Two Soggy Gringos

Our trip begins tonight with our arrival at PDX, and as usual, we’re excited. I must say, I love our proximity to I-205 and flying the redeye out of Portland. Even though it’s Thanksgiving Eve, and the traffic is heavy approaching the airport, about ninety percent of it is heading toward ARRIVALS. Up the ramp to DEPARTURES and we’re at the curb and unloaded in less than a minute. We say goodbye to Phyllis and Fara (our trusty house sitters) and through the giant glass gerbil wheel we go.

Every time I go to the airport, there seems to be more and more kiosks for checking in for your flight and printing your boarding passes. Hey!....I like technology as much as the next guy, so I step right up and start the process. “Enter your Confirmation Code” Tap…tap…tap..tap…tap…tap….done! “Enter this…”Done! “Enter that”….Done! “Scan Liza’s passport” ….. Scanning…. Scanning….” CAN NOT READ PASSPORT, SEE CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE” … Damn! Technology is a son-of-a-bitch.

Now we’re in line, it’s short, but it’s moving like molasses. We wait our turn until we get the necessary assistance, which turns out to be the United employee scanning Liza’s passport and getting the same exact result I did. Yep, I’m a total idiot! I couldn’t have possibly read the clearly displayed instructions on the last kiosk. Once she realizes it’s not gonna work she whips out her magic card, slides it through the kiosk, and begins to manually enter something. Whatever she was doing worked because we soon had our boarding passes in hand.

Worthy of note- We’re traveling with just carryon luggage this trip. We’re each wearing our Osprey Travel Packs, and we’re each carrying an average size backpack.

These Osprey packs are awesome! They’re a 65 liter pack that looks like a duffle bag, but the base (or in this case the back) has a complete set of shoulder and waste straps tucked into hidden pockets. We bought ours at REI. BONUS! They also fit in an overhead compartment…..barely

Fast forward ….. We pass through security and I make a B-line for the bar. We have a long way to go and I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna catch some sleep tonight. Our “spirited” waitress/bartender soon arrives and blasts through a list of…..something… like she’s calling the sixth at Scarborough. I just kind of nod at her and order a whiskey and coke. As she’s trained to do, she immediately presents me with the option of “making it a double” for only three dollars more. Economics speak for themselves… I ordered the double. Liza and I enjoy a beverage, watch the waitress/bartender work herself around the room with machine like precision, and listen to the guy next to us say “thanks brutha” about ten times to the waiter who was waiting on him. “Dude, after you hit about the fourth one those you just start sounding like a tool. Props to you for driving it home!”

We finish our drinks and head for the terminal, stopping along the way for emergency rations, water and pretzels. Nothing else remarkable happens between now and our arrival in Houston. Completely out of the ordinary for me, I was able to get some sleep on the way down. Sweet!

HOUSTON-

We get to Houston at around 5:30 a.m. Thanksgiving morning. There won’t be any turkey dinner for us on this trip. The airport is quite busy, and we, quite hungry. Here’s where I always remember what I really dislike about this airport……the FOOD! C’mon Houston…….really? This food court is the best you can do? Nevertheless, we “cowboy up” and roll on in. I hold a table while Liza gets her breakfast, which consists of powdered eggs, home fries, and toast. I take my turn at the same place she went, but not being a fan of powdered eggs, I opt for a chicken wrap. (Yeah, I know what time it is). As I’m unwrapping my wrap it becomes immediately apparent that the lettuce is rotten. Ugh! It’s too early and we have far too long still to go for me to get upset, so I return to the counter, show the “breakfast server” the rotten lettuce and suggest swapping the wrap for something else. I opt for, yes, the powdered eggs, home fries, and toast. I think the café still came out ahead on the deal, but the quick turnaround via “breakfast boy” made it all worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed watching “breakfast boy” scoop up my plate of food then jamming it into the microwave so that my powdered eggs are molten hot when they come out. The home fries exhibit that all so familiar “sizzle of death” as every last ounce of moisture and texture escapes out into the terminals HVAC system. Bye…bye..flavor. Have you no shame Houston? I did receive an unexpected bonus when I went to eat my toast. Uh huh, you guessed it……toasted on one side. Sigh!

The United Club, formerly the Continental President's Club, is our oasis in an otherwise dining vacuum. I would have stabbed a nun in the eye for an Egg McMuffin at this point. But I digress. We proceeded to the United Club where we enter the through the giant, automated hardwood doors, able to accommodate even the likes of Yau Ming. Upon entering the doors to "The Promised Land" we approach the counter where the two highly skilled profilers immediately cast their scowl of suspicion, (this is somewhat reinforced by the fact we were wearing large backpacks and not carrying a Gucci bag or wearing a Tag Hauer watch). After carefully checking our credentials, we are allowed to pass. Upstairs we went. Our destination? The TV Lounge, where I immediately assumed control of the remote and grabbed us a couple of seats.

Settled in now for another three hours, it's time for an adult beverage, so Liza heads out to the bar for some FREE drinks. Her expeditious return with only a plate full of baked goods and a banana immediately triggers my senses that something was missing. Ah, yes, that's it ... NO ADULT BEVERAGES!!! Damn you again Texas! You can own a gun large enough to strap to a Hummer, but you can't get an adult beverage before 7 a.m... what the hell!?! We nibble on some baked goods, watch the news and see that Israel and the Palestinians have reached an agreement to stop bombing each other. That most definitely calls for celebration! What? Still no cocktails? Damn!

Tick…tock…tick….tock….

Seven o'clock has arrived, NOW it’s time for some cocktails.. We keep it simple and throw back a couple of Vodka Cranberries, surprisingly, a full two hours later, just before we head to our gate, the Israeli and Palestinian cease fire is still being upheld, which I'm convinced led to the on time start of the 86th annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, led by none other than Hello Kitty!! (Where the hell did the Fonz get that ugly green coat anyway?). To the gate we go. Up next?.....Tegucigalpa, Honduras ( Tay-goo-see-gal-pa). Even though I broke that down for you phonetically, I’ll bet you still can't say it three times in a row.

TEGUCIGALPA-

Tegucigalpa is on approach and it's at this point I picture the fiery crash that's about to ensue. Little does Liza know that only just a few days prior, while I was researching the airport for a map of the terminal, I run across a little known statistic... anyone want to guess what that is? Yep, Tegucigalpa is the second most dangerous airport on the planet. Sorry, mom’s! As it turns out, you fly in to a rather mountainous region and right over senora Gonzales's house. How do I know it was her house? Well, let me tell you. I know because we were so close I could see her rolling tamales through her kitchen window… I think they were pollo. It’s at this point I think Liza may have caught on to something. As we’re passing Mrs. Gonzales’s’ kitchen the lady across the aisle from Liza made the sign of the cross, closed her eyes and executed the Honduran death grip on the armrests.

One, two, three wheels, we’re down, now we’re hard on the brakes. Since I can’t see the end of the runway I’m not really sure if the brakes are being applied with as much vigor as I’d like them to have been, but we slow down enough to turn towards the terminal. As we begin the turn towards the terminal everyone, without warning, starts to applaud. (I’m not shitting you!) Liza looks around and says to me “why’s everyone clapping?” I play dumb and just shrug my shoulders.

We walk into the terminal where we’re met by a gate agent, he rounds up all the gringos and escorts us from gate # 4 to gate #5, which is conveniently located on the other side of the duty free section. I need a bano’ stat! Hmmm…no bano’ in terminal #5. Can we go back to terminal #4? I mean they did “escort” us to terminal #5. Screw it! There’s nobody paying any attention so we head back to terminal four. We navigate our way back through the duty free section and exhibiting monk like discipline, purchasing none of the graciously discounted tobacco, alcohol or perfume. A quick stop in the bano’ and back to terminal five we go. Upon arriving back in good ol’ number five we check our tickets and notice we’ve been seated on opposite sides and three rows apart. Huh? My attempt to remedy the situation was quickly met with an apparent language barrier. No habla Ingles? Oh well, the last flight is only an hour, I think we can sit apart for an hour. We board the plane, but it’s only half full, and both of the seats next to me are empty, so the seating snafu is resolved. Liza and I will get a chance to crash into the mountain on take-off, together.

Liza’s still not aware of the dangerous airport situation and makes a comment or two about ”how cute all the stewards are”, at the same time, the locals line the fences on either side of the runway and begin waving at our plane. I presume this is to wish us luck for a successful take-off or a swift and painless trip into the afterlife. Once we clear the end of the runway, and the top of the mountain, I finally break the news to Liza about the dangerous airport we just passed through. Since we didn’t die, she doesn’t seem so concerned, although she does express her desire to get to Costa Rica, soon.

SAN JOSE-

The rest of the flight and landing in Costa Rica is pretty uneventful. Clearing Customs and Immigration was a breeze, except for the type-o in Liza’s passport which causes a problem every time she tries to clear. A short explanation to the customs lady and we’re headed for the shuttle. Outside we find our shuttle representative and are told “ it’ll be ten (Costa Rican) minutes for our driver to arrive”. Ten Costa Rican minutes are remarkably similar in duration to ten Mexican minutes.

We spend time chatting with our shuttle guy while waiting for the driver. He, like a number of people we’ve met in our travels, claims to have once lived in the U.S. and is even an American citizen. And, like in most of the tales like this I’ve heard, he loves America, but chooses to stay in Costa Rica and hale tourists out on the sidewalk for 16-18 hours a day. Hmmm? Our driver arrives and off we go. We’re on the road…. I mean track, because it’s pretty much a free-for-all in San Jose, no lanes, no signs, no blinkers, oh my! The good news is that the traffic is pretty heavy so you can’t really get up to fatality speed amongst all the chaos.

Around and around we go on our way to the hotel. There are motorcycles a plenty in Costa Rica, probably due to the fact, as we find out later, that gas is about $6.50 per gallon. Yikes! (Yeah, I know it’s liters down here). We drive around for what seems like ample enough time to reach our hotel and past the National Stadium (more about that later) when our driver starts saying “Hotel Christine, Hotel Christine”. Liza and I both look at each other and say “ Uh, no, we’re staying at the Adventure Inn.” and repeat it, but slower this time. Ad--ven--ture Inn, as if that’s somehow going to help. He picks up his print out that I assume has his schedule on it, recognizes his error, and comically throws his hands into the air. This is followed, quickly, by a down shift and hard acceleration. We all laugh and keep on going. A few minutes pass and Liza asks the driver “tour mas dinero?” He just laughs and says “no nothing”.

After what seems like twenty two right turns we arrive at the Adventure Inn. At this point I haven’t got a clue where, exactly, in the city we are, but no matter, we’re only here for one night. The hotel and staff are nice and we’re quickly ushered off to our room. The room is decent so we drop the bags and just kick back for a while. We’re interested in trying to get a phone that works, so we head to the front desk and they direct us around the corner to the local market. Of course, we go the wrong way, not once, or twice, but three times, leaving us only one other option. We finally locate the store, but unfortunately they only top up phones and don’t actually sell the SIM card we need to make our phone work. Oh well.

We tool around and decide to grab a bite to eat. I should point out that this brand new mini-mall is just outside a gated ex-pat community and is relatively dead except for the grocery store. Ironically we’re the only people eating at any of the three restaurants in this facility. Dinner was fine if not unremarkable, so we pay for dinner and head back to the room. We decide to grab a couple of drinks at the bar which is decorated, I assume, to give you the impression you’re near the beach even though the nearest beach is an hour and a half away. There are beach scenes as viewed through a window painted on all of the walls, and for some reason there’s a giant spray foam tree in the center of the room that has a weird old man face formed into the trunk. We each have a shot of Tequila, which turns out, isn’t as popular a beverage in Costa Rica as it is in Mexico. Rum is the spirit of choice in Costa Rica, but I guess that’s to be expected. I wash mine down with a beer and Liza follows her shot up with one more for good measure. We decide to call it a night and head back to the room for a little TV and some shut eye.

Friday morning and we’re up and about, packing and getting ready for the long ride to Puerto Viejo (4 ½ hours). We take advantage of the free breakfast, grab our bags and head to the lobby. It’s another 15-20 minutes before our shuttle arrives. When our van pulls up, Luis, the driver, introduces himself. He’s a spirited fellow and he speaks English! Luis’ personality has me upbeat for the journey ahead. We set out on the road amongst the chaos that is San Jose traffic, left and rights, motorcycles all around. If there’s enough space to get around you a motorcycle will pass you. Oncoming traffic? No problem! Most of this drive is via Hwy 32 all the way from San Jose to Puerto Viejo, but negotiating the streets of San Jose requires a sort of sixth sense because nothing is marked. How anyone finds Hwy 32, on their own, is beyond me. Before we even get out of town we hit a traffic jam. Apparently it was a truck trying to make a right hand turn into a narrow alley. Ten or fifteen minutes pass and we’re on our way. I’m guessing it’s another twenty minutes or so before we start approaching the mountains/volcanoes. As we approach we’re a little disappointed to see they’re completely socked in by a heavy cloud layer, so there won’t be any sightseeing much beyond the roadside this time over the mountain.

It doesn’t take long to realize that this road trip will be the most dangerous one we’ve ever been on. It makes our first trip to Akumal, in a rental car, at night, even on the old two lane Hwy 307, seem like a drive in the park. I’m so glad we aren’t driving ourselves. Luis turns out to be quite the character. He’s also lived in the U.S. some years ago and spent several of them working as a butcher for a large cattle producer/rancher. According to Luis, “some of the facilities were slaughtering up to 5,000 head of cattle a day”. Yep! That’s why every McDonalds Quarter Pounder (Royal with Cheese for you Euro’s) has one hundred different cows in it. Mmmm! Apparently his boss hired him to travel to various other locations and train employees throughout the company. He goes on to tell us he’s been to twenty five different states and would visit a junkyard in each and every state to buy a license plate to document his travels. He’s been from California to Florida and as far north as Buffalo, NY. His parents are farmers and have a farm just outside San Jose where they raise sugar cane and a few other crops I don’t remember. He has two children one (his oldest daughter) that lives with him and the other daughter lives with his ex-wife in the U.S. His parents just celebrated their 56^th wedding anniversary and he’s looking forward to them reaching their 60^th. He says his dad’s uncle or great uncle also lives in the same city and is its oldest resident at 108 years old. His secret? A little shot of moonshine first thing in the morning to start every day. How can you argue with that? The dude is 108! As we start to climb the pass it starts to rain, just like you would imagine it would in a rain forest. My impression is that it’s always cloudy, foggy and perpetually wet. I’d say five or maybe even six of every ten vehicles on the road is a semi-truck.

Limon is the major port city on the Caribbean Coast, so all the cargo from all points east/west come through Limon and over Hwy 32. As you may have heard in the news recently, China has inked a deal with Costa Rica to widen this road to four lanes from San Jose all the way to Limon. I assume this is for access the refineries and gasoline. According to Luis the Chinese are heavily vested in Costa Rica and most recently built a 40,000 seat sports stadium with living quarters for some 200-300 athletes and supporting cast underneath the stadium. It’s got to be close to 180KM to Limon from San Jose, so this is going to be quite a project. I don’t remember the exact figures, but as best as I can remember they seemed to be substantially less than it was going to take to build the new I-5 bridge between OR and WA.

I know, I know, this is getting a little booooring, but stay with me, it gets better. (Tequila break)

We’re in the mountains now, and it’s very green and lush, lots of interesting vegetation. The traffic is unbelievable, cars, vans and motorcycles pass at will and on occasion, around corners. I should point out that I’m a little concerned about our return trip as we passed a number of lengthy traffic jams for traffic headed into the city, but I also know we’ll have at least six hours. Thankfully Luis is our driver, he’s very alert, patient and safe. A point, which, he himself makes, as he’s telling us story about a car full of tourists that plunged over the rail and to their ultimate demise, at the hand of one of those “crazy drivers”. Did I mention I really like Luis? While we do pass a number of semi’s it’s all done safely and with plenty of room. As we reach the summit we run into a traffic jam, one of four we’ll hit along the way. Once the traffic begins to move we discover the traffic jam was from a downed tree across the road. Another downed tree, and traffic jam later, we stop for lunch. Luis takes us to a roadside, family run restaurant. They’re not “off the grid” but they do all the cooking over a wood burning fire, oven. They even make and keep the coffee hot via a wood burning fire.

Luis hooks us up with a local dish that includes rice, black beans, plantains, macaroni salad, some sort of cooked local vegetable and handmade tortillas. Even though we only had breakfast a few hours ago, one bite in and I know this is something special. I try not to devour everything in site before Liza gets her share and Luis goes at his plate with equal intensity. He later explains that this will be his one and only meal for the day. He’s been up since 6 a.m., will drop us off, and not return home until almost 9 p.m. He’ll have traveled from the Pacific coast, all the way to the Caribbean coast to nearly Panama and back to San Jose in one day. He also mentions that he gets paid every two weeks and that all the expenses he has including food, lodging and gas (at $6.50 gallon) are his responsibility until he gets paid. He’ll spend nearly $100.00 in gas today alone. He doesn’t seem too troubled by that and is proud that he actually owns the van we're in, so it’s much better for him than those that use a company vehicle.

We’re back on the road within thirty minutes and quickly run upon our third traffic jam of the day. This one turns out to be quite lengthy, probably a good thirty minutes or more. Once we start to move and approach the cause of the jam we notice what appears to have been another downed tree that hit the box of a box truck that then caused a semi to leave the roadway and lose its load into the ditch. Judging by the damage to the vehicles it doesn’t look like anyone was seriously injured, but who knows for sure. We’re pretty much down out of the mountains and in the flats now, but the rain shows no signs of letting up. Luis receives a phone call from his boss asking him where he is and why he’s late. He hangs up the phone and says the Germans he’s supposed to pick up are pissed off because they now know he’s going to be at least an hour late. As we approach Limon the sides of the Hwy are dotted with large lots stacked four, five and six high with hundreds of shipping containers. This is something I plan researching later on. I can’t figure out why so much freight moves through this corridor. Is it just to support the inland population? Is it transported elsewhere? No matter the reason the roadway is woefully undersized.

We’re just outside Limon now and we hit our fourth and final traffic jam, fortunately Luis has a “shortcut”, one that he only discovered earlier this year . We make a right and Luis is off like a shot. I think he’s feeling the pressure at this point and attempts to make up some time so we’re flying through the countryside like Mario Andretti (yes, I know that’s a dated reference) but surprisingly, there’s almost no other traffic on this road. Another thirty minutes and what seems like enough time to reach our destination, turns out to be about the halfway point from our detour onto the shortcut to our final destination. We drive down the coast over several single lane bridges, right of way going to the either the one who got there first or to the one with the biggest balls. We finally see the sign for Puerto Viejo, yes, some six and a half hours after we began. Again, thank goodness for Luis, he made the entire journey worthwhile.

PUERTO VIEJO-

Driving through Puerto Viejo my imagination as to what it would look like is completely changed in just a matter of minutes. Even though it’s in the middle of nowhere I guess I pictured it to be a little more city like than it is. There’s one main road through town and everything to the side is either gravel or remnants of an old paved road. The town is pretty “shanty” but I’m not totally surprised based upon its location and proximity to the jungle, ocean and the fact that it rains here to the tune of about twelve inches a month.

We roll through town and come upon Cariblue Resort, our final destination. Luis drops us off and we head to the reception desk. The host, Elmer, yes Elmer, is there to greet us. He asks me to fill out the usual paperwork and scurries off for what turns out to be our complimentary drink, Tamarind. He says it’s an herb and is good for the stomach. Hmmm..…is there something wrong with my stomach, or is there about to be? (only later do I find out that he just walked over to one of those juice dispensers in every hotel lobby/cafeteria in the country and poured it from there.) Translation: NO BOOZE!

As we’re waiting for him to finalize the details, Liza shouts out something about a spider. “Mike, you gotta come here and check this out!” Elmer seems amused, but only in a superficial way as he’s probably heard that same thing about a thousand times. I walk over to take a look and Holy Shitballs! This spider had a body the size of your pinky and has legs that spread out as wide as your palm. No, it’s not Tarantula, but it’s the biggest web spinning spider I’ve ever seen up close and it’s right there in the entry way. We study the spider…..cautiously mind you, as we’re certain this thing is going to jump out and latch onto one of our faces like that freaky thing in the movie Alien. I stay back because there’s no way in hell I’m going out like that.

Elmer tells us he’s ready and shows us to our bungalow. The bungalow is comprised of one room and a bathroom, which I assume is made from local hardwoods, and includes AC and a ceiling fan. Check. It’s minimalist, but it looks nice, clean, dry and sturdy, and it’s something new for us.

We drop our gear and decide to head to town to get the initial “lay of the land”. We get ready to head out, but one of the windows won’t lock and our lock box was already locked (probably from when I swung open the door to the bungalow).

Back to the front desk we go where we explained the sitch’ to Elmer and he says “no worries”. One guy comes with us to fix the window, but we have to wait for the key to come from the main house for the lock box. About fifteen minutes go by and the same guy who fixed the window shows up with the key, unlocks the lock box, and we’re set. Back to the front desk one more time to have Elmer call us a taxi. The taxi shows up just a few minutes later, we jump in and head to town (it’s about a one minute drive, and only about a fifteen minute walk, but it’s pitch dark and just isn’t safe for a number of reasons). The driver drops us at the edge of town and NOW it feels like our vacation has officially begun.

Back and forth through town, down to the beach and back again. There’s really no beach here in the center of town. I mean, there’s sand, but the ocean pretty much slaps right up against the tree line. Interestingly enough, the Police station is the closest building to the beach in the entire area. And, ironically, as has been stated in many of the reports I’ve read about the area …the Ganja dealers sit in the bar right on the corner of the main road and the beach road which leads to the Police station just some 200 yards away. In fact, the second we approach Tex Mex ( the bar that sits on that corner) we’re propositioned. “Hey amigo, you need some weed?” That will be the first of many offers as we stroll around town.

As it turns out November is the end of the wet season, therefore it’s also the slow of the slow season, and as far as I can tell we’re just two of a handful of gringos anywhere in town. There are locals, and other Costa Rican’s, but we’re the only two with blonde hair and pale skin. No matter how hard we were trying to not look like “tourists” it was an epic fail based upon our hair color and pale skin.

This is somewhat concerning as it also means we’re easy targets for those with less than good intentions. While you often read about being safe or unsafe, and what you should or shouldn’t do when visiting a particular area, you never really know until you get there. I’m jumping ahead a bit for the moment, but we were warned by at least three different people in the first twenty four hours, (two of whom are locals) to stay off the beach at night, to not to carry bags, purses or cameras at night and also to take a cab from our hotel to town and back after dark. Again, somewhat disappointing, but not entirely unexpected either.

We stick to the main streets and end up at Cafe Viejo for a drink. I ordered a Mojito and Liza a shot of Tequila, which, as I’ve already mentioned, is about as popular as a toothache down here. After some back and forth with the waitress, Liza ordered a shot of Herradura, but who really knows what she actually got. A couple of gentlemen sitting behind us were ordering dinner and having similar trouble placing their order. Our drinks arrive, and a short time later so do the dinners for the two gentlemen behind us. Some discussion ensues between the two guys behind us, something to do with the lack of Gorgonzola flavor in one of the pasta dishes. The owner comes over and quickly remedies the situation. At some point I butt in and chat them up about places to eat in town. Come to find out they both live in Costa Rica and have a place together in San Jose. One of them, Steven, also has a place in Puerto Viejo just down the road from where we’re staying. I now wish I would have asked him for his contact info as he mentioned he rents it out when he’s not staying there. Oh well.We finish our drinks and head out to check out some more of the town.

Resuming our search for a place to eat, we decide on a place almost across the street called Soda Flip Flop (A Soda is similar to a café or in Mexico a loncheria). While the town itself was a little quieter than expected, Flip Flop’s was packed. We grab one of the few remaining tables and are promptly greeted by the owner. A quick review of the menu revealed a wide array of choices, everything from hamburgers to sushi. I opted for the Bolognese with Penne and Liza the hamburgesa (hamburger) “The best cheap burger” the menu read. We each also ordered a glass of red wine. (BTW – wine is not only plentiful here, but pretty good from what we can tell, and only $3.00 a glass at Flip Flop). Since they were so busy, it was a good forty five minutes before our food arrived. But seeing as we had just survived the six and a half hour trek from San Jose, forty five minutes for our food to arrive seemed pretty reasonable. LOL! (some other patrons were not so patient).

Our food arrives and in the dim light looks pretty good. Mine actually tasted pretty good…. cheap, but good. Liza’s hamburger also "looked” good. She proceeded to cut it in half to make it more manageable, only to discover that after she takes a few bites the burger is, well…crunchy….not unlike a beef flavored rice cake. At this point we had already waited long enough for our food so we dare not send it back if we want to finish this meal yet this evening. We get the attention of the waitress and explain the situation. She graciously takes the burger off the tab (but did charge us for the fries). LOL! Thank goodness for the papas fritas (french fries). Soon afterwards we ask for the check and are ready to pay her, but she turns her head towards the register as if to signal us to look at something and says “The Germans”. There was a group of about twelve of them and I’m pretty sure they were also responsible for the jam up in the kitchen. Now this is kind of funny, because the owner (not our waitress), was almost certainly German. LOL! We pay for dinner and head back out into town.

We head south a few blocks until we reach the south end of town where a large, bald, boisterous gentleman hollers at us in a Hungarian accent, “Fresh fish e-v-e-r-y day! You come for dinner! I cook fish for you!” He was just closing up so we turned around to talk to him and ask “what kind of fish you cook?” (not really as he probably would have kicked our asses for mocking him). But we did politely ask him what kind of fish. He goes down the list “I have Snapper, Sea Bass, Tuna etc.” Come to find out he cooks whatever fish he catches that day. He doesn’t open until 6 p.m., and the menu isn’t posted until he returns from fishing. There’s no sign identifying his restaurant, which is not much more than a couple of roll-up steel doors, a few tables and a small kitchen area that’s pretty much open to view from just about any angle.

Damn! I don't have a picture of this guy.

Since he’s closing up shop we continue to chat him up, we ask and he tells us his name is Laszlo and introduces us to his son Robbie. Laszlo is from Hungary, his wife is Czech and his “son is a gringo that grew up in New Jersey”. We explain to him that we just arrived in town today, and we’re just headed back to our room. He’ says “you come with me, I show you place to eat, and good place to drink”. We’re not really interested in a drink, but what the hell? We’re not on a schedule. I explain to him that we also need a taxi. “How do we get one?” He says “I get you taxi, I know guys”. We stroll back through the middle of town following Laszlo like a couple of lost puppies. He waves and says hello to several people along the way and even grabs one young lady and gives her a kiss. He seems well liked (or feared) I’m not really sure. Laszlo’s reputation seems to be that of ex-military and he acts and talks every bit the part. He’s nice, but he also has a “I could snap your neck in a second” kind of air about him.

As we walk through town, Laszlo warns us about of some the seedier bars and walks us around to Mango, probably one of the more hoppin’ joints during high season and after 10 p.m. There’s kind of a late night thing here. There are a few bars open until 2 a.m. and many of them don’t get busy until about 10 p.m. With that said, Laszlo, Liza and I head back the way we came, Laszlo says something in Spanish to a couple of guys sitting next to their cars and says “ These guys will take you home. These are good guys.” They all have the standard issue taxi, either a Nissan Sentra or Hyundai of some sort, so it all seems legit. Yes, that was my proffesional assesment of the situation. Strange Hungarian man + Unkown Taxi driver + Sitting in the dark + Foreign Country = This will be just fine. We thank Laszlo for the tour, and as we’re getting in the taxi tell him we’ll see him for dinner the next night. At this point we headed back to the resort where we called it a night.

SATURDAY -

Saturday morning arrives and we’re greeted by what sounds like someone trying break bricks with a hammer at about 6:30 a.m. right outside our bungalow. I manage to shrug that off and get back to sleep, but then at 8 a.m., not long after waking up, there’s a knock at the door….it’s the housekeeper! Are you kidding me? You want to clean our room at 8 a.m.? Un hora por favor! (one hour please!) You’re going to have to wait a little bit longer to get this gringos money. We’re up and about and treated to a mix of brick breaking, birds chirping and floors creaking. We get ready to go get some breakfast and stop by the reception desk to ask about getting a refrigerator (we’re staying for 8 days) and also about the possibility of changing rooms. The hostess says, “We have a room with two Queen beds available, is that okay?” We say “Sure, how long before we can change?” She says “Check back with me at noon.” Great, now let’s go get some breakfast.

We walked to town and stopped in for breakfast at Soda Elizabeth. Good cheap eats. One thing I’ve learned about eating Huevos Rancheros is that no two recipes are the same. Today’s version had red bell peppers in it which was a nice twist. After paying for breakfast we headed back to main street in search of some bikes (note that everyone gets around here on bikes). (Side Note: The local currency is Costa Rican Colones and the exchange rate is 500 Colones to one American dollar) It’s strange to look at menus with prices of $3,500 or $5,200, but the conversion is pretty easy when you just figure it’s two American dollars to every one thousand Colones. Even though it’s slow season it was surprisingly difficult to locate some bikes to rent. Okay, not that difficult…just not good bikes at a good rate. Most places wanted anywhere from $6 to $7 per day, and from one knucklehead with his “stupid gringo alarm” going off, $10 per day per bike. We finally locate a stand on the south end of town and are able to negotiate a deal for two bikes for eight days for $60 total! Having successfully negotiated our bike rentals for the week we head back to the resort to see about the room change.

The hostess walks us out our new digs to make sure it is acceptable, room number three. This bungalow is the outermost bungalow with the exception of number four, which is down a different path but ultimately only about twenty yards away and sits parallel to ours. This is the only other building we can see from this bungalow. The entirety of the grounds are set within the jungle, but this bungalow and number four are the most “in the jungle” like, private and secluded. We tell the hostess this room will be fine and we’re looking forward to the change of scenery. She tells us the room will be ready at 1 p.m. and we head back to the first room to pack and wait. We pass the time with a little reading and blogging. It’s now 1 p.m. so back to the reception area we go to drop off the old key and pick up the new one. We’re walking up the pathway to our new bungalow and as we approach we notice the cleaning cart is still in front of our bungalow. We approached and the housekeeper shoo’d us away, not unlike one shoo’s away flies from a picnic. She tells to come back at 3 p.m. as she must be under the impression that we had just arrived and were checking in early. Back to the lobby to talk to the hostess where we’ll have to wait for a few more minutes. You know what that means. A little more blogging and a little more reading and our room is finally ready.

We drop our bags, again, and head out on our bikes in search of The Point, the primary sports bar in town. It’s across the bridge about 1km north of town. Surprisingly, they had about seven TVs and one large projector, so considering our location the number of TVs was pretty impressive. Even more of a surprise was that they had a Costa Rican microbrew on tap! It was actually pretty good and better than just about any microbrew I’ve ever had that was brewed from anywhere in the Midwest (USA) to the East Coast. Maybe it’s the water? After noshing on a plate of chili-cheese fries and a beverage or two we headed back to our bike rental place to exchange Liza’s bike. It kept tattooing her leg with grease from the chain (which she found to be highly unpleasant and messy), mainly because her bike had no chain guard. The bike is swapped out in a jiff and back to the resort we pedal.

Back at the ranch now and it’s starting to rain. And I’m not talking a “ I’m gonna go get the mail” without a coat kinda rain, I’m talking “ I’m gonna go get the mail. Where’s the snorkel?” kinda rain. I’ve lived in Oregon all my life, and Liza, for about ninety nine percent of hers, so we’re no strangers to rain, a lot of rain. I’m sure some of you have experienced rain like this before, but in our forty plus years on this planet we’ve never seen anything like it. It was like someone turned on a giant fire hose and pointed it right at Puerto Viejo. For hours, it poured and poured, but it also gave us time to relax, read a little, and start this stupid blog, (that has since taken up countless hours of my life) and I’m only at day three.

This all started as a Facebook post about how much I dislike the Houston Airport. Why?!!!

Tequila break –

Due to the high cost of tequila and somewhat lack of selection, we resolve to drinking a Mixto. It's decent, but I'm not paying $50.00 for 100% agave (Sauza-Hornitos).

I think we squeezed in a nap here somewhere, but I don’t know for sure. I nap so infrequently that, even when I do, it hardly leaves an impression on me.

We get ready for dinner. Tonight’s destination…..Laszlo’s Fresh Fish. We make another of what becomes our routine evening jaunt down to the lobby and ask them to call us a taxi. For the time being the rain has stopped. We pull up to Laszlo’s and it’s mostly empty, except for a younger couple sitting at a table talking to Laszlo and his son, Robby. Robby is tall like his dad, but skinny as a bean pole, or a young man who eats lots of fish, vegetables, beans and rice, and spends all his spare time surfing.

We introduce ourselves to the younger couple (Daniel and Monica), and they to us. Daniel’s not at all shy, but neither is Liza, so in about 6.2 seconds they’re chatting like they've known each other their entire lives. Liza’s telling Daniel about how we found this place, met Laszlo the night before and how “he picked us up and took us around town last night”. Daniel finds this statement amusing and says something in reference to Laszlo’s military background and that we probably shouldn’t let it get out that “he picked us up”. I’m not sure why that’s so funny, but I roll with it. We all chat for a bit and learn that Daniel and Monica are from Ireland, and that they're here on their honeymoon. At some point Laszlo jumps up “I cook now!” What I find amusing is, for several minutes he spends his time bouncing around the kitchen, firing up the stove , getting together some ingredients, and slicing some vegetables. It's at this time when I start asking myself “did I order something, because he appears to be preparing a meal already?” Liza and I even look at each other with that inquisitive sort of look, each wondering “did we order something?”

Just then Laszlo hollers out and asks us if we want something to drink. I don’t remember what I told him, but he said something about beer, I nod, and Robby brings us a couple of Imperials, Costa Rica’s national beer. A little more time passes and Robby finally asks us if we want the big fish or the little one (Holding them for display by the tail). Apparently we’re having Snapper for dinner. Liza and I again look at each other and just kind of shrug our shoulders in agreement. I said to Robby “ we’ll just share the small one”, to which Robby replies “What, you don’t want the Sea Bass?” (holding up a large steak) Okay, so we’re having Snapper and Sea Bass for dinner. Funny, I don’t remember ordering either of those, let alone looking at a menu.

Laszlo is busy cooking our dinner, and has literally chopped, mixed, and cooked everything we're about to eat, right then and there. I enjoy watching him nibble on some of the food and drinking a beer as he's preparing our meal. It takes a good thirty minutes from the time he says "I cook now" until we're served, but when our plates arrive the food looks delicious. The Snapper was absolutely fantastic. Both pieces of fish were served with an array of fresh vegetables, and the portions were huge. We could have easily shared just one of the plates and been perfectly happy, but when Laszlo cooks you two plates full of fish, you eat two plates full of fish.

It's beginning to rain again (surprise), but not hard. While we're enjoying the fish we're learning more about our new acquaintances, Daniel and Monica. Since they're from Ireland and we're from Oregon, we both find common ground when it comes to rain. While none of us are particularly enjoying it, we're not totally disappointed either. We're all pretty much of the same opinion "Hey, at least it's warm." Although I think we're taking it more in stride than our new found friends. We're just on vacation, but as I previously mentioned, they're on their honeymoon. We also came prepared for rain and had on our rain coats and our Keen's (Free Plug). Daniel and Monica, however, were not so well prepared, they brought no rain gear at all, and poor Monica, well, she was wearing a cotton sweatshirt over what appeared to be a sun dress.

D & M decided it was time for them to head out, but not before making plans to meet up with us later at Mango's. We bid them adieu and go back to our enjoying our fish. I start to pick Robby's brain on the surfing situation and ask him where a good place would be to get a lesson. He says just down the road at Cocles beach is a good spot, but I've been by that beach several times, and I can tell you this my friends, "That's no place for a beginner". It's a beach break, and quick one at that, so unless you want to be beaten to death by a wave and a beach, I suggest you go for a lesson somewhere else. I know there are better locations, so I play my hole card and ask Robby if he knows Herschel Lewis, and to my relief, he does. I quickly follow that up by asking him if he knows where I can find him. He says "Sure, he's just down the road next to Tex-Mex, he's got a shop down there". Jackpot! (I stumbled across Herschel while watching watching surf videos prior to leaving for our trip). Now I'm STOKED (that's surfer talk to you kooks) and can't wait to take a couple of lessons.

We finish dinner and ask for the check. Seeing as we never saw a menu, I have no idea how much this dinner is going to cost. Robby brings us the check and I'm relieved to see the bill is only $17,000. What?! Relax, that's in Costa Rican Colones, which are 500:1 U.S. Dollars, so it's about $34.00 American. Another thing I notice is there's no 10% tip, tax, surcharge, or whatever the fee is everyone else is adding to our tab down there. I ask Robby about it and he says "I never add anything to the bill". I like this kid. I throw him about six or seven (American) worth of Colones and now he's STOKED. We've only been here twenty four hours and I'm already hittin' my surfer groove. I would like to take a moment to apologize to all the legitimate surfers who have earned the right to say things like Stoked, or Kook, or "Dude, just relax. You're gonna blow out your squeaker. etc. Respect!

Now it's our turn to brave the rain, but unlike our Irish friends, we're prepared. While Laszlo's is on the south end of town, it's still in the "safe" zone, so walking from there is no big deal. On the way we pass many of the sidewalk vendors. These folks are out here from early in the morning until late at night selling there wares. Some of the stuff, mostly jewelry is pretty nice, but it's not our thing so we spend little time looking. What a rough way to make a living. I assume they do much better in the high season, but the small crowds and wet weather seem to do little to discourage them. We soon arrive at Mango's, and as it was the night before, the music is loud. Don't get me wrong, that's not a problem for us, but it does somewhat inhibit ones ability to converse with a group of friends. You limit your turn speaking to about one sentence because it takes a full breath and a sustained shout to say what you have to say before reloading and shouting again. Actually, if you sit outside it's not too bad, but sitting inside and talking is almost pointless.

Even though it's closing in on 10 p.m., which is typically when things get going around here, we're disappointed to see it's just a few locals and Daniel and Monica. We had read that there's a pretty good late night scene down here, and during high season I'm sure that's the case, but with the weather and the fact that it's low season, the "late night scene" never really comes together for us, at least not at Mango's. (The picture to the right is not one of ours, but I assume this is what it looks like when it's busy) We get a couple of beers and join D & M for some more conversation. We're all having a good time and a few more folks stroll in, but it never really gets crowded. At one point a lonely crab makes an appearance and temporarily entertains us. Some of the local boys pick it up and illicit a couple shrieks from some of the young gals that had just arrived. It's ten o'clock now and the DJ starts setting up. For who? I'm not sure, but it's part of the schedule, so crowd or no crowd the DJ must spin'em. As he gets going the music gets even louder, now all conversation in impossible, so we make our way outside where were able to continue our conversation with D & M. We have one last drink each and decide to call it a night. We make tentative plans to meet up with Daniel and Monica in a day our two, and part our separate ways. We head back up to the main drag, grab a taxi and head home.

SUNDAY-

We’re again greeted by rain when we roll out of bed this morning, but not the torrential downpour we’ve become accustomed to the previous couple of days. Today’s agenda includes eating breakfast at one of the places we had on our list, Bread and Chocolate, and that’s about it.

Before we leave our bungalow, we start the day off with our traditional shot of tequila. It’s a tradition we started when we first began traveling to Mexico together back in 2002. Granted, the quality of tequila was not up to our standards on this trip, but as I mentioned before, I’m not going to pay $80.00 for a bottle of Herradura. Sure, coffee makes a pretty good pick-me-up in the morning, but nothing gives you a wake up slap like a shot of Tequila. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t just drink tequila because it makes for a great story, we honestly enjoy tequila, good tequila. If you need a lime or salt or anything else to assist you in getting it down, you’re not drinking good tequila. A good tequila deserves respect just like any other fine spirit, which is why we prefer to drink it straight up. One of our personal favorites is Lapis (Anejo). Sure, maybe it’s in part due to the cool looking bottle, but it’s also pretty darn good tequila.

Side Note:

I made a couple of last minute purchases before our trip. I purchased a pair of Keens based upon a suggestion from Liza. I gotta say… for the most part it was a good decision, but more on that later. Another free plug here for the U.S. Outdoor Store right here in downtown Portland, OR. Trying to find shorts, in Oregon, a week before Thanksgiving is like trying to find a Snowman in Phoenix in July. Not only does the U.S. Outdoor Store have shorts, they have racks and racks of shorts and at blowout prices. The icing on the cake is….. most of them are major labels, I even bought a pair of The North Face shorts. I didn’t even know they made shorts, when I think North Face, I think snow.

We put on our rain coats, Keens, and quick drying shorts (all of which are a must if you plan on traveling to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica). We grab a wad of Colones, hop on our trusty/rusty bikes, and head to town. About half way there the rain starts to pick up, while not torrential it’s coming down pretty hard. Thank goodness it’s only about 1km to town, so we put in a little extra effort and arrive at Bread and Chocolate just a few minutes later.

It’s a small place and it’s fairly crowded. I’m a big fan of “busy” when it comes to eating at new places. First, it usually means the food is pretty good. Secondly, it means the food is getting turned over on a regular basis and, therefore, should be fresh. After watching many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares I steer clear of places that have little to no patrons in them. (Some of the best food finds we’ve had here in Oregon were based solely upon the number people standing in line or the number of cars in the parking lot). We park the bikes and head for cover. Ahhhh….. what a relief it is just being out of the rain. Bread and Chocolate appears to be no more than a house with one or more of the rooms on the main flow converted into a kitchen,

and a large covered deck built on to the front of it.

We grab a table and peruse the menu, it’s limited, but the variety is nice. Many of the items on the menu are made right here at B & C. They make their own berry preserves, baked goods, peanut butter and as their name indicates, chocolates.

They also cook their eggs in a double boiler, which is similar to poached eggs, but scrambled. Not only do they serve you your coffee in your own personal French press, they also provide you warm milk should you want some for your coffee. In fact, Liza just told me that the woman next to us order a mocha, so in addition to the French press they also brought her warm/melted chocolate to pour into her coffee. Get out!

We only ate here twice, and just breakfast at that. They also serve lunch, so who knows what other culinary delights await us on our next visit.

While eating we struck up a conversation with a couple sitting next to us. Liza asked them about the wine bottle sitting on their table. I mean, how crazy is that? Wine at 9:30 a.m.? Tequila? Sure. No problem, but wine? That’s just crazy! But seriously, it turns out to be a wine bottle full of honey. Sweet! I don’t remember where the gentleman was from, San Diego I think, but that’s just a guess. His wife, as it turns out, was from Washington. They had just moved down here full time and were staying down the road a piece in a rental property…at least until they could decide where and in what kind of place they wanted to live permanently. We tell them about a few of the things we would like to do while we’re down here, one of which was horseback riding. As luck would have it they know another expat, Bruce Walker, he owns Playa Chiquita Riding Adventures and has a place just down the road from where we’re staying. They even have his phone number, so we get Bruce’s digits and say our goodbye’s.

The rain has slowed to a drizzle, and we’ve got some fuel in our bellies, so we decide to ride our bikes south in search of Punta Uva, which is often described as “the place to snorkel”. Granted, with the current weather situation we have no illusions about doing any snorkeling today but we point the bikes south and it’s Punta Uva or bust.

The scenery along the way is pretty similar, lots and lots of vegetation with a mixture of private residences, small resorts, hostels, a couple of small stores, some restaurants, a school, and a few other places I can’t quite identify. You can’t see the beach at all once you pass Cocles, so trying to find Punta Uva may be a challenge.

I forgot to mention we’re also hoping to see Bruce’s place, Playa Chiquita Riding Adventures and we pass it about twenty five minutes into the ride.

Another place we’re looking for the Jaguar Rescue Center, which was also on our list of things to do this trip, a place we’ll visit on Monday. Along the way we never see it, we know it’s there, but we miss it somehow. We ride about 8 to 10km and pass through the area known as Playa Chiquita. It’s a small area with no real discernible borders, other than the signs on either end as you enter from opposite directions. This area has a 25km speed limit and the most recently paved section of road. This area houses many nice villas and small resorts, and appears to be the more “upscale” area along this section of coastline. We pass signs telling us we’re entering Punta Uva, but like everything else, there’re no discernible borders, other than the signs.

By the time we reach the 10km mark the rain starts to pick up and we still haven’t been able to find any signs pointing us to the actual Punta Uva beach itself. We know we had to have passed it, so with that and the fact it’s starting to rain heavier we turn for home. A kilometer or two back I turn off the main road on to a dirt road I believe may take us to a beach. Punta Uva? Who knows, but I’m determined to find a beach nonetheless. My instinct, or gamble, or whatever you want to call it, pays off. A couple of hundred yards down the road we get to a beach. It’s not a big beach, well, it’s long, but like many of the beaches here it’s not very deep. Since we rode past a couple of places along the dirt road I don’t know if the beach to the north or south is private property or not. We just stick to the main section and soak it in “literally”. Did I mention it rains a lot down here? We do our best Clark Griswold… get back on the bikes and starting heading back to Cariblue. Just about the time we hit the main road the rain picks up even more. Now it’s a full on downpour and rain gear or not we’re gonna get soaked. Did I mention it’s also warm down here? So while it’s moderately miserable, it’s not as near as bad as it would be back at home because it’s so warm. I’m not crazy about getting soaked, but it’s just one of those situations where you have to laugh it off and enjoy the ride.

When we get back to the resort and change out of our soaking wet clothes. (This is the part about the Keens, my Keens, I was going to tell you about). I bought the Keen Newport’s on the recommendation of the salesperson after describing to her that I wanted something good for the jungle and the beach and some that were going to be good in wet weather.

There’s a waterproof tag right on them, and the leather upper with neoprene liner were, for the most part, pretty waterproof. However, the suede like foot bed soaked up water like a sponge. I know as soon as I take them off that getting them dry is going to be a challenge. The humidity down here pretty much prevents anything from air drying, it’s not an uncomfortable level of humidity, but that’s mostly because the sun hasn’t been out for several days. As it turns out it takes the better part of two days and at least an hour under a McGyver rigged hairdryer to get them dried out. Liza’s Keens, on the other hand, have a synthetic foot bed that doesn’t absorb any water at all, so while they remain wet on the outside the neoprene liner and the synthetic foot bed are quite dry. It’s at this point I bitch about my purchase and how I’m going to return them for the Newport H2’s as soon as we get home.

The rest of the afternoon is comprised of a warm shower, dry clothes, sitting on the porch listening to the rain and blogging while Liza makes use of the hammock to read a book. After such a rigorous afternoon we decided to have a nap!

After our nap we decide to head to The Point for some pub grub and some NFL Football. Knowing it will be dark by the time we head home we call a taxi. The taxi that arrives to pick us up this time looks pretty nice, and when I open the door I’m surprised to see leather interior. Leather? No shit! Nice! Not only was it leather, this guy had it all shined up. If there hadn’t been a door on the other side of the back seat I’m sure Liza would have slid right across the seat and out the other side. As we’re driving down the road I say something like “muy bueno”, to which the driver replies “solo bueno”. We affectionately name this taxi Solo Bueno, and say it out loud every time we see him the rest of our trip. Before we departed for The Point we asked the hostess at the resort what a taxi to The Point should cost, she said it should be about three to four thousand Colones. When Solo Bueno drops us off I ask him how much, and mi amigo says “five thousand”. Whooooo……Solo Bueno is sticking it to these two gringos! (My fault for not asking before we left). Solo Bueno might have leather interior, but you’re gonna pay for it.

We pull up a seat at the bar and order a couple of drinks. I again go for the microbrew and am still just amazed that down here in the middle of nowhere a beer like this is actually available. The gentlemen we spoke with at the restaurant our first night in town did mention that The Point has the best burger in town. Liza opts for the burger and I’m excited to see hot wings on the menu so that’s what I order. We watch some football until our food arrives, when the waitress brings out this giant bowl of stew for the guy sitting next to us at the bar. What we later find out is a local dish called Rondon.

I don’t remember what’s in it, but it looks good. Our food shows up a short time later and everything looks better than expected, the wings are huge and meaty and the burger is fat, juicy and perfectly cooked. We really enjoy dinner and strike up a conversation with the guy eating the Rondon, his name is Lars and he’s from Norway. Seriously? Norway? Lars goes on to tell us he’s been coming down here for four or five years and stays further south, in Manzanillo, for about three months at a time. He says he only hangs out in Manzanillo and at The Point, that’s it. He goes on to tell us many things about the area, so I don’t entirely believe his story about where he hangs when he’s down here, but I realize he’s just making a point about not being into the late night scene in Puerto Viejo.

It’s just shy of seven o’clock, and Lars mentions something about needing to pay his tab so he can catch the bus to Manzanillo. The last bus is due to arrive just outside The Point at around 7:15, which means that it will arrive anywhere between 7:00 and 7:30. The rain is really coming down now and Lars doesn’t have a coat or umbrella, but he doesn’t have a choice but to head out into the downpour to catch the bus. We say goodbye and watch him head into the night, in a heavy downpour. (That sounds like a Foreigner song). Lars has been gone for a good fifteen or twenty minutes now, and from our vantage point at the bar we can see right out one of the doors. Well, the entire bar area is just lattice work and doors, so you can pretty much see out from any vantage point.

As I’m looking out the door I see a bus go by, and it had to be going a good 30mph. I think to myself “that bus sure seems like it’s going pretty fast for just stopping at a bus stop”. About ten seconds later here comes Lars, running into the bar. He’s soaking wet, but he’s smiling and just shaking his head. He tells us he and one other guy were waiting for the bus and were both waving at the driver, but that the driver looked right at them and just kept on driving. Again he just chuckles and says “ I guess I’ll have to take a taxi”. He’s certainly in a better mood than I would have been, but I guess spending three months on vacation down here probably relaxes one, so missing a bus really isn’t that big of a deal. He sits back down in his bar stool and orders a beer. The bartender and “remote guy” had a good time ribbing him about his predicament. We all just shoot the shit for a while and when we’re ready to leave, we offer to split a cab with Lars. We tell him that we’ll pay for the cab to the resort, so he would only have to pay for the rest of the trip from there to Manzanillo. He’s down with that so we ask the bartender to call us a taxi. When the taxi arrives we all depart together.

We arrive at our resort and say goodbye to Lars. We spend the rest of the night in our room, reading, drinking tequila, watching TV and listening to the rain. I forgot mention that we both really enjoyed the burger and wings. This place is a must if you get a hankerin’ for some pub grub and great atmosphere. I also forgot to mention that The Point also has some outdoor seating and that it’s fairly close to the ocean, so you do have a pretty decent view from the tables outside.

Monday –

We wake up and something is missing...yes! There’s no sound of rain hitting the roof! I don’t immediately run outside to check out the weather, but instead get showered and dressed for breakfast. On our way out of the room I can see the sun shining through the trees and hitting the ground and then, BAM!!! Holy Cow! It’s humid! There’s so much moisture everywhere, that even at 9:00 a.m., the sun is already steaming things up. I initially thought the whole day was going to be insanely hot and humid, but that never really materialized, and it turned out to be just crazy hot and humid. Although, after that much rain, we were ready for some sun, humid or not.

We start the day off with breakfast at our resort. I think it was this morning when I realized why they had fans behind the buffet tables……to keep the fruit flies off of the fresh fruit. Genius!!! This may have also been the day Liza attempted to boil us a couple of eggs. Yes, boiling hot water for preparing raw eggs to your liking. Another one of those things you’ll never be allowed to do here in the states, at least not away from your own heat source.

Bless her heart, her intentions were good. But at some point I asked her how long the eggs had been cooking, and as she looked up at me I could tell by the look on her face, her answer would not include a numerical value. Oops! She smiled, and I’m sure I shook my head but who cares? The eggs were free. I ended up jumping the gun and cracked open a couple of not-quite-soft boiled eggs. Our first FAIL of the trip!

Today we’re headed to the Jaguar Rescue Center

It’s a couple of km south of town, and just 10-15 minutes from where we were staying. (I’m just going to get this out of the way right off the bat. There were NO Jaguars...at least nothing like I imagined them to be). There were some small felines that may have been Jaguars and I just wasn’t paying attention to our guide. Don’t get me wrong, the place is a “must see” but I was expecting to see some cats large enough to tear out my jugular. So when they introduced something the size of a Cervil, I admit, I lost a bit of interest.

I hesitate to describe the Rescue Center in too much detail, so as to make the experience as fresh it can be for you as it was for us. Some things I just don’t want to know all the details about before I go. I will tell you that it’s conveniently located, affordable, well run, and you will see a variety of birds, mammals, (yes, including baby monkeys and sloths) reptiles and insects. Very cool!

I should also note that this is a rescue center their goal is to rehabilitate and release the animals back into the wild whenever possible, not just put them out for show. The tour was about two hours and was highly worth it.

Now we’re on our way back to town to search out Herschel, the guy I hope to take a surfing lesson from tomorrow. (I think I mentioned this earlier, but I just stumbled across this guy in a YouTube video while looking at surfing videos Herschel Lewis).

Just as we pass our resort we start talking about lunch, and as we ride we mull over a few options. Just as we agree to wait until we get to town, I catch the scent of something….something good! I ask Liza if she smells that, she does, and we agree it’s worth checking out, so we whip a 180 and head back to source of the enticing aroma….. Tasty Waves.

This place was already on the list of places to try, so the good smelling food made it easy to come to a swift and mutual decision. Tasty Waves is right across the street from Cocles Beach, so the name and the setting are a perfect match.

Bryton & Jackson

I’m happy to see a fairly limited menu that includes tacos, burritos, and a handful of various other “finger foods”. To me this is a good sign. It means these guys are smart enough to know the best way to keep customers, even during the low season, is to keep the food fresh and they do! It’s a lot easier to do that when you’ve only got about ten menu items. I had a burrito and Liza had a couple of tacos, both of which were super tasty. One of the guys waiting on us, is an owner, and his name is Jackson. I think he told me he was from Maryland. He’s a really nice guy, and he invited us to come back for Taco Tuesday. “Tacos are two for one.” Bryton, the other owner gives freebie cab rides to patrons on Tuesday nights too! We finish up lunch and decide we’re definitely coming back for Taco Tuesday.

We finish our lunch and we head to town now. With the directions we received from Robby a couple of days ago, and the large surf board out front with the word SURF on it, it wasn’t too difficult to find.

Unfortunately Herschel wasn’t there, but there was a lady there that, as it turns out, shares a small retail shop with Herschel and his surfboards. She appears to be authorized to speak on his behalf, so I make a reservation for a lesson at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Since the sun is out a trip to the beach is definitely in order. We boogie back to the room, put on some swim gear and head across the street to the beach. Even though the weather wasn’t overly cooperative, this is where a lot of the value of our resort comes into play.

It’s 200 yards tops from our room to the beach, and that’s just about as close as you’ll get in Puerto Viejo.

We just chill on the beach, watch some surfers, and play in the water.

The water temp is nice and you could stay in it all day, but be careful, some of the waves break close to or right on the beach. Definitely not a place to be turning your back to the ocean… that is unless you like the idea of getting pounded into the sand, not unlike the way an infant bangs a doll against a coffee table. If you’ve ever had this happen to you, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, just turn your back on the ocean for sixty seconds and I guarantee you you’ll find out. C’mon I dare you! :)

Friendly reminder – Use that sunscreen!!! You will fry like an egg down here. This is particularly true for those of us above the 45^th parallel.

After a well deserved day at the beach we decide to head into town to grab some more Colones from the ATM. This was our first vacation where we utilized the ATM instead of taking cash. While not having large sums of cash on me at any given time was a relief, there was an initial feeling of uncertainty, as I couldn’t be sure the ATM would always have cash or be working. This was quickly dispelled as there are two different bank ATM’s right around the corner from each other. I didn’t have any issues during this trip, but I don’t know that I wouldn't bring more cash next time, or take more Colones out of the ATM each visit, but less frequently.

On our way back out of town we get handed a flyer, it’s for two for one drinks at Lazy Mon. This is another place that I read about before we arrived and had even heard mentioned a couple of times since we’d arrived. We decide to check it out and pull in for a beverage (or two). This place faces south and east towards the Caribbean. It’s doesn’t have much of a front street-side, so even as big as it is you can easily miss it. Once you get a good look at it though, my previous statement may seem ridiculous.

This is one of the few places built right on the water, so the views are about as good as they get. However, there is some potentially bad news. There is an ongoing issue with a maritime law and land owners that have built within the 200m exclusion zone (inland from the ocean). I won’t go into the details here, but this place is one of many along the entire coastline that have been targeted for demolition on at least one occasion. I believe there is some sort of temporary injunction in place for now. I think it’s worth a read should you decide to visit Puerto Viejo and if you enjoy it, decide you would like to help keep it as it is.

Had the weather been better I could have seen us hanging out here more often. But that’s what return trips are for, right? The waitress mentions to us that they have live music at 7:00 p.m., and that sounds good to us. The problem is, we’re on our bikes. Now, we’re not far from our resort, but it’s farther than anyone has recommended we travel at night, even on bikes. We pay the tab, head up the road a piece to the store to pick up some water, snacks, etc. and back to the room. We roll into the resort at dusk, perfectly timed.

We shower up and take a cab back to Lazy Mon. When we arrive we’re pleased to find an open table right out on the patio near the band. We also spot the “remote” guy from The Point (the one we were talking to the night before). He’s sitting behind a drum set and is apparently their drummer. Liza comments about his base drum, which, believe it or not, is a suitcase. It’s a small kit, but perfect for the setting. The band consists of some expats, and maybe one local resident. I don’t know, I didn’t ask.

They were putting on a good show, but we were getting hungry. The menu at Lazy Mon wasn’t really doing it for me so we decided to try somewhere else. In hindsight staying at Lazy Mon and eating there may have been the correct choice. Liza will probably be glad to read this since I think I was the one pushing for us to go eat somewhere else.

I hastily based my decision on a place across the street, one that was full of people earlier in the evening. We arrived a bit late, but that made no difference. Unfortunately it was, in a word, unremarkable, and I don’t even remember the name. No complaints about the service, it was good, and they even accommodated our request to split a meal. We just got the traditional chicken with the “brown” sauce with rice and beans. It was okay, but just okay. I think I’ll give them another shot when we return. After dinner, it starts to rain again, so we decide to just call it a night and head back to the resort.

Because it’s so warm Liza decides to head down the pool to take a swim. I stay behind to work on this blog and do some reading. She comes back and tells me about the poor guys tending the bar and how they scurried out to the pool bar to ask her if she wanted anything.

Unfortunately for them, we’re not “charge it to the room” kind of travelers, so she politely tells them, no thank you and heads back to the bungalow for a night cap and some TV. It was a good day and we’re very excited about the upcoming good weather and surfing!

Tuesday –

We awake bright and early today. Probably because today is surf lesson day, and I want to make sure I eat breakfast well beforehand. It’s the usual fair at the resort today. There’s plenty of fresh fruit, a few pastries and some hot dishes like eggs and sausage, potatoes, etc. It’s nothing to write home about, but it’s included, so …….. I eat a bit more than usual with the thought that this will somehow translate to more energy for surfing. Having surfed before many, many years ago, I know it’s a lot more work than it appears watching from the shore.

At 9:30 a.m. we grab the bikes and head for town. There’s no rain again this morning, and it doesn’t look like there will be any rain, at least not for a few hours anyway. We pull up outside the surf shop and chain up our bikes and head on in.

Herschel is inside and deduces that I must be “Mike” and I’m here for the surf lesson. He’s on the phone but finishes up quickly and comes out to introduce himself. Right off the bat I get a good feeling from Herschel. He’s super personable, has great energy and seems happy to have a lesson booked, I assume because it’s low season and the weather has been pretty bad. We walk back outside and he introduces me to the other person taking a lesson today, Stephanie.

Since my wife is editing this blog and because there’s a good chance Stephanie, herself, will at some point be reading this, I’ll just say that she was very attractive. It turns out Stephanie is from south Florida, and is here for three months! Man, I wish I could take three months off, but I might have a hard time going back to work if I did. Now that Stephanie is part our group, I don’t really see any downside to today’s lesson, short of injuring myself. (Sorry, honey).

Okay, back to surfing…. Herschel has some kid, that I assume works for him load a couple of long boards on top of his Suzuki Samurai. No short boards for these two gringos. We’ll need all the surface area we can get if we’re successfully going to ride any waves today.

Hershel has his son with him this morning and he can’t be more than two or three years old. He’s a cute little guy and excited to be hanging out with his dad. Herschel says we’re going to go check the conditions at Black Beach (Playa Negra) and if that doesn’t pan out we’ll head to a different location. Black Beach is just on the north end of town, and it’s called Black Beach because, as you might have guessed, the sand is black.

Since it’s me, Stephanie, Herschel and his son, there’s no room in the Samurai for Liza. (Sorry again honey). Liza is the designated photographer for the day, but it looks like our photographer is going to have to walk. We take off to go drop off Herschel’s son with his mom. On the way Herschel is talking to his son, asking him a couple of questions. Since the young man was speaking English, Stephanie asks Herschel if his son also speaks Spanish. He says “yes, he also speaks German”. Man, did I miss out. This kid is only three and he’s speaking Spanish, English and German. How cool is that? We drop his son off and then head over to the beach. All of this takes about five minutes and covers about ten blocks. Yes this town is small. As we roll up to the beach Liza has just arrived, on foot. Did I mention this town is small? LOL!

We unload the boards and Herschel goes to hand us a couple of rash guards (basically these are long sleeve spandex tops), but we’re prepared and have already put on our own tops that each of us brought with us. Score a point for Stephanie and Mike! Herschel mentions how good the conditions look, and I have to agree, it looks like perfect conditions for some beginning surfers.

Before we get wet he wants to go over a few things and we gladly listen. We set our boards down in the sand and he shows us his method for standing on the board. He shows us where to place our feet, how to bend our knees and where our arms should be for proper balance. He then shows us his technique for standing up on the board once we catch a wave.

This goes relatively smoothly so we head for the water.

For some reason there’s a large barge that’s beached on the south end of this small bay, and from the looks of it it’s been there for at least a few decades. I mean, there’s a tree growing out of it.

Out in the water Herschel has us head for the end of the barge. He’s all jacked up and says the conditions are perfect. He’s just floating around in the water and giving us some last minute instructions. Grabbing the back of my board he tells me to get down, arms in, elbows up... a quick shove and I’m on my way. Of course I completely disregard his entire technique and basically attempt to “pop up” on the board as quickly as I can. While his is a more controlled technique, I’m here to surf damn it, and I aint spending my time working on technique. I’m here to ride yo! Fortunately, my method seems to work and I successfully ride my first wave in about thirty years.

Stephanie and I kept trading waves and Herschel was impressed with how quickly we both picked it up. At one point I think he said he was particularly impressed with me. I seem to recall a reference to my age somewhere in his compliment. No matter, I know I’m no spring chicken, but that didn’t matter at all, I was just happy to be in the ocean and riding some waves.

Shortly into our lesson this guy appeared on the barge. He looked like trouble to me. Standing there, with his “Miami Vice” shades and his “too cool” attitude. I’m thinking to myself “who does this guy think he is?” He’s clearly worked long and hard to perfect his “look”..... (Got you, PANA!!!! I’m just busting your balls, man! We miss you and Steph, you guys made our trip about ten times better than we imagined it would be). Anyway, it’s not long before this guy is over talking to Liza. My wife loves to meet people...particularly while we’re on vacation, so from my position, and in just a matter of minutes, it looks like they’re hitting it off just fine.

Stephanie and I continue to surf and we’re joined by couple of young girls that were taking a lesson from another local guy “Kemba” I think his name was. We all manage to share the area without any trouble and at some point Herschel instructs us to go ahead and paddle up and drop in on our own. I’m thinking “Now you want me to paddle? I’m tired as shit now. We’ve been surfing for over an hour.” My first attempt is a dismal failure… not because I don’t know how to do it, but because I’m frickin' exhausted. I do manage to paddle myself into a couple of more rides, and get a couple of more freebies from Herschel.

Our ninety minutes are up now, and I can honestly say that I’m not disappointed.

I would have had trouble not looking like an old, outta shape, desk jockey had I surfed much longer.

Pana

We all head in and Liza introduces me to her new found friend, Pana (Pan-ya). It turns out he knows Herschel (Duh!) and Stephanie, and he was there to watch her surf. (Duh!) Pana is super cool so we all shoot the breeze for a bit. Liza invited Pana to walk back with her to Tex Mex so they could continue their lively conversation. Herschel, Stephanie and I throw the boards on the Samurai and head back to the surf shop, which is conveniently located right next to Tex Mex.

Back at Tex Mex we get to know each other better and learn that Pana knows an ex pat named Cleo, she is 74 and just relocated to Puerto Viejo. Stephanie is here visiting Cleo. Cleo has told Pana that it's his job to look after Stephanie while she’s here. Okay, maybe it’s not exactly like that, but when someone asks you to look after their young (female) friend from Florida, you make some time. LOL!

Liza and I are getting a little hungry and Pana asks us where we we’ve eaten since we’ve been in town. We rattle off a few places, but other than Lazlo’s nothing seems to strike him as worthwhile. He then mentions something about a place he likes to eat and that they make traditional food. Traditional food you say? Sweet, we’re down with that, so Liza and I ask him for directions. I think I know what he says, so we thank him and tell him we’ll catch up with him and Stephanie later. We hop on our bikes and head for Taito. After riding around for about ten minutes I quickly surrender as I realize I haven’t got a clue where this place is. We head back out to the main street and run into Pana…we explain to him that we couldn’t find the place… he gets a chuckle out of this and agrees to take us there. We were only off by about a half a block, but the place is so small you could have ridden right by it and not even noticed it. Frankly, I’m not sure we didn’t do just that. It’s really small. There’re three tables and it sits eight people max. It looks like a room off of the kitchen for the house.

Liza and I go for the traditional chicken dish and Pana, the pork. Man! The food smells good. She’s cooking it just ten feet away and I can’t wait to try it! Our food soon arrives and it’s comprised of some slow cooked chicken in a brown gravy looking sauce with beans and rice mixed together, some fried plantains and a small salad. One bite and I’m hooked. Just good home cooking, and plenty of it. I think the dishes ran around $3000-$3500 Colones. I’m sure the morning of surfing helped, but I had no trouble cleaning my plate and couldn’t have been happier. We pay our bill and head back to the resort. With a morning of surfing and a plate of chicken and rice under my belt a nap is in order. We also know we’re going to Tasty Waves later tonight, so the nap is a dual purpose one today.

We took a good long nap and finally rolled out of the sack at around 7 p.m. Tasty Waves is one of those joints that doesn’t get rolling until around 9 p.m. so we’re not in any hurry. Tonight we’re riding the bikes…... uh-oooooohhhh. It’s only about 500 yds, so I think we can make the trip without any trouble.

We get to Tasty Waves about 8 p.m., and were only two of about six or seven people there, but we’ve come to expect small crowds do to the” low season effect". Jackson asks us if we’d like something to drink and Liza inquires about the dollar shot menu he mentioned on our visit the day before. There’s a Red shot, a Blue shot and a Purple shot. Liza seems most interested in the Purple shot and asks Jackson what’s in it? He says “it’s a combination of a red shot and a blue shot”, well that makes perfect sense. She goes for a Purple shot and I just go with a beer. When he comes back with our drinks we also order a couple of tacos. The tacos come out pretty quickly, they’re huge, and they look delicious. You almost need to eat them with a fork, but we go for it and just do our best to manhandle them.

Soon after finishing our tacos a younger guy we’d seen earlier at Tex Mex comes in and sits down next to us at the bar. It overlooks the outside portion of the place. He recognizes us from earlier and introduces himself. He orders a beer and then pulls out his stash. I mentioned earlier that there’s a lot of pot smoking taking place around town and this place is no exception. He hand tears/grinds up some pot and rolls up a joint. He lights it up and just proceeds to enjoy a little smoke with his beer and nobody so much as blinks an eye. I’m still trying to figure out why this isn’t accepted behavior around the world. He calls it “Blue Dream” and says it’s from California. I just don’t know if he means it came down from California as finished product, or if the seeds came from California and was then grown locally. If I had to guess I would say it came down as finished product. From the looks of it I’d say it was grown outdoors, which is why I wasn’t sure if it was grown locally or not.

We just enjoy the tunes and the people watching from our seats above the outer portion of the bar. The music is good and the beer is cold. As it gets later people start to trickle in and before too long there’s actually a pretty decent crowd forming. We’re watching a game of pool played by possibly the two worst pool players I’ve ever seen in my life. Liza even notices and asks me “are they still playing the same game?” I say “yeah, they’re not very good” and I think one of them overhears me because he quickly looks in my direction. I’m not too worried though, I have the high ground and if one of them makes a move for the stairs I’ll be there to meet him with an empty beer bottle.

At 9:30 it’s free drinks for the ladies for an hour. And what I love about this is, they don’t make the girls come ask for drinks, they go right out and start taking drink orders. I’m sure it’s just rot gut, but you gotta love the fact that they can’t get them out fast enough. At this point the number of people (dudes) working at the bar seems to go from two or three to about six. Everyone is taking drinks to the ladies. And while they know Liza is with me and not really their target audience, they ask her if she would like a free drink nonetheless, she gladly accepts. Most of the rest of the night is just pretty chill, and then the rain starts and everyone down below crowds under the covered area above the pool table. A couple of people even come riding in on their bikes and they’re soaking wet, but alas they’re smiling. Rain or shine everyone seems to be in a pretty good mood most of the time. The rain is short lived, so we won’t have to ride home in the rain.

It’s about 11:30 and we decide to hit the road. Like I said, our ride is only about 500 yards, so we’re not anticipating any trouble. We’re cruising along and have our headlights on so we can see where we're going. As we’re riding along we hear a large dog bark, but he’s on the other side of the fence. Liza responds with the customary return bark “whoo… whoo… whoo”, no big whoop. Just then, out the dark like your worst F’ing nightmare, this snarling, snorting man eater comes charging out from an apparent hole in the fence! Thank god we were riding at a pretty good clip, because I had to make snap turn and lift my leg up just to keep this Chupacabra from tearing it off. Even to this day I couldn’t tell you what the dog looked like. But I know this my friends, he was big, pissed off and nothing would have made him happier than to spill some gringo blood that night. Keep in mind that we had ridden past this place at least a dozen times already during the day, and hadn’t heard or seen any dogs along this stretch of road the entire time. I could only imagine the owner sitting on his porch, laughing as his dog had just scared the livin’ shit out of a couple of tourists.

Thanks goodness we had some Tequila back at the room, because it took me a couple snoots to get the ol’ ticker back to a regular pace. We enjoyed a good laugh about it, and called it a night with a little t.v.

Wednesday –

This morning we’re awakened by, what at first, I thought “Holy Shit! That was a tree coming down,” I say to Liza. This thing shook the entire bungalow, so either it was a “so so” big tree and really close, or it was a huge tree and was some distance away. As there are many big, old trees in the area, I’m inclined to think it was one of the larger trees. And I have the feeling that had that tree fallen in our direction, things might have been more drastic. For a short time we talk about how crazy that was and quickly return to sleep. Wednesday was sort of the “lost day” for us on this vacation. We started off the day by packing up our laundry and dropping it off at the local lavenderia. This place was down an old mud road along which there are a couple of small buildings. We passed some chickens, a dog and finally came upon what appears to be a one room house with a small front porch. A nice lady meets us outside and tells us to come back in 2 hours.

Okay! Now we're off to breakfast at Bread and Chocolate which was delicious, as expected. After breakfast we just kicked around town until it was time to pick up the laundry, then we went back to the resort where we just hung out for a while.

Today we decided to go to Manzanillo (a small town just south of us) as we had heard some good things about the beaches in this area. We asked the front desk to call us a taxi and when our taxi shows up we just looked at each other...it was “Solo Bueno” mister fancy cab. This will be the longest cab ride of our vacation and we're riding in the most expensive cab in town. Even at that it was only like $7000 Colones each way. I’d say it’s probably a twenty minute drive by taxi, and as we roll into town we're not seeing much of a town. The beaches look nice, but that’s about it.

There are some small buildings, various small Soda’s, a couple of small stores, houses and one giant building right at the end of the road as you pull into town. It’s almost as if this was the only building in town at one point and the road just ended at its front door. That isn’t the case now as the road Y’s and goes either left along the beach, or right and continues south. The road to the left is pretty primitive and just a beach road, and the road to the right is at least paved, but it’s pretty rough. I have no idea where it leads to or how much farther it goes and since we’re on foot now, we’re not going to find out.

I should have pointed out that we made arrangements with the cab driver to return to pick us up a 4 p.m. and were really glad that we had as there was no taxi in Manzanillo to call. Not even one! We first walk up the beach and the sun is out so it’s a great day for a little exploring. Like a majority of the coast line the trees grow right up to the waters edge, so where there are patches of open beach they’re not very wide. But it’s a nice walk nonetheless. About a half mile down the beach you run into a small river mouth which is accompanied by a few small fishing boats. There are a few people there with their surfboards, but the only surf seems to be out off a nearby point, and the access looks difficult to say the least.

We make the turn and return to town. We walk down the forked road to the right of the large restaurant/bar that dominates the landscape. It’s mostly residential area, so we follow a road around back out towards the main highway and complete about another half mile loop.

I read about a place to eat here called Crazy Manza Pizza, but there’s no sign of it being open, which was somewhat disappointing since it appeared our options were gonna be limited.

We end up at the giant restaurant and decide to get a couple of drinks. This place would probably hold a few hundred people, but there’s maybe a dozen people in the joint. All the tables and chairs are big and heavy, with a thick layer of black looking lacquer. They look like they would last forever, based upon just the thickness of the wood itself. We sit down (upstairs) where most of the other patrons are, and sit at a table that overlooks the main street as you pull into town.

We laugh about the small dog that’s using the middle of the street as his personal bed. He was there when we pulled into town and I don’t think he’s moved in the hour or so while we walked around town. In fact, there are about six or seven dogs roaming the general vicinity. Sitting there watching the dogs I notice a very different “social order” so to speak compared to watching dogs playing together on the beach or at the park here in the states. It was interesting to watch bullies, gang up and pick on some dogs, while ignoring others. One dog was even trying to get the old speed bump dog lying in the road to play with him, but he wasn’t having it. At some point the dog wanting to play just gives up and lays down next to “Speed Bump” paw to paw and nose to nose. It was almost as if that dog was thinking "Well, If I join him in being lazy for a while maybe he’ll get up and play with me later”. I can’t say that I ever saw them playing together, but I did see them get up and walk around for a while. “Speed Bump” barked for a couple of minutes and then flopped back down in the middle of the road. By now the other dog has lost interest and goes on his merry way.

A younger couple sits down next to us, and a short time later I notice they appear to be reading a book about Costa Rica. They looked like they’re dressed for adventure, at least more so than we were. We strike up a conversation and learn that they are on a bit of a free-for-all type vacation. They’ve been all over the country, and were actually trying to figure out where they wanted to stay that night. That’s always sounded kind of fun to me, but I don’t know if I could pull it off, I might be a bit to OCD for that.

We take our time as we’ve already seen most of the town, and we’ve still got 45 minutes to an hour to go. As I look around I’m still a bit perplexed as to why someone would have built such an enormous building, here, in Manzanillo. Now that I think about it, I wish I would have asked someone that worked there.

At about 3:45 we’re ready to go and head back down to the street. We walk down the beach, but to the north this time, just to check it out. A mother is there with her two children, one’s just a toddler, he’s as naked as a jay bird and has a mouth full of sand. The sun is hanging low in the sky and is shining right in our face as we walk down the beach. With the sun in our face, the beach, the sound of the ocean, the sounds of the kids playing in the background, and the absolute absence of any noise that reminds me of modern day, I hit that sweet spot, if only or just a few minutes.

"Solo Bueno" is about 10 minutes late, and not that I was worried, but there’s almost no traffic in this town, and we don’t have a working cell phone to call anyone. So late or not I’m happy to see him when he arrives. We jump into the back seat of Puerto Viejo’s version of a Town Car and head home. I can’t say that going to Manzanillo was a total loss, but I wish we’d gotten an earlier start and just rode our bikes. As it turns out, we just kind of missed everything between Punta Uva and Manzanillo as we whizzed by in a taxi. No matter though, this evening’s agenda was to include dinner somewhere and dancing at Mango’s. That’ll make up for an otherwise slow day, enjoyable, but slow.

We didn’t put much effort into deciding where to eat at tonight, so we again had dinner at Soda Flip Flop, but it wasn’t as crazy busy this evening, a nice bonus. Liza and I both went for pasta tonight and neither dish was remarkable, but it was pretty good and you can’t beat the cost. Flip Flop is definitely one of the more budget friendly restaurants in Puerto Viejo, plus, remember, the wine is cheap. About half way through our dinner Steph and Pana walk by so they stopped in for a bit and we made plans for later on. We were going dancing tonight at Mango (I promised Liza some dancing on this trip and tonight the music is live at Mango). We invited Steph and Pana to join us, they were down with that, so we told them we’d finish up dinner and meet them at Tex Mex in a bit.

As we’re departing Flip Flop Liza says she’s not feeling well, but it can’t be the food, we only just ate. I just chocked it up to long day of sightseeing and some mild dehydration. We did meet up at Tex Mex to tell our friends dancing was off the table this evening, but before we left we made plans for Thursday morning. Pana was going to show us where Punta Uva beach is, so we all agreed to meet at the tree next to the surf shop at 9:30. Calling it an early night wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We just headed back to Cariblue and spent the rest of the evening doing some reading. All in all it was a pretty laid back day.

Thursday –

I think you’ve all heard enough about breakfast at this point, so I’m just gonna jump ahead today.

We show up at the designated tree and we’re there first so we take some time checking out the surfers surfing on Salsa Brava. It’s a bit off in the distance, but not so far you can’t tell what they’re doing. We also take note of the large stream of leaf cutter ants passing nearby. These ants are abundant down here, but they aren’t really a problem unless you’re not paying attention to where you’re standing. It won’t take long before you find out, though, they’ll just bite you a few times and let you know it’s time to move on.

It’s not too long before Pana and then Steph show up and we’re on the road. We're all riding our bikes and basically retracing the same route Liza and I had ridden a few days before. Today, however, we're not riding in the rain and we're riding Caribbean style (about 2mph).

We’re taking in all the sights and Pana is trying to spot sloths for us, but it’s early, a little cool still and it rained hard again last night. I can’t recall seeing sloths on the way out, but no matter, we’re having a great time just riding slow and easy. Pana, as usual, is a riot and he’s keeping us all entertained.

There’s an endless amount of flora and fauna to enjoy even if the wildlife itself is a little sparse at the moment.

I’d say it was a good forty five minutes before we arrive at the road to Punt Uva, It’s not a small sign, but it’s not in giant bold green and white like here in the states.

Come to think of it, it’s just the right size, big enough to read, but not obnoxiously obvious. As we turn down the road to the beach we pass what appears to be a small resort.

It’s only 100-200 yards from the road to the beach, and this little resort definitely sits within the maritime zone, but I don’t know if it’s one of the many structures under threat of demolition or not. It seems like it would be a shame to demolish this place. It looks more like a large house than a resort, it’s well cared for and fits in well with the surrounding area.

We arrive at the beach and there are only a handful of other people in sight. The beach is quite beautiful from our vantage point. It’s a half moon shape with a large hill to the south and a longer point reaching out to the ocean to the north.

Pana offers to show us how to open a coconut without the use of a machete. He runs off into jungle and returns a few minutes later with a fine looking specimen. I can’t wait to see this, and begin imagining how he’ll open this coconut. Will he use a rock? A large stick? A rock and stick combo? Sadly, okay not sadly, no. He walks over to a a tree stump and just starts whacking this thing against the corner of the stump, first on one end for several strikes, then on the other. This was even more rudimentary than I had anticipated, but it seemed to be working. Now don’t get me wrong, he was whacking away at that thing for a good five minutes. This basically breaks apart the fiber to a point where you can get a hold of it and tear it away from the “nut” itself. Judging by the amount of force he was striking the tree stump with, I don’t think hitting it with a rock or large stick, as I had imagined, would have been nearly as effective. Short of beating it against a large sharp rock I’m not sure there was a better method available when you have no tools.

Now that he’s got the nut free from the husk, he grabs a rock the size of a hockey puck and proceeds to crack open one end of the shell. Success! He’s officially opened this coconut without using a machete, and we all enjoy the fruit of his labor and drink some of the water inside and it was delicious. After we’ve finished the coconut water, he finishes breaking it up into smaller pieces so we can all eat the meat on the inside. It was a good, ripe, sweet coconut and made for a tasty and well appreciated snack.

He then takes off back into the trees and comes out with a long branch. He then starts poking it at a tree that looks like it has small green coconuts in it, but he calls them Pipas. However, I still think these are just smaller unripe coconuts, but I could be wrong. I’ll definitely look this up upon my return home.

He knocks down two or three of these and one of them breaks apart upon landing, and as a result all the water inside comes pouring out. It’s quite surprising just how much water was in there. He busts open the other two and we all drink up the water, it was good, but not as good as the water from the ripe coconut.

After we get our fill of coconut and coconut water we lock up the bikes and head down the beach to the south. A few hundred yards down there’s a small river/creek that empties into the ocean, but Pana informs us our destination is on the other side. It’s not a big deal as it’s pretty shallow and the current is minimal.

As we cross the river to other side I’m not exactly sure where we’re going from here since it appears the only way to go is either along the river or up the hillside. Pana informs us we’re heading up and over this hill. This should be interesting, particularly since the rain the night before and many more days before that has left the ground quite wet, and in this area, muddy. But have no fear I’m sporting my new Keens and we’re about to see if they’re up for the task. I can say they performed admirably, but I don’t know that they’d be any better than any other shoe. Pana has been barefoot all day, and by this time Stephanie has removed her shoes. I’d say they were probably getting along as good, or better, than we were in the muddy conditions.

The climb from the beach is quite steep, but not difficult except for the mud, which isn’t deep, but just slick. It’s very clay like and is an interesting contrast to the surrounding greenery.

On the way I stop t photograph some of the surroundings, including some mushrooms and other fungi.

At one point we come upon a large tree with a trunk that extended outward to for a small pool. I think we pretty much had to walk through it to continue on the path we were on. We were hiking for about 10-15 minutes when we came upon a clearing that gave us a nice little view of the ocean and part of the beach to the south.

I didn’t know it at the time, but we would be heading down the other side of this hill to that very beach. Another 10-15 minutes and we are back down on level ground.

As we continued down the beach I soon realized that this was the beach Liza and I had been to a few days back when we were riding our bikes in the rain, looking for Punta Uva Beach. I’m not sure if this was also considered Punta Uva Beach or a different one, but we were so close that day and didn’t even know it. We walked around a bit and the Pana directed us down the drive, back towards the main road. We soon come upon a drive that veers off to the right and just on the other side of the fence is a pickup and travel trailer I’d noticed the other day when Liza and I were there. The license plate indicate that the owner had pulled this trailer all the way from Quebec, Canada. Holy Smokes! How long of a drive is that? We pass a couple of more private residences along the way and eventually end up back at the beach we started at.

The weather is pretty decent by comparison, so we all take the opportunity to go for a swim. The surf is of pretty decent size, so I decide to try and body surf the next large wave to come along. A couple of quick hard paddles and to my surprise I actually ride this wave a good 20-30 yards, Sweet! Once the rest of the group sees this everyone decides to give it a go. Before I know it we’re all bodysurfing. Now that’s a good time. I only wish I would have had the foresight to bring my snorkel fins for a little extra propulsion. We spend a good 45 minutes bodysurfing before we call it a wrap.

We saddle up the bikes and head for town. Our ride back is done at a pace equal to the ride out, so we’re averaging about 2 mph. But by now the temperature is up, and Pana is able to spot some sloths way up in the trees.

I couldn’t say I could actually tell they were sloths, but I can’t imagine what else they would have been. He even spots a large iguana/lizard that we otherwise would have missed. Again, it was so far away I couldn’t actually tell it was a lizard, but the silhouette seemed to indicate that it was.

I’m riding along, looking at the surrounding landscape and trying to take some pictures, and like a dumbass I drive off the road into the ditch. Luckily I catch myself before I went ass over tea kettle, but I had removed my Keens, so I’m barefoot and using my feet to catch myself which was unpleasant to say the least. Oh well, no harm done and I’m back on the road, but not before everyone has a good chuckle. Several minutes later Stephanie gets excited and says “ Ooh, there’s a sloth!” pointing upwards next to a telephone pole. Now it was quite apparent to me at the time, and Pana quickly pointed out that this particular sloth was dead and had been electrocuted by the power line it was still clinging on to. The girls were of course horrified and saddened by that discovery.

For lunch we went to Soda Taito again. When we find a place we like we’re always looking for an excuse to go more than once, and since Stephanie hadn’t yet been there, that was all the excuse we needed. This time I opted for the pork chop, and while it was delicious, I enjoyed the chicken a little bit more. We all opted for the mango milk this time and that really hit the spot. Several times while traveling to Mexico I had seen people drink any number of fruit milk drinks but never tried one, now I wished I had. The mango milk was awesome. After lunch we made plans to meet up later that night at Tex Mex and then head to Mango’s for another attempt at some dancing.

We parted ways, but before leaving town we hit the ATM. As I said earlier, this was the first time we went the ATM route. Cash in hand we decided to stop by Bread and Chocolate for some of their house made chocolates. A day or two before we’d went by a coffee/chocolate shop out near Tasty Waves, and while the chocolate was handmade, hand milled, organic and all that crap, none of the flavors really jumped out at us. Because of the hand milling, the chocolate was rather course, which I admit was something I was ignorant about. I won’t say that I was surprised, but when you’ve eaten nothing but store bought chocolate your entire life I guess you sort of expect it to be all super smooth and such. That was a bit of a disappointment as we had hoped to take home two things with us, chocolate and coffee. Chocolate was now off that list and coffee wasn’t looking very promising either. There probably was somewhere in the area where we could have purchased some good local beans, but we didn’t really dedicate any time looking for it, although I now kind of wished we had.

Chocolates in hand we made a quick stop at the store from some water, soda, snacks and the like. I love looking at some of the different beverages you can get in other countries. One that stands out was something called Ron or something like that. It was Ron Bacardi and Coke in a can. But since I hadn’t really planned on writing a blog I didn’t purchase one to sample it or even get a picture of it. Sigh! Next time we go, or on our upcoming trip to Honduras I’m going to try every crazy drink they have in the cooler.

From the store we headed back to our room for the rest of the afternoon and just spent some time reading on the porch, drinking tequila and watching some T.V. The sun had set and the jungle was starting to come alive. We just sort of hung out on the porch for a while, taking in all the sound. From the howler monkeys at dusk to the crickets/beetles at night, it was quite remarkable how much louder the jungle was at night than it was during the day.

We finally started getting ready for the evening at about 8 p.m. We’re planning on meeting the crew (Steph and Pana) down at Tex Mex. (aka The Most Dangerous Bar in Town).

We rolled into Tex Mex about 9 p.m. met up with Steph and Pana and grabbed a table next to the bar. We threw back some cervezas, took in a bit of the local vibe and just chilled out to some good tunes. About twenty minutes after we sat down a local guy who we’d never met walked up to the table and started talking to Pana. I immediately sensed by the look on Pana’s face that this guy was no friend of his, which was weird because everyone else seemed to be Pana’s friend. They exchanged a few words and the guy just sat down at the table. Pana was telling him not to start anything, and while he didn’t “start anything” he also didn’t leave.

The vibe had taken a downturn at this point as we sat there pretty much silent, for a few minutes feeling a little awkward. Then Liza suggested we all move to a different table. Genius! Everyone seemed to think that was a good idea, so we just got up and moved to a different table. Fortunately “captain buzzkill” didn’t join us and we quickly got back into our relaxed state of mind.

A few drinks later we started talking about what we we're going to do tomorrow, when Pana said he would take us on a hike into the jungle to a house that looks out over Puerto Viejo and surrounding area. (Pana is a guide during busy season). How can you pass up an offer like that? We all thought that sounded like a great plan, but insisted on paying Pana for his tour services. He would only take $20 from each of us. A bit later we started talking about going dancing later on since Wednesday night hadn’t panned out, but that idea was quickly snuffed out by Pana. He told us that we needed to go home and get to bed early because we would need all our energy tomorrow. Not wanting to question Tour Guide Pana, we all agreed that was probably a good idea and packed it in at about 10:00 – 10:30. Of course, there was a little more tequila to be had back at the room. There’s always a little more tequila to be had back at the room.

Friday –

Today is day two of “Adventures with Pana” and we’re headed for the jungle. Harkening back to something I was taught by my Dad’s generation as he was taught by his father’s generation and so on, I decide I’m going to “carbo load” this morning during breakfast because I assume we’re in for a workout. As it turns out, that probably wasn’t the best idea. After breakfast we hop on the bikes and head to town to meet up with Steph and Pana at the tree by Tex Mex. We all show up within a few minutes of each other and waste no time in getting this adventure started. Today, Pana has his machete with him, so naturally I’m thinking we’re in for some dense jungle.

I’ve got on enough bug spray to kill every insect within about a ten foot radius, and probably enough to cause some acute neurotoxicity. But is that really any more damaging than all the alcohol we’ve consumed up until this point? “Note to self – invent a non-fattening, non-artery clogging ice cream that also makes an effective bug repellent”

We head down the back road just a block or two from Soda Taito and towards the jungle. As we approach the jungle the road turns from pavement to a gravel/dirt road and passes by a few private residences that you can’t otherwise see from the paved road. A short ways up we come to a metal gate, but that doesn’t stop Pana he just opens it up and we pass on through. Almost immediately we start gaining elevation, and from what I can see it doesn’t look like it’s going to flatten out anytime soon. Rats!

Walking up the road we see several small, rickety looking gazebos and a mountain bike that I assume belongs to somebody, but there’s no one around. Just then someone calls out from the jungle and Pana hollers back. They have a short conversation in Spanish and we move on. Pana goes on to tell us that the guy he was talking to just spends his day clearing brush from the jungle, which would explain why the entire area around all the small gazebo’s was relatively brush free. It turns out that the gazebos are there for him to escape the rain, which, as you know by now, happens frequently. I ask Pana about the guy clearing the brush and apparently that’s his full time job. Who he’s clearing it for, why he’s doing it, and how much he makes for doing it remains unclear. Hell, Pana might have told me, but I’m already hot and sucking wind.

We continue up this road like we’re scaling Everest, at what felt like a half of a half of a mile per hour. I swear the road gets steeper with every step and it’s getting humid. Did I mention I hate the combination of hot and humid? Well, let me tell you now, I HATE IT! No matter, because there’s no escaping it and I’m determined to make it to the top of this hill if it kills me.

A short while later we come upon a bush or a tree. I’m not really sure how to classify it, but it garners some attention from Pana. He starts picking up these little, yellow-ish, orange-ish, pink-ish Koosh Ball looking……things, but I don’t know why.

Stephanie inquires as to what these are and Pana tells us they’re a local fruit which I think he called “mamacheena” (aka Rambutin) Cool! He grabs one and just tears it open to reveal a white, somewhat opaque looking center not unlike a large grape and pops it in his mouth. He picks up a few more and passes them around. We all begin to tear into them and I pop one into my mouth. I’m not sure how to describe the taste. It was sweet, like a grape, but the “meat” was more dense and it had one large seed in it like a large almond, pretty tasty if I do say so myself. We spend a few minutes eating some of the new found spoils and enjoy a bit of a breather from the hike, but we’re soon on our way.

At one point we actually come across a section of pavement just randomly laid down along the way, so while it was nice to get off the gravel for a bit, it was heavily covered in moss and various lichens making it extremely slick which actually slows our pace as we really have to watch our step.

I’m guessing we were hiking for close to hour before we start to see some open space, and even more importantly, FLAT GROUND. Whoo Hoo! As we reach the top of the hill we spot the house.

It’s just a little white house that has a balcony facing the ocean, and while it’s all boarded up, it appears to be for safe keeping, not as if it was abandoned. And unlike you would find anywhere in the states, it hasn’t been vandalized. That alone was nice to see. I’ll never understand why damaging someone else’s property brings enjoyment to those that do so. It’s that sort of chicken shit, cowardly act that makes me wish public caning was the standard issue punishment for getting caught.

Now that will make my next statement sound hypocritical, because we all climb the railing out onto the porch, but for no other reason than to take in the spectacular view. You can see the entire coast line all the way from Limon to Manzanillo.

I’m not only amazed at the view, but at the thought of the effort and commitment someone has made to haul all the materials up this hill just to build this place. The road is so steep it would have had to have been brought up by hand or via only the most capable four wheel drive vehicle, it was really, really steep.

We spend a few minutes enjoying the view, but there’s more to see so we climb down off of the porch and head over to a covered structure that looks like a carport, but it has a rudimentary built in BBQ, so in reality, it’s probably more for entertaining than for parking cars.

The thing is covered with spider webs and more of those giant spiders that decorate the entry way to our resort. And these aren’t the kind of webs you wipe out of the corners of your living room ceiling with a broom, I’m pretty sure these things could stop and hold a small bird. Just then Pana walks right into one of them and as he walks away it held tight. It stretches and stretches but it doesn’t break. I’d say he walked a good ten feet before the building tension finally alerted him that something was attached to him. And being the calm, cool guy he is he just wipes them off without blinking an eye. Bugs don’t typically bother me, and spider webs don’t scare me or gross me out, but I hate the sensation of having them stuck to me. Had that been me that walked into that spider web I would have freaked like I was standing in the middle of a swarm of bees. Eck!

Pana walks off by himself looking for a stick to knock down some more Pipas. A moment later he comes back with a stick that’s got to be twenty feet long. I’m actually quite surprised that he was able to find this stick and that it was nearly perfectly straight. I can tell by the look on his face that even he’s excited about his find. He makes a beeline right for a tree full of Pipas and quickly knocks down about a half a dozen of them. We gather them up and head back over to the driveway area. This time Pana has his machete and makes quick work of the first Pipa and cuts off pieces a little at a time until he produces a small hole about an inch in diameter.

He does this to four of them and passes them around as he produces a hole in each one of them.

We all enjoy another welcomed and refreshing drink from the Pipas. As we finish drinking all the water out of them Pana motions for us to hand them back to him where he then splits them in half and them makes a small nick in the outer shell about the size of an average potato chip. This was meant to be used as a spoon to scoop and eat the soft fleshy interior of the Pipa. I dig into mine and it’s a bit sweet and not like anything I’ve ever eaten. The texture is bizarre, I’d say somewhat gelatinous, a little slimy, but firmer than jello, with nearly the density of a strawberry. I can’t say that it was my favorite thing, but the experience of having someone knock something like that out of a tree, and that it provided both liquid refreshment and a little something edible was pretty cool.

Pana points out a lemon tree and then Liza spots another fruit bearing tree and asks him if that fruit is something we can eat. He says “no, that’s a poison fruit” or something to the effect. Liza laughs and comments “of course, I would pick out the poison fruit". We finish up our Pipas and decide a little more exploring is in order. I’m all for it as we seem to be pretty much at the top of all the nearby surroundings. A short walk to the south reveals an expansive view of more rolling hills and valleys below, all very green a lush.

Pana explains that this jungle extends into Panama. We spend a little more time sightseeing before we began our trek back down the hill but before we leave Pana spots a mango tree with several ripe mangos. He quickly grabs his trusty stick and begins to knock several from the tree. He explains that he will take these home for his sister and nephew so Steph fills her little bag with fresh mangos and off we go.

The walk back down required less effort but it was still fairly treacherous because it was so steep and the uneven ground, perfect ankle rolling material. Then there was the short strip of pavement with all the moss and lichens on it. And because of its proximity to a steep hill both up and down on either side, there really wasn’t any way to walk around it. We all proceeded with caution and made it without any trouble. The rest of the decent was slow and steady and really worked my knees over, but we all made it down safe and sound.

I noticed that one of the houses near the bottom of the hill had a plastic waterline feeding it and it was pretty much just lying on the ground. I’d say this line was a few thousand feet long, and again, I’m surprised that something as critical as fresh water service is out in the open and accessible to any passerby. Anyone could have taken a machete and hacked that line in a second, but again I guess that’s just part of the culture down here.

Since our bikes were at Tex Mex we headed back over there. When we arrived we decided to skip the usual beer and went for a watermelon milk. Unfortunately, however, it tasted more like a watermelon water with a splash of milk. It was bland and not very sweet, a disappointment to say the least. Despite the below average taste, we finish our drinks because we’re all pretty thirsty. We hang out for a bit and make some plans for later on. Since dancing on Wednesday didn’t work out, and since Pana shut us down early on Thursday night, we decided we’d have another go at the dancing this evening. We hang out little longer before all going our separate ways.

Liza and I decided to do some shopping and check out most of the little shops around town. Since we’re traveling with backpacks, we’re going to keep souvenirs to a minimum. Liza picks up a few t-shirts and some stickers, and we have plans to pick up coffee later. There are some pretty cool shops and some not so cool shops, but in general the town looks like it’s on the upswing as far as that goes. There’s a smattering of new construction and remodeling going on, but nothing major. After shopping we rode our bikes around town for a bit just to check it out a little more. There are some interesting things to see...

We hit the ATM, grab a few snacks and then head back to the room to shower and take a nap. After getting some much appreciated shut-eye we discuss where we’re going to have dinner this evening. Although there are many other choices, we decide on another trip to The Point. I just had to have some more of those monstrous chicken wings. You’ll never see wings like this in the U.S. but then again you wouldn’t expect to. I think I may have mentioned it before, but they literally cut a chunk of the breast off when they prepare the wings, which makes me think that these are probably prepared in house. The wings were not as good this time, and tasted a little dry, but they were smothered in enough buffalo sauce to make up for some of the dryness. Plus the tasty microbrew was something I really enjoyed but I think The Point was the only place that had it on tap. Liza again opted for the burger, which was as impressive looking as the last one she had ordered. We paid for dinner and headed back to the room and enjoyed some quiet time reading. Liza was also quite excited as she was able to finalize the details for our horse back ride on Saturday which was one of the things on her list to do this trip.

Since we were supposed to meet Steph and Pana a littler later than usual, we decided to go grab a drink at Lazy Mon. The weather was spectacular and we just enjoyed a little live music and the fresh ocean breeze. We decided to kill some time and played a little ping pong, but the gear was a little ratty to say the least. Neither paddle had any rubber on it and the ball, while similar to your standard ball, there was something different about the material it was made from, it felt a bit sturdier than your average ping pong ball.

We smacked the ball around for a bit, before a couple of young local guys showed up. We just stepped aside because watching them play was going to be more entertaining than watching us play. They started going at it right away, and they were, in fact, more entertaining to watch play than it was to play ourselves. We watched them play a few games before they asked if I wanted to play. I initially passed on the opportunity and let them play another game, but my competitive side won out and I took the winner up on his previous offer. Now I knew I wasn’t going to have much of a chance to beat this guy, but I used to be a really good ping pong player (about 20 years ago), so I thought to myself “maybe there’s a chance”. Since I really didn’t think I had much of a chance I played a little weak at first, hoping to make him think I totally sucked. I was then going to crank it up a notch, which I did, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the four or five point lead had had taken by then. I’m pretty sure I lost by a good five or six points. I played well enough to not look foolish in front of my lady, but that’s about it. Oh well, it was still fun.

Now it's time to pay the bill and had over to Tex Mex. When we arrive Pana and Steph are already there enjoying a beer. The music rocking and the volume was set to eleven as usual so it was difficult to talk. Frustrated with the loud music we decided to move to another table, but in a bar with no walls and music blaring in all directions the change in tables was only moderately better than the previous table. It was at this point that I started to feel a little green. I tried to ignore it, but I knew I was going to need a restroom, a real restroom, and quick. One thing you won’t find many of in PV are public restrooms. I knew of one, but when I got over there it was locked and, I assume, closed for the evening. I tried to remain calm and walked back over to Tex Mex and informed Liza that I was going to need to catch a cab back to our room because I wasn’t feeling well. I told her that if she wanted to go dancing I was okay with her going with Pana and Steph as I knew she was in good hands, and that I’d join her later if I started to feel better. As I was starting to tell everyone my plan, my upset stomach started to subside. I just took it easy for a bit and started feeling better. Dancing better? I don’t know about that, but I wasn’t feeling ill any longer.

Since Mango is supposed to be “the” place to dance we head over to check out the scene. Unfortunately when we got there, the scene hadn’t really changed from any of our previous visits, and there weren’t more than a couple of people there. Feeling somewhat disappointed….Liza more so than myself, we decide to go back over to Tex Mex. The girls really want to dance, and I gotta hand it to Pana, he took charge and got them up on their feet. I just sat there, wishing I could join them, but given the fact that any dancing might have sent me running for the restroom, I decided to play it safe and just sip my beer from the bar stool. I swear they were dancing for what seemed like hours, just the three of them. They were having a good time, which I was glad to see since Liza really had her heart set on some dancing. I’d say we were there until at least midnight, which was a welcomed change from our visits to our secret little getaway in Mexico where most everything is closed by 10 p.m. We did, however, have to call it a night at some point because we were scheduled to go horseback riding Saturday morning. We didn’t want to say goodbye because we knew our time was growing short and we were having such a great time with Steph and Pana. We made plans to meet at the designated tree by Tex Mex after our ride in the morning so that we could spend our last evening in Puerto Viejo together.

Goodbyes said, cab hailed, and back to Cariblue for a few zzzz’s .

Saturday –

Today is our scheduled horse ride with Bruce Walker at Playa Chiquita Riding Adventures and the weather this morning is spectacular, if not a little on the warm side. Bruce’s place is just south of town a few miles so of course we rode our bikes. While the weather was probably the nicest so far this trip, it was pretty hot and humid. Normally that would have been just fine, but since we didn’t know where this riding adventure was going to take place, we were both wearing jeans, not that you would want to wear shorts while horseback riding anyway.

We roll up to Bruce’s place just before 10 am and he was already in the stable getting things ready.

Bruce came right out and greeted us and was full of energy. He kinda reminded me of Sam Elliott if someone had hit him with a shrink ray (sorry Bruce, I hope that wasn’t offensive). I mean Sam Elliott ain’t half bad lookin’. The stable is small, but just what you’d expect for the area and the horses were well kept. We had heard from another ex-pat couple that Bruce had some real trouble when he first started, which he later confirmed. He said when he moved down there he bought some horses and wanted to do something he loved. Give riding tours, but then it rained for six months straight. He had only $50 left in his pocket when the sun finally made its return. But despite many challenges he persevered. Hearing him tell his story I don’t know that I would have had the fortitude to stick it out as long as he did. I won’t share a lot of Bruce’s story here, because you gotta go check it out yourself. I will, however, say that Bruce was an absolute pleasure to spend the day with, and I can’t recommend him highly enough. If you make it down to Puerto Viejo you simply must take a ride on the beach.

Bruce gets the horses saddled and assigns us each a horse. I don’t remember their names, but I’m sure he told us what they were at one point. He also had a couple of dogs, the names of which also escape me at the moment, but they were super friendly and as free spirited as their owner. I love to see dogs that get to roam free in their surroundings. They just seem to be a little happier than your average dog, of course a good owner is also key in making that possible.

We saddle up and as we’re waiting for Bruce he says something about my horse and how much he likes to eat. Bruce mounts up and as we turn for the road….before we even get out of the driveway….my horse decides to snack on a big palm like leaf. Okay, so maybe he’s hungry. We get out on the road with Bruce out front and Liza close behind and I’m bringing up a distant third while my horse finishes his leaf. We make it about 50 yards before my horse decides he needed another snack. He just leans into the brush and strips off another palm leaf while Bruce and Liza ride on. I’m thinking to myself “No worries, we’ll get this snack thing out of the way and then we’ll be good to go.” Little did I know that this four legged “brush hog” would treat the roadside vegetation as his own personal buffet for the next four hours.

When he wasn’t eating he wasn’t making much of an effort to keep up either. Great! So he’s slow because he’s stopping to eat a lot and he’s slow when just walking in general. And as I’m sure it’s my fault, I sense the horse has no respect for me and I’m just a ticket to his all you can eat vegetarian chow fest. It’s not that I feel uncomfortable on a horse because I’ve ridden them many times, just not in the last ten years or so, but I’m not discouraged, this isn’t the first horse that’s looked back over his shoulder at me like I was nothing more than a skin covered meat sack.

I spent most of the ride a good 25-50 yards back from Liza and Bruce, they didn’t seem too concerned though.

We ride down the road a piece with at least three or four dogs in tow. At one point some other dogs approach the dogs tailing us, and they seem to want to pick on at least one of them, or at least prevent one of the dogs from passing through. I mention this to Bruce and when he turns around he says” Oh, that’s not my dog, that’s the neighbor’s dog” and rides on. Okay then. We continue to ride and the dog or dogs that were following us, that didn’t belong to Bruce, pretty much peel off at that point, leaving just the three of us and his two dogs.

As we’re riding along we hear someone coming up from behind shouting something we don’t understand. We’ve seen this guy around town about every day since we arrived, he’s selling something, but since I don’t understand him I don’t know what it is. Bruce hear/sees him and as you would expect, he knows him. He tells us he’s a good friend and that he sells juice, tamarind juice if I remember correctly, the same juice we were given at the resort the day of our arrival. With the heat building the juice sounded like a GREAT idea. He pulls out three plastic bags partially filled with juice and knotted at the top. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to drink juice from a bag, although I had a plan, but before I get a chance to try it I see Bruce bite the corner of the bag and start drinking it down. Okay, that’s what I had in mind, but Bruce stole the spotlight so I just gnawed off a corner and had a couple of swigs. It was really sweet, maybe too sweet for some, not for me though, I was just happy it was cold. Man! Why didn’t I find out what this guy was selling before today? I could have been drinking this tasty little beverage all week. Damn!

We moseyed down the road a piece before we turned off the road. In fact, I think we turned down a road we had already ridden our bikes on so the area was familiar. We get to the beach and, man, it’s hot! So while I’m excited that it’s a clear blue sky, I’m not so thrilled to be on the back of a horse that’s generating his own heat, and also wearing jeans for the first time this entire trip. Okay, that’s the last time I’m going to bitch about the heat. We turn south down the beach and I’m glad I had on lots of sun screen, because we’re in the open and the sun is blazing, but there’s a decent little breeze though. The ride is nice, but we’ve been on this beach already, so I’m really looking forward to what’s ahead.

We ride for quite a while and come upon an area we hadn’t yet seen and it’s probably the nicest looking beach and the bluest water we’ve seen since we arrived. There’s lots of coral in the shallow, definitely a place to come snorkel. I ask Bruce about snorkeling here and he says “yeah, this is where we snorkel” Damn! We only have one day left and the weather up until this point wasn’t really snorkel worthy. Even when it wasn’t raining the runoff water was making the water too murky to see anything. But it hasn’t rained, or as least not very much the past couple of days, and the water in this area looks spectacular, probably helped by the lack of rivers feeding into the ocean in this particular area. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to check it out next time.

We ride on and off the beach, in an out of the trees until we come to a bit of a clearing amongst a patch of trees. Bruce tells us that we’ll take a break here so we all dismount and stretch our legs and rub our butt cheeks a little. Okay, maybe that was just me, rubbing my butt. We chat a bit while the horses wander off and do their own thing. Hmmm, I guess they’ll come back eventually.

Bruce grabs a machete and goes to town on a coconut. And while he doesn’t exert as much effort as Pana when he opened one up by hand, I don’t know that Bruce opened his up that much quicker. But why do I care? I’m not having to open the thing. Bruce graciously shared some coconut with us, and surprisingly, also with his dogs. One of them in particular couldn’t get enough of it. Huh, who knew dogs liked coconut? I’d say one of the dogs ate as much coconut as all three of us put together, darn near a whole coconuts worth.

As with every other part of the area we’ve been in the jungle floor is swarming with ants. There’s plenty of room to stand so as to avoid them, but you really need to be aware of where you are standing or you’ll be in the thick of them in no time, and you’ll know it as soon as they start biting you. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the number of ants is quite astounding.

We finish noshing on some coconut and chatting about life before Bruce shouts out calling in the horses. Time to saddle up and start the ride back. We head back down the beach the same way we came, and eventually come to a spot with a road that leads back to the main road. As we ride along we pass a few people walking the other way. Just as they approach us my horse rips of another big mouthful of leaves and starts chomping away, at which point one of the guys walking past says, with a big smile on his face, “ah, you got the fat one”. To which I respond by just shaking my head and shrugging my shoulders.

Further down the road a piece, I hear a bit of excitement, it turns out Liza has just about ridden face first into a low hanging sloth. He’s right out on the end of a branch, hanging over the gravel road and right about face level, if you’re on the back of a horse. Clearly this is the best view you could hope to have if you want to check out a sloth. So we check it out for a minute, but it’s a sloth and it’s kinda like watching grass grow, they just don’t do much. Now, if you let’s say, I don’t know…..taped a cheetah to its back, you might have something there worth watching.

We spent the rest of the ride on the road, which, consequently gave my horse plenty of time to eat. I’m sure Bruce had plenty of interesting things to say, but I’ll never know because fatty was spending the entire time stuffing his face with the jungle. I tell ya, this horse could out eat a whole herd of goats.

Not long before reaching Bruce’s place another horse came galloping toward us, and at a pretty good pace. Turns out it was Bruce’s assistant, a local kid that looks like he came right out of the jungle. He was sporting a shaved head with a Mohawk, shoeless and wearing clothes somewhat reminiscent of something you might expect to see on a Native American. Liza, being the equine expert she is, immediately took note that he was running that horse on pavement and the horse wasn’t wearing any shoes, which is apparently a no-no. Hmm, who knew? Bruce did too and thought there was some sort of emergency at the stable. As it turned out, his assistant just thought the other horse needed to go out for a ride today too since it was such a nice day.

Shortly thereafter we arrive back at the stable where we turn the horses back over to Bruce. We spend the next several minutes chatting with Bruce about some of the volunteer work he does for the local children and their families. I’m sorry Bruce, you’ll have to share the details with me because I don’t remember them at the time of this writing. But be sure to ask Bruce about them when you stop by his place for a ride which I think I may have mentioned already, is a MUST DO! I also should mention that this ride was not like an organized ride with a large group. Bruce is very laid back and it just felt like friends enjoying a nice horseback ride on a sunny afternoon! I should also mention that while we only paid for a 2 hour ride, we were out for 4! Thank you Bruce for your hospitality.

After we say our good byes with promises to keep in touch we hop on our bikes and head back to the resort for a shower and change into our shorts and then head to town for some lunch/dinner and since it has become our favorite, we head to Taito for one last meal with Mama. Liza and I both had the chicken today and wash it down with a mango milk! Mmmmm…. I’m going to miss this place.

After lunch we head to Tex Mex to meet Pana and Stephanie for one last happy hour. We get to the bar and Pana is there waiting for us but Steph has yet to arrive. We order a beer and wait for Stephanie. When she does, she is with Cleo! We’ve been hearing about Cleo all week and it was nice to finally meet her. She is a spirited woman with a great love of life. We all enjoyed a few cocktails and conversation. Unfortunately for us, our ride back to San Jose is arriving at 6 a.m. the following day and we have to get back to the resort to check out. We’re leaving so early even the lobby won’t be open! Reluctantly, we all say our good byes and Liza and I head to the bike shop to return our trusty rusty bikes and then back to the resort to pack.

The ride back to the airport the following day was fast and furious! The two young men that picked us up seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to get us back. There was a point I was sure we were doing 110 in a 40 but we made it safe and sound. It was an amazing adventure and we are really looking forward to our return visit.

Two Soggy Gringos

Monday, December 3, 2012

Two Soggy Gringos Go To Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

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