Spring Break, pt. 1: Puerto Viejo

For spring break, twelve of us rented a house in Puerto Viejo on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Because Ethan's birthday was on Friday, we decided not to leave San Jose until Saturday morning, and to go out Friday night to celebrate since he and most of the other OTS students were going to Bocas del Toro, Panama for the break. Almost everyone in our house was taking the 10 am bus out of San Jose, I took the early bus to get out to Puerto Viejo with a reasonable amount of time on the beach. It was Mary's last weekend in Costa Rica, and we invited her to stay in our house since it had already been paid for, but since she had class on Monday she was only going to get one full day on the beach... hence our decision to leave at 6 am instead of 10. Tessa also decided to head out early with us, and we made it on time (barely! Mary forgot her passport and we had to take a taxi all the way back to our house and then to the bus station again!) for the bus even though we had been out late the night before. We arrived in Puerto Viejo around 10:30 am and called Ahki, the manager of the property we were renting, to ask him how to get to the house from the bus terminal (one of the many downsides of places in Costa Rica not having addresses). We had been in touch with Sylvia, a real estate agent, when renting the house, and she had told us that we could show up whenever we wanted on Saturday, but when we talked to Ahki he said that check-in wasn't until after 12:30 pm. We were disappointed because we had our big backpacks and didn't want to bring them to the beach or wander around the town much trying to find the house (which was supposed to be a few km away), so we decided to go to a restaurant with wifi to kill time until we could leave our things at the house. We bought plates of fruit since we had gotten up too early for breakfast at our homestays and checked email for the first time in a while since internet at CRLA wasn't working well at the end of our time there. 

Eventually we called a cab which we quickly discovered was a little sketchy for two reasons. First, it was an unregistered taxi. We got the number from Ahki, but apparently there is only one real taxi in the entire Puerto Viejo region, and the rest of them are just people who drive people around in their cars regularly. There are no meters and you agree on a price when you get in and tell them where you're going. In San Jose, unregistered taxis are really dangerous, but apparently in Puerto Viejo they're pretty normal. So, we got in and headed to our house. Second, our taxi was a regular sedan, and the house we were renting was at the top of a steep hill with a gravel driveway. Our car couldn't make it even 1/4 of the way up, and we started to slide backward down the hill! Our driver was trying really hard to make it, but eventually we just told him we would walk the rest of the way up, which took about 15 minutes with our heavy backpacks. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica is hotter than the Pacific side, and we were already quite sweaty and a little disgruntled by the time we got up to our house, given the morning's mishaps.

However, when we got to the house we quickly realized that our wait was well worth it. The house was beautiful! It is two stories with a large open living room and kitchen upstairs, and decks on both floors with views of the Caribbean just across the street below. 

The living room. All of the glass sections are sliding windows that open completely, making the upstairs totally open-air if when we wanted it to be.

Downstairs there was a large master bedroom with a closet and a separate bathroom, which Tessa and I claimed for ourselves since we were the first ones to arrive in the house. There were two more bedrooms upstairs, each of which slept 3-4 people, and the rest slept on beds in the extra room downstairs. 

Our lovely bedroom! Sleeping on a REAL mattress for the first time this semester was an unbelievable treat... not to mention the view of the sunrise every morning!

One of the real highlights of the house was the kitchen. There was tons of counter space with bar stools and a speakers, making plenty of room for people to cook and eat food together or just hang out in the kitchen area. The windows on the deck also opened up completely, making another bar area with stools out on the deck facing in. Outside we had a beautiful view, and comfortable rocking chairs and a hammock to observe it from.

Tessa in the kitchen. Although it's backlit and impossible to see, there's a view of the sea out the window!

Our upstairs deck! Again, the sea is off in the distance although the lighting is bad here.

This hammock was a hot commodity in a house of twelve!

This sloth lived in a tree right outside of our balcony! We saw him almost every day.

Since it had taken us so much longer to get to the house than we expected, we decided to just wait the extra hour until the next group of people arrived at 2 pm. While we were waiting, Ahki came down, introduced himself to us, and told us a little bit about the property. It turns out that the house is usually used to hold volunteers, because the rest of the property is an organic permaculture cacao farm! The whole property, known as Global Creek, is owned by someone else who lives in the U.S., but Ahki has lived there for the past four years in a different building a two-minute walk up the hill, taking care of guests and volunteers and running the farm. I was very interested to learn more about the property, but he said he would come back later after everyone else arrived to give us more of an orientation. 

As soon as our other ten housemates got in at 2 and we all changed into our bathing suits and applied sunscreen, we headed out to the beach. Our house was actually in Cocles, which is one beach farther south of Puerto Viejo. This turned out to be a good thing, since Puerto Viejo is a little dirtier and more crowded since it draws more tourists and has more restaurants and hotels. The entrance to the beach was just across the street from our house, which was lovely. 

The entrance to the beach near our house

Cocles is (according to my guide book) one of the only beaches in the Puerto Viejo area that has an organized lifeguard system, which turned out to be a good thing because it's a popular surfing beach with strong rip currents. The swimming zone was another couple of minutes down the beach, and we all got in the water within a few minutes of arriving since the early-afternoon sun was really hot.

On the way to swim!

The current was even stronger than we thought, and after a few minutes in the water most of us were too tired to swim anymore so we came out and dried off. For the rest of the week we realized that the best way to cool off is lying down in the shallow water where there's no rip tide. The beach was beautiful and not crowded at all, and we enjoyed it safely every day for the extent of our stay in Cocles.

Manny found a crab in the road on the first night!

The second day of break, the rest of our amigos on the way to Bocas del Toro were staying in a hostel in Puerto Viejo to break up their travel time into more manageable increments. They came over to see our house during the day (it was a big hit, not surprisingly) and we all went to the beach together. That night, a few of us went out for "girly cocktails" happy hour in town, which was a nice break from being in a very large group all day.

Lee, Liz, Rukhshna, Tessa, and I at happy hour

We all tried guaro sours, which are made with Costa Rican liquor made from sugarcane. They were a big hit, and Liz, who has a bar tending license, made them for us again later in the week. Our waitress also brought us free bruschetta to snack on since we stayed there for a long time!

The "sunset" view during happy hour, which isn't much of a sunset because we were facing east.

Monday we had a lazy day around the house and met with the real estate agent to make the second half of our payment for the house. After that we bummed around on the beach all afternoon, which was nice because it wasn't as hot as it had been the past two days.  At night we had a friendship bracelet-making frenzy with a bunch of string that Carolyn had bought in San Jose. We all taught each other how to do different stitches, and made bracelets for everyone in the house. It was a relaxing way to spend a night since we had gone out four nights in a row before that. We also all cooked in the house, which was really nice since we haven't been able to make our own food all semester. I made pasta with spinach, onions, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, garlic, and olive oil. It was amazing! Costa Rican food is delicious, but it was nice to switch it up.

Everyone intently working on their bracelets in the living room

Tuesday we got up early because we wanted to rent bikes to go to another beach 10 km away. Unfortunately, as soon as we got ready to leave the house it started pouring! It was still warm out so we could have biked anyway, but we decided that since the point was to go to the beach we would rather wait for a sunnier day. Thus my morning became dedicated to reading and taking a nap in our hammock, overlooking the sea (I can't complain!). In the afternoon it stopped raining so Tessa and I walked into Puerto Viejo to look for souvenirs for our friends and family, since our next couple of sites were going to be pretty isolated and we weren't sure when we'd be able to shop again. I did really well and got things for my friends from high school and Erin. Tessa also got herself a ring and something for her mom. We even squeezed in a little time at the beach when we got back, and started teaching Rukhshana to float in a shallow pool of water that had no rip current. She is an amazingly quick learner!

Tessa on the way back to our house after Rukhshana's swimming lessons

Walking back to our house at dusk, we saw that even though all of our other friends had already gone back to make dinner, Justin was still out in the water. He rented a surf board from some guy on the beach and was teaching himself how to surf! Surprisingly he made a lot of progress in just a few hours, and was able to get up onto his knees consistently and ride into shore. We stopped and Tessa gave him a few pointers, because she's taken surf lessons before, and then went home because it was getting dark and we didn't have a light.

Justin surfing at sunset

Wednesday we made good on our plans of the day before and got up early to rent bikes and go to Manzanillo. Nine out of twelve of us decided to go, and by 10:00 we were on the road. We started out going slowly because a bunch of the group hadn't ridden bikes in years, and because we were enjoying touring the neighborhood south of our house. Even at our slow pace, it only took us ten minutes to get to a grocery store that it took us almost 40 minutes to get to on foot the day before. It became really clear why so many people rode bikes there, since it's so much faster than walking and the low coastal roads are almost completely flat.

Biking! Photo by Ellen

About half way to Manzanillo we had a little detour and ended up going to Punta Uva first. We locked up our bikes on palm trees and set up on the beach, which we shared with approximately four other people. The whole area is much nicer on weekdays, because there are less tourists around and the beaches are practically private. The beach we were at in Punta Uva was a beautiful cove protected by a coral reef offshore, which we happily discovered as soon as we went into the water and felt how calm it was in comparison to Cocles. Floating on my back for 20 minutes, I barely moved an inch... there was absolutely no rip tide! We were overjoyed.

The cove... so calm and peaceful!

Amigas in Punta Uva

We spent several hours enjoying the tranquil water and napping and reading on the beach. We took an ice cream break around lunch time at a store across the street from the beach, and then decided to continue on the last 5 km to Manzanillo since it had been our original destination, and was the beach that Ahki had recommended that we visit. He also told us that it was the best Caribbean food in the region, so we stopped at a small restaurant and some people got early dinners. I wasn't hungry because I had packed lunch, but I got to try a little bit of the rice and beans, which they make with coconut milk on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was a subtle difference in taste, but it was good! Manzanillo was an even quieter town than Punta Uva; in the words of Ahki, it exemplifies "pure Costa Rican tranquilidad." I can see why he thinks so, but overall I thought that Punta Uva was the most beautiful beach we had seen yet, and I was really glad that we had unexpectedly decided to stop there on the way.


Thursday was Ellen's birthday and our last day in the house we rented, so of course we went out Wednesday night to celebrate. Apparently since the most tourists are around on the weekends, businesses in Puerto Viejo takes Wednesdays off instead. We didn't know this in advance, but it became increasingly apparent as we walked into town and saw every restaurant and bar closed. As we got closer, though, we started to hear dance music in the distance, and followed our ears to the one bar that was open. It was practically empty (I think there were actually a total of six people there besides us), but, as usual, we filled the place up with just our group. One of the lessons that I've learned this semester is that traveling with eleven to 27 friends at all times makes it easy to have a party whenever and wherever you want. Haha. Because the bar was so empty, the DJ took every song request that we made, and Ellen got lots of free things for her birthday. We had a really fun night and Ellen definitely started off her 21st year well, surrounded by friends in a bar on the beach in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

All of us on the beach outside the bar on Ellen's birthday

Thursday we woke up early and cleaned the house, since we had to check out by 10:00. We had tried to rent the house the whole week, but someone had reserved it before us and were arriving on Thursday so we couldn't. However, after befriending Ahki and learning about the cacao farm on the property (more on that later), he offered us extra nights of free lodging if we volunteered 3-4 hours each day that we stayed. We thought that the offer was too good to pass up, and paid our way for another night in Puerto Viejo... some people helped pick cacao, some people helped make compost piles, and a few other people and I cleaned up the house thoroughly so that they could save money and not call in a cleaning service before the next guests arrived. After we finished working, I interviewed Ahki for a homework assignment we had about getting local perspectives on conservation issues in Costa Rica (more on that later, too), and then we went out to dinner to celebrate Ellen's birthday again. We had a much more low-key night and went to a restaurant instead of a bar, and we all got delicious food. The waitress even brought Ellen free cake! Manny's sister also arrived in Costa Rica that day with her boyfriend, and somehow she found us in the restaurant we were in without knowing we'd be there. Puerto Viejo is a small town in a small country! Haha. Still tired from the fiesta the night before and our volunteering earlier that day, we went to sleep relatively early to get ready for the next leg of our spring break trip.

Ellen's birthday cake!