El Pizote Lodge Puerto Viejo

... to Manzanillo .... **** balls! LOTS of pot holes ... a drive that should take 15 minutes takes 30, but it's extremely intersting nonetheless. We pass all kinds of localas and tourists biking away, avoiding pot holes and generally getting in our way. Have I mentioned that their are dogs everywhere??? And the occassional horse or two ... just chilling in hthe road or on the side.

We finally see the sign for Congo-Bongo, take a right and start ...

... many young surfers, bohemian wanderer types, older former hippies and business men, many college age backpackers and then tourists like myself. And everyone is mellow.

No one here in PV really dresses up per se, rather the dress here is cotton casual beachwear; shoes are flip flops, sandals, Birkenstocks too. Many guys walk, drive or ride shirtless.

For the most part the folks here are nice...I have met two that weren't. One is a business owner of ...

... of vacation with me. The trip from Tamarindo to San Jose was a painful nine to ten hours ride. I had the choice of a 'direct' chicken bus at 3:30 or 5:30......am! Or a series of different buses from town to town. The main problem was the bad state of the majority of roads from Tamarindo to San Jose. As I knew mum wanted to rent a car anyway, I created a new option which was driving to San Jose with a rental car. It also allowed me to give a ...

... of the girls were asking me what we do for our independence day. I felt so lame. No, we don't have people dressing up in traditional attire. (What is traditional attire for us, anyway? Pilgrim hats?) Some people wear the colors of our flag, but that's it. No, we don't have weeklong parties hosted by beauty queens; just half off on mattresses at wholesale furniture stores. We do have fireworks, I told them. And lots of people go to baseball games, or the beach ...

... two nights later and I parted ways to got to La Fortuna to see me some lava action. A tiny yet eerily American mountain-volcano town with not a hike to the volcano but a busride (what, what, what?!? que ridicule!) and waiting for the lava to flow with 200 other people. La Fortuna would not make it into my `1.000.000 things to see before I die`book but no worries cause I`m off to Nicaragua!

... ready for bed by 8:30pm but we struggled through until 9:00pm to ensure we didn`t wake up too early the next day... except Natasha who KO`d on the bed immediately! Waking up the next morning to see the guy sharing our dorm, Gill, an American, we introduced ourselves and took some tips on where we should head. After hearing his recommendations we took a taxi to a restaurant for lunch (which involved the rice and beans) and I was able to get a ...

... I also think I may have gotten a contact high from all of the marijuana smoke wafting through the air. Eventually we packed it up and returned home for the evening. The next day was beautiful, so we headed back to the beach right after breakfast. I realized then that I was truly sad to leave Puerto Viejo--while I loved the rest of Costa Rica, I also loved being in the presence of Black people--there was a comfortable familiarity ...

... listenign to reggae and getting stoned. Today we went on a 4 hours hike in the Jungle with Rasta Ricky a naturalist guide who showed us all sorts of plants and animals, which was wicked! Saw everything: spiders, snakes, monkeys, sloths, etc... Audrey picked up the art of finding the animals in the jungle pretty quickly, so she seemed to be the one pointing out monkeys and snakes before Rasta Ricky (probably because he too was stoned!). Then trekked up this ...

... me in my new room was a door that didnīt lock, and a dark dingy room with 4 bunks which appeared to be perfect nesting grounds for mosquitoes. It could only get better, and better it got. I met some really cool girls from the States and Sweden, who I hung out with the next couple days. We rented bikes to Manzanillo and swam in the perfectly warm and perfectly blue ...

... for the bus to depart again. Makes sense, when you think about it, but I don't think I realized this until my travels in Thailand, where the companies conspire to take advantage of you in more confrontational ways, but that is a story for another time. The bus then turned south along the coast, passing Limon by and leaving it behind. The remainder of the trip passed through coastal rainforest and tidal flats on its southerly course, with intermittent views ...