Hotel Kasha Puerto Viejo

... s all real. Half way into the night I can hear something is in the place ... too scared to move I tell Dave, but what can we do? Eventually we fall back alseep only to wake the next morning to perfectly peeled banana peels laying on the floor ...damn monkeys!! Prett funny, they left every fruit and vegetable except the banana's.

When we woke at 8am we saw the culprits .... monkeys everywahere above us in the trees, laughing at us no doubt. ....

... them too. It is a common sight to see a dog running off leash next to it's young owner on a bicycle or in a bicycle basket on the handle bars. There are a lot of dogs tolerated in the restaurants here too. And the dogs always look happy; their heads and tails held high, many frolic in the waves or with each other on the beach. Then they just trot away looking like a happy dog. It makes me smile every time.

Puerto Viejo is extremely laid back...I think ...

... right outside San Jose. All in all, the trip that was supposed to be five hours by car compared to the ten hours by bus, ended up being ten hours. I was just on time to meet up with my Mum, whose flight was delayed anyway. Like when she came to visit me in Thailand, it was a week of nice hotels and good food to take me out of my backpacking routine, if there ever is a routine when backpacking. We left the dirty, filthy town of San Jose ...

... jocote today. Jocote is a dimpled fruit about the size of a cocktail wiener, with a thin but tough skin that ranges in color from deep green when it's young to red and yellow when it's ripe. The flesh of the green fruit is firm and extremely tart; you're supposed to eat it with salt, while the ripe fruit is sweet and mealy and a bit like mango. It's not my favorite new fruit, but I've had worse. I had thought about staying home this weekend, because I needed a ...

... more frequent and there were more tramps and junkies begging us for money. When an American drove past and called out of his Chevrolet window "you guys are in the wrong place!", we became a little anxious and hot footed it back towards the hostel. Thankfully, we didn`t have any problems and ended up just going in the Colombian restaurant nextdoor to our hostel which, aside from the cockroaches, was nice enough! An in depth discussion/debate ...

... war, ins Freie klettern, aber das war uns in dem Moment egal, hauptsache wieder raus! Ansonsten hatten wir auch noch eine schoene Tier-Begegnung, naemlich mit 2 Delphinen, die neben unserem Boot kurz geschwommen sind, als wir mit einem Kajak zum schnorcheln gepaddelt sind. Nach diesem schoenen Karibikeinstieg sind wir durch die Mangrovenwaelder und die Heangebruecke (=Grenzposten) wieder zurueck nach Costa Rica...

... hatte, wurde ich auch ab und zu etwas ueb**muetig, was mit etlichen Rumpl**n wegen Schlagloech**n endete, he he. Nach weit**en 65 km kamen wir an. Die letzten paar Kilomet** vor Pu**to Viejo sind uebrigens Schott**piste, eine neue H**ausford**ung fu** meine Fahrkuenste. :-) Gleich eingangs Stadt hielten wir **st mal am Geldautomaten, um Colones (die Waehrung in Costa Rica) zu beziehen. --> Man kann all**dings in Touristenorten meist auch problemlos in US-Dollar ...

... that the bus pulled away. Well we went back to the house and searched together. After 20 minutes of me looking in all the places I had already looked, Danielle finds it. Tucked away in a hidden pocket of one of my bags, a place I hadn't looked. Instant relief!! But now we had to wait until the 6 am bus and hope we could get seats. Things worked out in our favor, even after the chaotic morning. The wheels on the bus . . . Before ...

... more and take in a canopy tour in the forest outside of town. 4.4 Still taking it easy in Puerto Viejo. Its different here than the other beaches we went to. This town has a Caribean atmosphere. I guess it would best be described as a Rasta village. Also, the other beaches we have been to were very dry and dusty and it never rained, however here the rainforest literally comes right up to the beach ...

... breaks in winter, however, and as a result there weren't many travelers passing through. The town itself had an interesting mix of Afro-Caribbean, Latino, and Bribri cultures, all intertwined to form a very laid back and relaxed attitude towards just about everything. The streets were hard packed earth, save for one partially paved and excessively potholed road running right through the middle of town. The paved portion of the road was probably only about a ...