Death by Sushi

Woke up at about 7:30 and drove out of Puerto Viejo and went down to Manzanillo which was just down the, bumpy and pot hole filled, road. We parked down at the end of the beach as there was a river that ran through stopping us from continuing, so we got out of the car and went on foot. Waded across the river and then entered the forest that lay straight ahead of us. Coconut trees were all around, and coconuts were all over the forest floor, and everywhere you looked, there were tiny holes that little red crabs would scuttle into when you approached. Hundreds of crabs could be seen on our walk, and there were hermit crabs and lizards all over as well. Where we were walking was a jungle, but to the left of us just several meters over was beautiful sandy beaches and ocean. We arrived at a coral knoll that had been thrust up by an earthquake filled with trees, and we looked up and managed to see toucans, which was actually the mission of our morning walk. Such radiant beautiful colors on their bodies and beaks, but soon they flew off. We walked a little further out of the woods and onto a big rock that hung out over the ocean, and we stopped and watched the waves crash up onto the rocks below, and onto the shore. After that we headed back, and crossed the river again and tried to get into the car, but right before that there was some man wandering around wearing what appeared to be a crossing guard jacket and was holding a stick, and was asking us for money for some reason, he spoke no English and we had no idea what he was blathering on about. I was actually just informed by my father that he was there two years ago doing the same thing. Anyways, we got in the car and headed back to El Pizote to try to grab our complimentary breakfast before they stopped serving, but they actually wanted money for it, so we decided to just check out and find food elsewhere. We ended up at Sonya’s again, and Jim had a snapper fillet, Mark had an excellent curried chicken, and I had pasta with seafood.

After eating we went to go look at houses. We made our first stop at a place off the side of the road, and saw a nice, but very open., wooden house with big tree looking posts as support on the sides, but the “special gringo price” he offered was absurd so we went elsewhere. Next we visited this one real estate place that my father had visited two years ago. We talked to the most unenthusiastic, unhelpful French woman for a while and she informed us that there was a house we could check out, but not until the 12th. Several busted nerves later we headed out in search of houses on our own. We got a couple numbers to call from signs in front of buildings that we decided we’d call later. We checked in at a hotel and dropped off our belongings. The manager was very nice, and he was setting out bananas on a stand across the road, and it attracted many beautiful birds. A beautiful yellow one which had a beak with some sort of razor system it would use for eating, which I believe to be a Great Kiskadee, a black bird with a bright red patch on it’s tail called a Passerini’s Tanager, and a Aracari, which looks like a toucan due to the beak, but isn’t actually one. He owned a parrot who would do the cat call whistle on occasion, it was green and crawled into a hole at the top of house the first time we approached it. He informed us that it would just fly around town but return later on it’s own.

After that we headed down to a point between the two cities, called Punta Uva, which means “wave point”, and the name did not lie. We went out into the ocean, but had to walk past some raised coral first, and got out to where we were about waist deep and this is where the waves were breaking. These were the biggest waves I have ever swum in, some of them went over our heads as we were standing there. Mark and I did a fair amount of body surfing, but my dad went to the beach to read as the waves were a bit much. We body surfed for a while longer and he returned to us in the ocean, where we swam for a bit longer until we had been almost exhausted from the waves, and we headed back to the hotel to shower off. The previous day we had passed a place in Puerto Viejo which had a sign out front stating that they had an all you can eat sushi deal for $20, so we decided to go there to eat. Mark got two big plates of noodles, and my dad and I ate delicious, ocean fresh sushi until we were near the point of bursting. I’d say we easily got our moneys worth, fantastic. We left and drove back to Manzanillo and checked out this bar blaring music. We headed upstairs and we saw that the waiters were bringing out massive plates of delicious looking seafood, and we decided we’d have to try the place out one day. We headed back to the hotel, which had no air conditioning, but 3 fans, two of which were mounted to walls, and one that was on the ceiling. I stood on my brother’s shoulders to pull the cut cord on the fan to turn it on, and it started to make a screeching sound as it would turn, but we thought we’d be alright and went to sleep. We didn’t take the hint that the cord was cut for a reason probably.

kjs