Monday 8/10/09
Got a bit of catching up to do on our log!
We left La Fortuna in the morning and began our 5 hour trek to Puerto Viejo. Shortly after leaving the city we visited Pollo de Cervecero (474-0101) and got the best tipico (typical Costa Rican food) thus far on the trip. Jim had Cascado con Pollo, which is rice and beans with grilled chicken, and had cheese, shell noodles, fried plantain, and an egg on the side. Mark tried the Chicken Cordon Bleu, which turned out to be pretty good, although it did have some sort of Velveta type cheese in the middle of it, and I (Karl) had Cascado con Pollo en Salsa, which was the same meal as Jim’s, but with shredded chicken in sauce. Muy bueno! Then we drove and drove, and drove some more until we arrived in Limon, where I was informed everybody carried around guns. The only people that I was able to see with guns were the officers, but it didn’t look like a city that I would want to stay in.
We arrived in Puerto Viejo and checked into the El Pizote at about 4:30, and we tried to go explore the trails behind the place, my father and brother had said they were very cool as they had stayed there 2 years before. There were massive bamboo shoots all around, and bats flying about, but it didn’t take too long until we reached the end, apparently they had been closed and we could no longer go to the location that they had previously visited. It turns out that the trails were flooded, and what used to be walkable, turned into a river. Mark’s legs got lacerated on the walk back. I was informed that the city comes to life at night, and so we went out at about 6:30 after it had started to get pretty dark. A lot of the knick knack shops with bracelets and necklaces were still being set up, but there was still a good amount to check out. We saw a place in the center of the city, and a Rasta man in the middle of the street was announcing to us and everyone else that there would be live music upstairs at 7:30, so we decided we’d finish wandering the town, and come back then. I forget the name of the place, but translated it meant “the cute little monkey”. We went into a bunch of souvenir shops, most of which contained the same items, and when it was close to the time, we headed back and went into the restaurant. We sat down, and Mark ordered Basil Pesto Chicken, and my father and I ordered a whole red snapper; Mark made the better decision. The Calypso music started shortly after we arrived; there were three members, a guitar player, a bongo drummer, and a guy playing an instrument that looked like a bow, a curved wooden piece with a single string. The songs had all the same structure, the same 3 chords on the guitar, and the same drum beat, but they would all sing, and the singing was what made each song different. It was a good atmosphere but the food wasn’t terrific and the music was just decent. We left still hungry so we went to this restaurant that my father and brother ate at a lot when they were down there 2 years ago. The woman who owned the place was named Sonya, who was a very nice hospitable individual. She had some of the best music in town being played over the speakers there, started off with some jazz, and later went into some good ambient reggae. We ordered a margarita pizza, Mark got two Mojitos, and my father and I had some tequila. We headed home after that and readily achieved the sleep we needed..
Tuesday 8/11/09
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.
Wednesday 8/12/09
What a horrible night’s sleep we had. The fan had haunted all of our dreams. My brother and I both had a series of bad events unfolding in our subconsciouses. The noise from that fan had penetrated our brains and turned a good night’s sleep into a toss and turn fest, separated by horrible sequences of events in our REM. One of the dreams my brother had was of a big scorpion, who would make the exact same sound as the fan as it would run across the ground, he later got punctured in the heart by it right before waking up. One of the dreams I had was of a screeching tornado that was approaching, which also sounded just like the evil fan. Evil evil fan. My dad went out for a walk at about 6, came back at 7 and got me, and we went further down the trail. We first spotted a giant spiderweb in the air that looked just like a vinyl LP, and continued down the trail and we saw one spider monkey initially, two different wood peckers, many butterflies, a long thin brown snake, and a cocoa tree. On the way back we saw a black and green poison arrow dart frog, and 3 more spider monkeys. We were walking down the trail and we saw one spider monkey leap from one tree to the next over the road ahead of us, and we stopped and looked up and watched two more do the same, and then off through the woods they went, just flinging from branch to branch, seemed like a good source of entertainment to me if I were able to do such a feat. We went back to the hotel and got Mark, and then headed off to the beach. Mark began trying to change the topography of the river, as he put it. He began making a big ditch and a dam to try to reroute the flow of water. I joined in after a while, but after a bit of work (we did manage to get the two streams to connect) the rising tide got too high and destroyed the mouth of it, so we gave up and went for a swim. The three of us decided we’d walk along the beach to Punta Uva, so we set off on our way.
We began by going down a little road into some jungle and explored around, it was beautiful in there but eventually we came to where they were clearing trees, probably to build a house. While inside we heard a high pitched whistle, followed by a low pitched whistle from another location. We then saw two little boys running out of the woods away from us, probably thinking we were the “rich white men who owned the area and were cutting down all the forest”. They hopped into their kayaks and paddled away. Then we set off down the beach to Punta Uva. The first stop we made had a bunch of hammocks in the back. We stopped and hung for a little bit, then decided to go into the hotel to get some refreshments. The name of the place was Almonds and Coral, an “eco-friendly” hotel, meaning there were boards that ran through the forest, and crabs and trees could be seen along the pathways, kind of neat. We went to the bar and got three sodas and she asked us for our room number, which we didn’t have, so she wrote us a check and told us to go to the reception desk. We went over there and found out each club soda was a $4, and then asked to see a room. A man came to show us the room, and during the walk he informed us that the rooms cost $325 a night. When we arrived at the room there were two beds with mosquito netting, no air conditioning, the heavy humid tropical air was basically motionless; a hammock in the park would have been much more pleasant.. The kicker of the whole place was that you couldn’t even swim in the beaches behind the place! We thanked the man for his time and left snickering. We saw a family seated inside near the bar and they looked very unhappy, and my brother whispered to me that he would be unhappy too if he was staying there and had to pay such a ridiculous amount for absolutely nothing. We went back to the beach and carried on, eventually the sand started becoming so deep that about every step we’d make would go up to our ankles, so we all took off our shoes and carried them. We walked through more ankle deep sand, a beach littered with twigs that would wash up and down with the waves, and stopped at a big tree on its side that the waves were crashing into. Mark sat down on the log and thought deep thoughts for a minute, and we then pressed on. We passed another hotel which had a bunch of lawn chairs on the beach, and after a bit more walking, we made it to Punta Uva. At this point my father was dehydrated, and had a horrible headache. We went into the water to cool off, and then went up the road to try to find a place to eat and drink. We went to the Punta Uva dive shop and ordered three fish sandwiches, and a giant bottle of water. They were playing a reggae version of OK Computer there, which was cracking me up, and I asked the guy what we were listening to, and he said “Radiohead Dub”. While eating we saw a bunch of leaves falling from the trees, so Mark stood up to investigate, and we saw a bunch of green parrots in the tree doing some trimming. After eating we decided to walk back on the road. Mark pointed out a monkey in the tree and we looked up, and to our surprise there were 20+ howler monkey babies in the trees! Shortly after that we got picked up by a bus and it drove us back into town. My brother and I went swimming again, while our dad went to relax in the hammock across the street from the hotel. We built a sandcastle with a nice barricade that managed to last all night and was even there the next day. The sky was a beautiful red as the sun was setting, even though it was setting way behind us. It cast a magnificent red light onto the top of the water, and I was in awe at the beauty of the shimmering orange-red water, but it started to get dark in a hurry, and our dad came out to get us. We decided we’d go to Puerto Viejo to go to an internet café as we hadn’t used it in several days. After checking up on our email we left and headed to grab a bite to eat. The service there was pretty bad, and the food was decent at best. Mark had rice with seafood and had two mussel shells sticking out of the side, and my father and I split pasta with seafood, and a marlin fillet in brandy sauce. The marlin could have been a boot for all we knew, but the sauce was excellent. It tasted better on the rice than on the fish. We went to Sonya’s again, got another margarita pizza with garlic, olives, and mushrooms, and went back to the hotel to crash.
Thursday 8/13/09
After watching the beautiful sky the night before I was set on waking up before the sunrise and being on the rock that overlooked the ocean by where we had seen the toucans the other day. The alarm went off at 5:30, but by that time the sun was basically already up. I got up and went outside and the sound of birds surrounded me, there were so many and they were everywhere. But with every couple of minutes that passed they became quieter and quieter. I went back to the hotel and Mark and my father were ready at this point, and we got into the car and drove down the road to the trail that we walked the other day and saw the 4 spider monkeys. We didn’t see much though sadly, but the walk was still nice; I think the most interesting thing spotted was a humming bird, but it was too far away to really tell. We went back to the point across the river and walked to the point, but decided to do some further exploring into the jungle. After reaching as far as the trail would let us, we headed back. We got in the car and decided to drive to the two cities over after Puerto Viejo to get some gas, as there wasn’t a gas station anywhere near us. After setting off, we saw the car ahead of us suddenly stop, and there were three girls on the side of the road looking at something. Upon inspection we saw that there was a three toed sloth crawling across the road, its back end had some fecal matter stuck to it (the only reason a sloth comes down from its tree every 3 days is to take a dump) and eventually it made it across and began to climb a tree. It looked back at us and it had a big goofy smile on its face, but we failed at getting any pictures of this. On our drive back we were a bit hungry, and pulled over at a little city and found the, what seemed to be, only open restaurant. We went in and it took quite a while until we got served and the guy working there seemed to be completely clueless, and he kept proving it to us over and over again. Mark got French toast, Jim got an omelet, and I got rice and beans with chicken. He forgot who ordered what, and then after the edible (edible being the only word I could use to describe it) meal he forgot what we ordered to ring us up, and had much difficulty adding up the three meals. Whatever, another location that won’t be revisited, to say the least.
We got back to Puerto Viejo and visited the unenthusiastic French woman again, and she showed us the one house which was just the downstairs of a two story house, with not much of a backyard, it smelled funny, and the shower was outside. It was a good option considering what we had seen thus far though. But we decided we weren’t done and went to the other realtor right down the road, and the man there remembered my dad from two years ago, a much nicer greeting. He told us he had a nice two bedroom house for rent, so we drove down the road to check it out. My dad was basically instantly sold. The woman there was very nice, and she said that her and her father had built the house themselves some time ago. It was up on a hill, had an awesome backyard, and the house was pretty great itself. We ran down to the ATM, got out some money, and came back to give it to her to seal the deal. When we came back she was on the phone with somebody else who was trying to rent the house, and she said something along the lines of, “Oh I’m sorry, the house is rented already” and hung up. We then went back towards Manzinillo and dropped off some laundry at a woman’s house that had a sign up to do laundry. We dropped Mark off at home as his stomach had been hurting him all day; he was laying down in the back of the car during most of the trip. We went down the street to the restaurant that had the massive plates of food and celebrated the successful house finding with some Imperals, and we ordered some civiche, which was made with bass, octopus, and probably a couple of other things. I had only tried civiche once earlier in the trip and it was pretty bad, but my father wanted to order it again to show me that it was actually pretty good, and that it was! After that we went back to Puerto Viejo to use the internet café once again, and then headed back to Manzanillo to drop Mark off again. We went to the restaurant to try to take on that massive plate of food. Some of the things were a little overcooked, especially the shrimp, but it was still a pretty good feast. Shrimp, lobster, crab, mussels, potatoes, and a bit more, good stuff. After that we talked with a couple of locals, and went home to retire, but decided to go crash in the hammocks across the street.
Friday 8/14/09
I woke up at about 4:30 and my father was missing, the calls of the howler monkeys were absurdly loud. Apparently there are several stimuli that set them off: rain, people, and dawn. It was turning into dawn, and it was about to rain, so it had set them all off. The sky looked really cloudy, so I figured it wasn’t worth trying to go catch the sunrise, so I went upstairs to the hotel and fell asleep for several more hours. I woke up some time later and Mark was still feeling bad, so my dad and I went into town to try to find a bite to eat. We got coffee and omelets, and we asked for salt and pepper to put on our eggs. She brought us the salt and pepper, but also a big jar full of onions, jalapenos, and a bunch of broth with all sorts of who-knows-what dissolved in the acids. Whatever was in it was delicious, and we put it all over our eggs. Shortly after eating that, my father informed me that there were two people taking their pig for a walk across the beach. The pig was cooperating until it came time to cross the street, at which point it started to scream and back up, not wanting to cross this strange ground. They had to push and shove it, and once it got across it, it was already. My dad asked the waitress were the butcher was, turns out he was right down the alley. “This little piggy goes to market, this little piggy doesn’t go home” Turns out they were taking it to the meat market, perhaps the pig knew what was up, poor thing. After that my dad decided he was hungry for some jamon, or ham if you speak English, so we ordered beans and rice and ham. The beans and rice were good, but the ham was not, this is why I usually just stick to chicken when I’m down here. Unable to finish my meal we got up and left and headed back to Manzanillo to check out of our hotel and begin the long haul to La Fortuna. We took a detour on the way back though, and went to go check out the house my dad had rented. We went up the hill and wandered around the backyard, we saw a bunch of birds, admired all the trees, and we even saw a green and black poison arrow dart frog hopping around on the porch, simply awesome. We got back to the hotel, got Mark, got all our stuff, and left for La Fortuna. 7 hours later we arrived here, where we retired to our beds, but I sit here writing this right now. Actually I forgot to mention, we stopped off at the restaurant we ate at as we were leaving the town with the best tipico, and once again the food was amazing. It was a shame my brother was unable to eat due to his stomach hurting him.
- Karl
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