Thursday, February 14, 2008

Puerto Viejo

¡Feliz Dia de los Enamorados! I'm wearing pink today and thinking of all of you at home. Today in drawing class we drew flowers and leaves, and last night I went to see Veintisiete bodas, or 27 Dresses, with Kniccoa which was super cute and really got me in the Valentine's Day mood.

This past weekend I hadn't really made a plan by Thursday afternoon so Chelsi, Mike, and I decided to go to Puerto Viejo, a beach town on the southern Caribbean coast. We went to the bus station Friday after Spanish only to find the next bus was not for another 2 and a half hours. Whipped out the trusty map and dang if the children's museum wasn't RIGHT around the corner! Entonces we played around en el Museo de los Ninos por dos horas y era muy divertido. We especially had fun finding these little apron-things which we tried on to look like people from the different stages of Costa Rica's history. We got a little silly with the picture taking. The 'parts of the body' exhibit was also quite exciting, with a giant mouth we could walk through! Back at the bus station we found out the bus would be about an hour late... tico time. Finally we made it to Puerto Viejo and checked into Rockin' J's, the funkiest hostel I've seen yet. We rented tents for the night, which came complete with mattress, pillows, and sheets. The entire hostel is covered in mosaics and paintings - it really is amazing. Our other choices for sleeping were to rent hammocks or get a private room. For our second night the tents and hammocks were all full so the 3 of us snuggled up in a room for 2 which ended up being totally fine. Saturday we went to a cool little breakfast joint and I had essentially a giant crepe with bananas and chocolate sauce on top, and Mike had 2 plates of Gallo Pinto. Que rico. We rented some old falling-apart bikes and explored town a little in the morning and then biked to Punta Uva, a nearby beach, for the afternoon. Puerto Viejo is such a laid back place, and beautiful. The bike ride was bumpy but fantastic. We went to the grocery store to find dinner and brought back cereal, milk, bread, granola, yogurt, fruit, and juice to the hostel to eat, where we had a great time making friends with some Canadian girls and an American couple. The Caribbean side is known for its hippies, and because of the island influence most of the people speak both Spanish and English. We chatted with a very strange hippie family living at Rockin J's in tents - the parents were in their mid 20's and sell jewelry and hair wraps for a living, while their 5 year old Sam runs around with matching dreads and swears at the newborn Sid because he's crying. I can't imagine raising a family in this sort of environment. Too many tourists coming through looking for a party, it's no place for children. Nice to visit, but not to stay.

Sunday morning it was drizzling when we took the bus home after eating our delicious dinner leftovers (more cereal etc). Overall a very nice, relaxing weekend.

Pura vida,
Eleanora

1 comment:

colinsito said...

Puerto Viejo is not for everyone. That is what makes it special.