Heat and Humidity in Puerto Viejo

The fourth leg began with a trip from San Jose to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca.  This trip involved about five hours of riding on public buses and ended on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.

Puerto Viejo de Talamanca is a seaside town that has much more of an island-feel to it.  We kept referring to “the island” even though that reference was incorrect.  There’s a single ATM, a few supermarkets, several restaurants and bars and several shops for diving, snorkeling and the like.  On the afternoon that we arrived, we got a rundown of the activities that were available in Puerto Viejo and then sort of went our separate ways.  I got some money, stopped by the biggest supermarket and then went to lunch with a few friends.  I had already determined that friends in this group would be hard to come by because of the small group size and the various personalities (diplomatic?) of several of the new members.

In the evening, there was a group dinner but I avoided that and took refuge in a bottle of wine and the internet at the hotel.  The most memorable point of the evening was when the new creepy Canadian dude in the group was carried in and dropped off in his room (across the hallway from mine) at one in the morning and I listened to, “Is this your roommate?” as his roommates tried to disown him.

In case you're wondering, this is Rikki.

 The next day, the entire group went out for a tour of the nearby jungle and wildlife.  It was Rikki’s Tour, coincidentally led by a guy named Rikki, and we saw some spiders and learned a lot about the vegetation in this part of Costa Rica.  We also saw some Howler Monkeys, but I’ve seen so many Howler Monkeys on this trip that I’ve become sort of jaded.  The tour was a lot of fun, though, except for when I stood on an anthill and noticed that my feet were getting eaten alive.  Other than that, though, I enjoyed it.

After the tour, I walked around town a little bit, though I expected to do more of that the following day, and went to dinner with a couple of people at a restaurant that turned out to be pretty good.  Later in the evening, I enjoyed some jerk chicken and that was pretty much the second day.

The new gang.  You know you're scared.

On the third day, I had decided that I was going to walk around town and see if there was anything else it had to offer.  I started at around ten a.m. thinking that it would still be cool and I would enjoy the walk.  I was wrong.  After about forty minutes, it was already in the mid-80s, with humidity in the 80s, so I was hot, sweaty and tired quickly.  I went back to the hotel and lied down in a hammock when my new Australian friend (not to be confused with the Australian friend that has been written about at length in this section of the blog) came by and asked if I wanted to go with her and scooter around the island.  It sounded good to me, so that’s what we did.  Well, almost.  We ended up getting a four-wheeler and going around the island on that.  It was a lot of fun.  We went to the beach for a little while.  We also stopped by a restaurant and got more chorizo sausage than two people should ever be served (part of it ended up being my breakfast the next day).  We had decided to start a gang – the Pasty Devils – but could find no other members in the current group.

That night, we went out on a group dinner and ended up going back to the same place to which I had been the night before.  I had something different and it was a fairly tame evening.  (This final leg of the journey was proving to be much more tame than the previous three.)

That was pretty much it for Puerto Viejo de Talamanca.  It was three days worthy of only a single, albeit longer than normal, entry.  Fun, but boring at times – and very hot and humid.  From there, it was off to Bocas del Toro, where I’ll pick up in the next entry.