It's an easy 15 minute taxi ride to the bus terminal. We hop on the bus and it's hot, sticky, and devoid of leg room. I ask the woman next to me how long the ride is and she pulls out a map and estimates 4 hours. Yikes. As we wind through the logjammed streets of San José I wonder if I've made the wrong decision. This is miserable. As we exit the city we pick up some speed and the wind through the windows feels excellent. The temperature drops a bit as we make our way up through the mountains and the views are breathtaking. My mood improves accordingly.
We make our way over the mountains and the scenery flattens out and the mugginess returns. It's 4.5 hours to Cahuita, where the woman next to me disembarks and I am able to stretch my legs out a bit. 30 more minutes and we're in Puerto Viejo and I am ready to get off this damn bus.
Puerto Viejo
Puerto Viejo is a small town with a laid-back vibe and vibrant Caribbean culture settled between long stretches of white and black sand beaches. The black volcanic sands of Playa Negra are said to be some of the most beautiful in Costa Rica. There are small shops, restaurants, and bars scattered throughout the town's few streets and most people get around on foot. I dig the pace of things here and I'm ready to feel like Joey Slowgano and slow things down for a couple days.
We disembark and wind our way through town to the Roots Family hostel, where Cécile has booked a bed. We are greeted by Emily, a petite girl from Essex with the most proper British accent you could imagine. She's just beginning her gap "6 months" since her future employer wouldn't let her do a full gap year.
She's volunteering for a month at the hostel & just arrived late last night so she's still getting oriented with the place. She thinks there are beds for Mia and me but sends her boss a text to make sure. Turns out there is only one bed available in the dorm but there is a vacancy for a private room. The dorm is \$15/night and the room is \$30. Mia is content with the dorm so I take the room. In a stroke of mighty good fortune, the proprietor of the place texts Emily back and informs her that I can stay in the room for the same price as the dorm.
Wunderbar!
I plop down my bags and head out to the common area. Our travel trio has worked up quite an appetite from that bus ride so we walk down to the beach to a little cafe for some grub and a few beers. We take in the sunset before heading back to the hostel, where we meet a set of brothers from Switzerland, a couple girls from Lithuania, a fella from South Africa, and a bloke from Germany.
I should mention that one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Costa Rica was to work on my Spanish. But everywhere I go is riddled with Europeans and the common language that everyone knows is English. So it's not exactly going according to plan on the Español front but c'est la vie.
We head down to the supermarket to snag a few beers and make our way back to the beach for some revelrous escapades. The town is small but it's buzzing and we party on the beach through the night.
The next morning I wake up and go for a nice run on the beach. Toxins flushed, I return to the hostel to a minor emergency. A pretty sizable crab, who the group has named Henry, has wedged himself between the refrigerator and the kitchen trash can. Me, the idiot, takes a look and estimates that Henry couldn't possibly wrap his claws all the way around the back of his body - so I grab the big bastard from the back and quickly learn that growing up 500 miles from the nearest saltwater source is not conducive to your knowledge of marine wildlife. Ol Hank clamps down on my finger something fierce and I spike his crustacean ass on the ground like a can of beans at the supermarket when Microsoft's down 3 points. Henry scurries outside so while the execution was unorthodox, the creature was extricated from the domicile. Uncle Andy's wildlife control gets results.
With Henrygate in the rearview the group discusses taking a bus to Cahuita for a hike around the Cahuita National Park. This place is famous for its wildlife, with sightings of monkeys, sloths, snakes, and all kinds of other fauna a common occurrence. While waiting for the bus we meet a gal named Jackie from Dallas. I remark how funny it is to bump into someone who only lives 4 hours away & the Swiss kids say that 4 hours is an eternity for them. They hardly ever go skiing because the mountains are too far away (2 hours). Those ungrateful Schwein.
The bus arrives and it's a 30 minute ride to Cahuita followed by a short walk to the park entrance. The animals must hear us coming because we don't spot anything other than some lizards and a raccoon trying to steal food out of hikers' backpacks. A few miles into the hike we decide to cool off at one of the beaches we come across. On our return journey we spot a family of howler monkeys swinging through the trees, eating a bite of fruit and violently throwing it to the ground. It was quite a spectacle and worth the price of admission. We make our way back to the bus terminal and back to Puerto Viejo.
On the way back from the bus depot we stop at the supermarket to pick up some food and liquid refreshments. The younger of the Swiss brothers and the German guy snag 4 pounds of pasta and I grab a bottle of wine to go with it. We get back and the two amateur chefs go about making 4 pounds of pasta just like you'd imagine two half drunk 20 year old Europeans would do. While the pasta is cooking I learn that Emily has recently earned her degree in Maths so we discuss maths for a while, where the conversation eventually leads to quantum mechanics, as any conversation with a wannabe physicist like me will end. This attracts a crowd and I blow everybody's nips off with the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - which I only know about because of Sean Carroll's podcast (great listen btw).
Luckily the pasta finishes soon after this discussion begins because the shallow well of my knowledge is running dry. I want to keep up appearances with these kids that Oklahoma Jesus knows what he's talking about. The food is served and I pass around the wine and everyone is merry.
I fill my belly and finish the last of my beers in the fridge and arrive at the point in the night when decisions need to be made. I ask the group if they are planning on going out or think we'll just stay at the hostel. The consensus is to stay put so I do the reasonable thing and walk down to the supermarket and buy 5 bottles of wine and a 6 pack of beer.
By this point everyone has been drinking on their own stash and we're all a bit tipsy so we naturally begin playing some drinking games. We play versions of games that I remember playing in college and the wine is going down easy. The party migrates outside where the final game doesn't end as much as people lose the capability to pay attention longer than 10 seconds.
Different songs are played from different countries then I bring down the house with a little Earth, Wind, and Fire. We're all dancing like half drunken idiots because we are half drunken idiots. What a time to be alive.
Speaking of half drunken idiocy, feats of strength are in order and I defeat the Swiss kid in a pull-up contest and he bests me in a pushup contest. This is Grade-A lunacy and I love it. I stumble to bed some time after midnight with a bellyful of cheap wine and a headful of mis-firing neurons.
Tortuguero
I am awoken by the sound of a driving rain on our tin roof at 5 AM. It sounds like we're under a waterfall - I mean it's really coming down. Guess that's why they call it the rainy season. I manage to get back to sleep for a few more hours before my alarm squawks at 7:30 for an 8 AM shuttle to Tortuguero National Park. I frantically pack my stuff, making sure to forget my water bottle and flip flops in the process. No way I'd need my water bottle on a cheap wine hangover and a 4 hour multi-modal trip ahead of me. Certainly not.
During the day yesterday I had "reserved" a spot in the Lithuanian gals' rental car but one of their friends unexpectedly showed up early and my spot in the car vanished like a fart in the wind. Cécile & Levent, the German fella, were super excited about Tortuguero and had reserved the shuttle. I had nothing better to do so that is how I find myself in my current situation - on a shuttle bus with an anti-vax driver whose stupidity would be evident to someone with a week's worth of Spanish classes.
He is telling Cécile how the vaccine is a scam and Covid is a conspiracy by world governments to kill all the old people. Thankfully she's the most adept Spanish speaker & I just pretend not to understand him when he asks me something. After he's gotten all of his Covid opinions out in the open he checks the "Afghanistan" square off the shit-you-don't-want-to-talk-to-your-shuttle-bus-driver-on-vacation bingo card.
I wish my headphones weren't packed up in the back of the van. At least there is one funny part during his rambling when he reveals that he has 10 kids. When he mentions that he has two 23 year olds Cécile asks if they are twins, at which point the best part of the story tumbles out of his big fat mug - the 10 spawns of his are from 5 different women. I should have asked him to name them all.
While I was pretending to not know what nuestro coductor de autobús was talking about Levent had the pleasure of actually not knowing what he was talking about. Glücklicher Hund. We mercifully make it to the dock and the dreary rain starts to let up a bit. I take a look at the boats at and if it does rain we're going to get absolutely soaked. I didn't imagine taking a 3 hour ride on a glorified bathtub when thinking about my activities for this trip so I'm regretting my decision to bring a computer.
The fellas on the dock bring down a couple boxes of black trash bags and start stuffing everyone's bags into them. At least my computer will get ruined slower if it does rain. Luckily the rain stops before we weigh anchor and it holds off for the entire ride. It's a neat little boat ride - we see some monkeys, a huge iguana, a few caymans (essentially lil crocodiles), and assorted other wildlife. We pull into the dock at Tortuguero mid-afternoon and check into the hostel.
The operators of our hostel also run a tour company offering guided canoe and kayak tours of the park. We peruse the information and defer a decision until after we get some food in our belly. We head down to the Buddha Cafe where I order the ceviche & a beer, which takes an insane amount of time to arrive and, while tasty, was only a meager portion. And I also find a small worm crawling around in it. Surf & turf.
The others' meals aren't much better & we leave the joint in a bit of a sour mood. Our spirits sink further when we arrive back at the hostel office to find it closed for the day. Sunofabitch.
We trudge back to the accommodation and whilst swinging in hammocks discussing what to do tomorrow the proprietor wanders by. We flag him down and tell him we'd like to take a guided tour in the morning. He tells us all the guides are already booked on canoe tours, but we can book kayaks and paddle behind one of the canoes and get all the benefits of a guide with the freedom of our own kayak. Plus he gave us a discount because they were booked up. Pura Vida.
The only downside is we need to meet at the dock at 5:45 AM so we call it an early night and rise at the crack of dawn. We get strapped into our watercraft & head out into the water, following the canoe. It has a small electric motor and putters along pretty slow so it's not much of a chore keeping up. The guide tells us all about the park and navigates us down a few rivers pointing out wildlife as we go along. We see, in no particular order, monkeys - of both the spider & howler variety - parrots, sloths, caymans, basilisk lizards aka Jesus lizards that can scamper across the water, and numerous birds drying their wings in the sun after the morning rains.
After about 2 hours of cruisin on the river, the canoe turns back and leaves us on our own to continue adventuring at our leisure. He recommends heading upstream a bit then veering to the right when the river forks. We do as he suggests and it's narrower and swifter than the previous stretches of river we've traversed. It's quite fun. We continue that way for about 45 minutes when we reach a downed tree across the river that we could get across if we really wanted to, but we're feeling a bit peckish and hot so we decide to turn back. We riverside our bows and I work up a little lather on the return journey - might as well get a little workout in while I can.
We stroll around the little town when we get back, purchasing some t-shirts and assorted knickknacks. As we're walking around we see a sign in front of one of the tour companies offering a shuttle service to La Fortuna with an optional white water rafting tour en route. The other option via public bus will require 5 transfers so we decide that it's a no brainer and book the shuttle & rafting.
The catch is that we need to be at the docks an hour earlier than we were today - 4:45 for a 5 AM departure. Hoo boy, hopefully this is worth it (spoiler alert: it was).
After booking the rafting/shuttle we walk down to the edge of town to the walking portion of the park. It's a 2 km hike down a path through some dense jungle where we see more of the same flora & fauna with the faint din of waves crashing a few hundred feet to our left. We get to the end of the trail and decide to walk back along the beach. I think there'd be much less aggression in this world if everybody got a chance to walk 2 km down a Caribbean beach from time to time. It was pretty magical.
We make it to the turn off for the hostel & grab a round of beers from a beachside bar to watch the sunset. Just as we sit down a Swiss dude & German gal who just checked into our hostel wander by with a 6-pack & we flag them down and all take in the scenery together.
After the beers & sun have both been downed we head back to the hostel & whip up a dinner that my college self would be proud of - corn, bean, & avocado tacos and scrambled eggs with red peppers and American cheese. In hostelworld when you're splitting town the next morning you cook whatever you have on hand, and by god did it hit the spot.
After supper I walk across the street to a bar to catch the second half of the Costa Rica - Mexico World Cup qualifier. Mexico is up 1-0 when I arrive and that's what the scoreboard reads when the final whistle is blown, despite two great chances at the end from Costa Rica. One golden opportunity went off the crossbar in the 2nd minute of extra time & a collective "Ayyyyyy puta madre" went up among the patrons. It was a communal experience of misery, of which I am very familiar watching the Bills for a good 20 year stretch. I walk out to the water to finish what's left of my beer and gaze at the stars and the lightning storm brewing on the horizon. I drop off my empty bottle at the bar and head back to the room and set my alarm for 4:20.
Big day tomorrow.