information on how to get to Cahuita national park, the public bus only cost C1,060 and took off right by the Mepe bus we arrived on. After asking another bus driver for information he directed us to the ticket office to pre-buy a ticket. This can also be done on the bus but we did as we were told.
We had a short wait before boarding, the bus more or less filling up from this stop. It took a while to get there with all the stops along the way but the open window gave some much needed respite from the heat.
Top tip, the park entrance by Cahuita is donation entry while the middle entrance (mainly used for cars) costs $10. We only paid a measly C1,000ea for entry which was pretty refreshing post being (in our opinion) overcharged throughout our Costa Rica trip.
So began our expected 8.5km walk through the National park. The majority of the walk was along a path that was a cross between normal forest floor and sand, set back a few metres from the Playa Blanca beach. This was definitely the nicer beach of the two in Cahuita, but being right at the start of the walk we really didn’t want to sit and chill when the day was arguably cooler. We therefore made the decision to make the walk over to Puerto Vargas beach instead.
The path was surprisingly great for spotting wildlife, helped by the masses of walkers stopping to stare at everything we wanted to see along the sole route:
Raccoons - we got forewarned that these guys have massive cojones and do not care about people at all. They are everywhere just chilling, walking across paths or actively trying to steal peoples bags. One guy we met had to run out of the sea to chase one away and another we saw was using a stick to ineffectively fend off a feisty raccoon.
Marcels (capuchins) - many of these guys knocking around
Lizards - also many of these guys whizzing around. The most entertaining one had caught a grasshopper / cricket and we got to witness first hand the dismantling of the insect, wing to head. Pretty interesting to watch.
Crabs - a bit boring and shy
Sloths x 2 - rather inactive ones this time around but took our final Costa Rican sloth count to 5.
Iguana - looked angry and miserable.
Coati - this was probably the coolest experience of the day. A family of at least 5 Coati’s were on the path and foreraging in a nearby big bush. They were a bit hesitant as we walked up but got more comfortable with us just standing and watching them from the path. They had a little bubba as well which was super cute and we had absolutely zero clue what they were until we googled it.
With ¾ of the walk done we found a spot to chill on Puerto Vargas beach. Sadly this beach was nowhere near as nice as Blanco, the sand more black than white which meant it was scorching hot to walk across and the sea was pretty choppy, crashing in at head height. We pitched up under a tree for shade and relaxed for only a little bit before moving on to try and make the hourly bus at 2.15pm. Floris was a little confused why we were in such a hurry but it wasn’t a particularly nice beach to chill, it closed at 3pm and we were both tired and wanted to relax back in the hostel for a bit.
The beach did have basic showers so we were able to purge most of the sand and salt water before continuing our walk.
The last part was across a well maintained boardwalk through denser jungle and was one of the better parts of the day. The jungle was beautiful, the walk was easy and was away from the sun. A nice end to the day that ended up being a 12km walk according to Strava.
Floris ended up leaving his shorts at the beach so sadly for him he had to run back in an attempt to make the bus. Maybe more annoying was that it didn’t arrive so potentially could have walked and still made it. After waiting for an age, and Floris’ chat getting more and more opinionated which seemed to make the wait even longer, we eventually got a lift from a random local woman on her way to Puerto Viejo and would charge us C1,000 each. A guy with a ropey car offered something similar earlier and we said hell na because we are scared little beans. This we felt quite a bit safer doing.
She dropped us by the bus stop which was perfect, but this didn’t stop Floris trying to negotiate the lift a bit further up the road unsuccessfully. A bit unnecessary and seemingly rude in Luke’s opinion.
We parted ways with Floris and spent the afternoon more or less falling asleep in the hostel hammocks before getting an early dinner at Soulsurfer. Alright burgers but it was overpriced.
The day before was much much cooler thanks to a wicked downpour in the afternoon but sadly this hadn’t happened today. The use of the showers was used to great effect in cooling us down but had the added negative or washing away bug biting protection so we ended up hiding away in the pretty unbearable hostel room to avoid getting bitten.
By the end of Puerto Viejo we were counting down the minutes until we left. Too hot, no effective cooling methods and too many mozzies. Luke ended with about 10 really itchy and irritating bites, seemingly taking the hit for the entire hostel camp. Nicola fared a lot better.
We had booked our transfer out of Puerto Viejo and Costa Rica before we entered the country given the (usual) checks on entry. Our shuttle picked us up at 8am from the hostel and we would have guided exit from the country and entry into Panama which we were super happy about. It only cost £19 each and arguably could have been done a lot cheaper as it wasn’t overly hard but we are a big fan of the easy life.
The shuttle took us to the border, we were guided to the equivalent of a crappy junk food shop where the $9 or C5,000 exit tax is paid (they don’t accept payments at the border, simply taking the piece of paper given as proof of payment) and then we were guided to the border control, stamped through and walked across the very warm, long road to our next new country.
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