Puerto Viejo de Limon

During our training, we were allowed to spend two nights out of our training communities (aside from the nights we spent at official Peace Corps activities like the trip mentioned in my last post). Although there are some awesome mountains/volcanoes to hike here, none of them looked to doable in one night (the two nights can’t be consecutive). So, I went ahead and joined about 30 of the 45 other trainees in taking a trip to Puerto Viejo de Limon (not to be confused with Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui (where I now live). Puerto Viejo is a very popular beach with tourists and is located on the Caribbean coast, just a bit above the Panamanian border. It was chosen not because it was necessarily the closest beach, but because a small group of trainees had been planning a trip there, and then a bunch of the rest of us just leeched onto their trip. We all got up nice and early and met in the next town over to catch the bus. Some people awoke before five to be at the meeting town by seven. Of course, the bus we had hired showed up 20 minutes late. Man, I really, really hate getting up early, hurrying my way somewhere only to then have to wait.

But, eventually the bus came, and we rolled through San Jose, across the Central Mountains and its forests, pasts plenty of banana, sugarcane, and pineapple plantations, and soon enough we had a left window view of the ocean. The trip was awesome for two reasons: we had rented a private bus-so there were no stops except for the ones we asked for and because of the first reason, the bus was filled with fellow trainees. This second reason was great because it meant we could yell jokes, play some music, chat about all sorts of things without the smallest worry of offending a host country national sitting next to us.

Once there we did what one does at the beach: lay on the sand and listened to tunes, kicked the soccer ball around on the sand, chilled in the water, and all that jazz. I regrettably neglected to carry my camera with me on our first day there, which was beautiful and sunny-but did on the second, which was gray and drizzly. We stayed at a hostel that offers an amazing accommodation option for frugal travelers like myself. In big open air rooms that are connected to communal bathrooms and showers are slung forty to sixty hammocks, one right after each other in a row. With check in you get a sheet and a padlock for a locker-which make up the waist high walls of the hammock rooms. And, like the Motel 6 commercial used to say, it was the same as the Ritz once I fell asleep. I had lunch with some comrades after we couldn’t resist the storeowner’s claim of the “best gyros in town.” You never know quite what you’ll get with the expat restaurateurs in tourist towns, as he evidenced. He certainly didn’t see the irony of advertising the best gyros in a small, Latin American beach town. He also seemed to think we admired his broken English or broken Spanish catcalls at the passing females, apparently admiration and entertained disgust are the same body language in Lebanon. The gyros were good, and the only ones we saw or tried in Puerto Viejo, although his shirtless, cigarette smoking service could’ve used an improvement here or there. In the night some of us ventured into the center of town to check out the local dance scene. I took the opportunity to enjoy a beverage or two while sitting on a nicely placed piece of driftwood with a beautiful ocean vista just steps in front of me while soaking up the knowledge of some friends. A fairly agreeable way to pass a night if you ask me.

On my second day I took a walk up to the absolutely gorgeous Playa Negra, named so because of its truly remarkable black sand. I had headed out there to meet up with other members of our group, and with all of us sans cell phone and me not making a fixed time or place to see them (the beach isn’t that big, I had bet on chance) I never ran into them. I thoroughly enjoyed my walk out there, wandering along the beach, sitting on a log to read a bit, until the rain started to move from mist to downpour. I then spent a large portion of the day sitting a bus stand trying to wait out the rain. Luckily I had brought my Kindle with me, and oh, well, it wasn’t that bad, as I had a marvelous view through some palm trees and tropical plants of the Caribbean Ocean foaming onto mounds of black sand. Walking back to meet up with the bus soaking wet wasn’t the most enjoyable experience, but then again, being able to wander over to the ocean and walk ankle deep in warm water made it much more tolerable.

What wasn’t exactly tolerable was the bus ride back. Some consistent rain in the Central Valley had caused landslides to block the main highway through some of the highlands. So, instead of the less than six-hour journey, ours pushed nine. It was a good enough trip, as the collective damp smell of everyone’s wet clothes didn’t bother me at all. As we bumped (and I mean bumped) along the road from Puerto Viejo to the main highway and the humidity wasn’t allowing for my wet shirt and shorts to lose a drop of moisture, I mentioned that I could use a beer. As Barton R., a fellow trainee from Southern California, responded with “I’ve got a Guiness in my backpack if you want to split it” I then realized that some people just plain live their lives at a higher level. With such an auspicious start there was no reason for the elongated bus ride to not be a good time. Although, I can’t act like I wasn’t delighted when I was able to lay down in my bed late that night.