Day 2 - San Jose to Puerto Viejo

After some coffee and a fresh fruit salad for breakfast Interbus picked us up right on time at 8:30am and we made the drive to Puerto Viejo. We traveled with a Swiss couple and an American and a German. We made a 20 minute stop about half way at a roadside restaurant so people could use the toilet or get something to eat. It was a pretty smooth ride until we got to Cahuita where the driver was getting pretty flustered while trying to find one of the hotels that some people wanted to be dropped off. At one point we took a wrong turn and ended at the end of a narrow road where the driver had to back up all the way to the main road about 300 meters.

After arriving in Puerto Viejo we were dropped off right in front of the gate to the house we are renting. We found the house through Collin from Banana Azul who put us in contact with the owner. It's located across from Rockin' J's about a 7 minute walk form the east side of town. The house is about 75 meters back from the road with a locked gate and covered place to park a car. There are two bedrooms, one with a queen bed and another with a single bed. The house has a fully equipped kitchen with coffee maker, stove, microwave, along with dishes and cooking utensils. The back of the house has a nice covered porch wth a sofa and table. On one side is the home of the property owner and on the other side is a group of small cabanas that are home to tico families. There is also a small grocery store and a guy who rent bicycles just to the right of our gate. The house also has a telephone and cable tv with most channels in Spanish but a few in English and one in German ands Chinese. We are able to get wireless internet from the owners house but the signal is weak, sometimes I could only access it on the back porch and sometimes not at all. There is a washing machine but no drier. At $300/week we thought it was a good bargain.


Back porch of our house


Kitchen

After getting unpacked we walked into town for some lunch and beers at El Dorado and then picked us some groceries at the Old Harbor market to have on hand at the house. We then decided that a dip in the ocean was needed so we walked through Rockin’ J's to the beach only to find that the beach was really rocky and not really suitable for swimming. First we walked east along the beach for a bit and then decided to turn around and walk back west looking for a place to swim and ended up at the crappy beach in town where my wife did a bit of swimming and I watched our stuff and trying to keep some all too playful dogs from shaking wet sand all over me.


Beach dogs


We then went back to the house to shower and relax for a while. We then walked into town, checked out the Sunset Bar which seemed like a less friendly locals only place so we ended up going back to El Dorado where we met a woman who used to live jst a few blocks form us in San Francisco and had moved to PV last week. We also met Coconut Man, a guy who sells coconuts along the beaches. After many beers and a pizza we walked back home and went to bed