Puerto Viejitos

Rachelle Towers

Puerto Viejitos

We cruised into Puerto Viejo in an intensely air conditioned tour shuttle coming back from a day of level 3+4 white water rafting down Rio Pacuare. I was convinced my wet hair would be clinking with icicles by the time our hour long ride was over. Yet suddenly I recognized the old and weathered-pastel beach homes; the triangle banners colored yellow green red and black hung between salt licked palms reaching out diagonally towards the shore- the effects of a rising ocean. After asking the matured and clean cut driver if he needed directions to take us to rocking Jay's hostel he replied in a thick indistinguishable accent- "Gal I waz 'ere when tha waz thirteen 'ousez an no runnin' wotah'!" Heading straight and then veering right without a seconds pause... I was really amused by his answer and I found his accent jarring since I wrongly assumed he was from a different area of Costa Rica. So I proceeded with more inquiries, one of my favorite answers was on his favorite place to get food in Puerto Viejo, to which he quipped again without pause, "MAH-OUSE" This was the first and also my personally favorite, local interaction. The driver was such a character, and his almost stubborn grip on his routine and solidarity reminded me of my father, very charming. 

The stay in Puerto Viejo was lazy and laid back, Teo's body was having a hard time adjusting to Costa Rican food and the new bacterias and microbes in Central America so we spent a lot of time lounging in hammocks and listening to the game of thrones books on tape in our wizards tower at the hostel. We didn't surf all day like we had planned but we made fun by learning cheats in Pokemon Go so we wouldn't have to move, watching fresh prince of bel air and playing laser hockey on his iPad(I won all of 6 games) and playing pool (I lost all of those games). It had been about two weeks that Teo was sick now, so we decided antibiotics were a good cure for being landlocked at our hostel room for the rest of our trip. The next day T was up and running again. He ate chocolate and bacon and had more than a couple drinks, we tossed around the football at Playa Negra which was a blast and walked along the coconut littered volcanic ashen coasts with no pain and all the gain! 

Apart from our last couple days, this part of our journey was a lot slower than our expectations willed it to be considering we were in a party town on the beach where we couldn't walk 10 minutes without being offered some kind of drug. But I'm very grateful for how much we were able to make out of our experience, if either one of us were to have traveled with anyone else there's a good chance we would have gotten into a row or been disappointed and gotten bored by how much time we spent indoors. A week ago we were partying in Manuel Antonio on the daily, I had 21 drinks during my birthday on the 7th! and here we were just a few days later reading and discussing The Te of Piglet for hours on end like a couple of angels! It was quite the contrast but Teo and I are pretty well rounded peeps if I do say so myself.