Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica…

Puerto Viejo is on the east coast of Costa Rica.  It’s a serious surfing town.  Unfortunately I didn’t go surfing.  I couldn’t quite figure out when the waves were at there best, and there was only one spot where beginner’s were safe to try.  Everytime we swam in this spot the waves would roll me around and I’d consider going to get a board, and then they’d die down and not come back.  Oh well, they’ll be more opporunities, especially on Costa Rica’s west coast.

We stayed in hammocks for the first 3 nights, at a place called Rockin J’s.  It was a bit of a “Spring Break” type party zone though.  It was however only $5 a night for a hammock and a locker, and it was a really cool place.  We had bonfires on the beach and got loaded.  You could check out a guitar and bongo drums.

All the picnic tables were plastered with items people had left behind.  There was never a shortage of things to look at it.  Apparently ALOT of Canadians come through here, and look, there’s a Canadian fiver:

Everything was pretty much along one big drag which hugged the ocean.  This is pretty much what it looked like, but it got a little more dense as you approached the center:

Brianna could change her clothes in her locker.  She probably could have slept in there too (cause she’s little).

We rented some bikes and tried to bike to Manzanillo (a town about 13km away).  It started pouring rain but we kept going.  We thought we had made it, but apparently we only made it half way.  It was a fun time though.

There was some serious surf spots along the way, we saw some people riding some pretty crazy waves.

There are dogs everywhere.  I assume they are stray, but they seem to be in good health.  I think maybe they’re community dogs (everybody kind of feeds them).  I think others have owners but they let them roam the streets all day.  The dogs come up to you looking to be petted.  They’re well behaved.

Sometimes horses are wandering along on the beach.

Oh, and how could I forget?  The first night we stayed in hammocks at Rockin J’s Brianna’s face got some serious bug bites that she didn’t respond to very well.  She got a big pussie wound on her check and her left eye was half closed like Thom Yorke when he was on heroin.  She couldn’t leave it alone and we happen to pass a medico who specialised in worm bites.  Brianna had thought she had seen a bug come out of her cheek wound, so we thought we’d get her checked out.  Turns out it was nothing more than some infected bites, so they charged us $50 to poke at it and another $10 for some anitbiotics.  She’s fine now, and we have insurance so hopefully we can get that back.