25/08/2022 From San José to Puerto Viejo
At 10 a.m. we took the next bus from a different bus station (called MEPE) to Puerto Viejo (five hours drive in total).
Caribbean Coast – here we come!

Puerto Viejo

When I traveled around Costa Rica with a good friend of mine in 2018, Puerto Viejo was our favourtie place in all of Costa Rica. So I was quite excited to be back. Puerto Viejo is home to a lot of Afro-Costa Ricans that descended here from Jamaica many years ago. We could really feel the Jamaican flair in Puerto Viejo (even though we’ve never been to Jamaica, this is how we’d picture it).
After checking into Hotel W Exotic, we went out for cocktails and poké bowls right by the beach, which was the perfect place to watch sunset from.

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26/08/2022 Puerto Viejo

Changing hotels

The next morning we had to change hotels as ours was fully booked out. We had no idea but the “Black and Afro-Costa Rican Culture Day” was on in Puerto Viejo. This is why people were coming from everywhere to celebrate their Afro-Costa Rican roots together.
Therefore, it was quite hard to find an available accommodation online (in our budget). So we started walking to different accommodations and found a reasonable and affordable one pretty quickly: Cabinas Talamanca.

Rent a bicycle

Explore the nearby beaches

Playa Cocles

There were also three tall men selling baked goodies right by the beach which was such a comical picture. (We’d rather expect an old granny than those three tall men, but who’s thinking of stereotypes here?!).

Playa Uva

We then rode to Playa Uva where we aka I (Blake is not the biggest water rat 😉) bathed in the water. In the meantime Blake was sitting in a boat as he found the boat more comfortable than lying on the sand. (Or he always wanted to be a captain – who knows…)

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27/08/2022 Cahuita National Park

Visit Cahuita National Park

Today was a very special day for me: it was sloth day! For some reason I’m so in love with these weird looking creatures that always seem to smile (when they are not asleep). But in our almost three weeks in Costa Rica we haven’t had any sloth-luck yet. So I had high hopes for today!
After an acai bowl at Port Vell, Blake and I rented an e-scooter and rode to Cahuita National Park, which is 16 km away. Unfortunately, the look of the e-scooter was the only funny thing about it, since it would only go 20 km/h which made the ride seem to go on forever.

When we got to the entrance of the national park, we organized to have a guide for one hour ($20 with bargaining), just to make sure we’d see the most animals possible.

Lots of wildlife

Right at the entrance we saw five white-faced monkeys. To be fair we would have seen those without the guide too, as they were right there. The guide showed us different lizards, yellow poisonous snakes, different birds, iguanas, bats, howler monkeys and more white-faced monkeys and…sloths! I was over the moon. However, they were very far up in the trees and they were all asleep! (The two-toed sloths sleep during the day whereas the three-toed sloths sleep during the night.) At one point a racoon was just strolling past us on the dirt path, like it was on a walk.

We really appreciated the guide and he taught us some interesting facts about different plants that are used as insect repellent or to combat diabetes. But somehow we still felt a bit unsatisfied. Maybe it was because Blake didn’t see his toucan he had been hoping for and because I was hoping for a sloth that would just walk towards us like the racoon did. But we don’t want to sound ungrateful, we still really enjoyed it!

Beach time in the national park

After the guided tour, we relaxed a bit at the beach which is part of the national park. Suddenly I heard Blake calling my name in a very intense way. (Usually the fact that he calls me by my first name is already alerting.) There was another racoon walking right towards me, looked into my bag and left into the bushes again. When I looked at Blake, however, I saw how he had jumped onto the little bench and held on tightly to all of his belongings.

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Unrecognizable town

When we got back to town that afternoon, the town was unrecognizable (déjà vu to our time in Granada, Nicaragua after the time at the lagoon, when the massive city festival was on): there was tons of traffic and all the Afro-Costa Ricans were wearing colourful outfits, many of them matching.

Out of electricity

Unfortunately, our e-scooter only made it to the start of town until it died on us. The scooter-lady had clearly lied to us when she assured us we’d make it to the national park and back again. Luckily, it happened in town where we could grab a “cerveza” while we waited for the scooter-guy to come and get us and the dead scooter. We didn’t complain, but when we told him that we were promised to make it back, all he said was: “But you did make it back to town.” Semantics I guess…

Parade in town

In the evening we saw the aftermath of the Black and Afro-Costa Rican parade: there were sooo many people everywhere with camping chairs, food and drinks and with loud music coming from everywhere. It was crazy, but also so interesting to watch!

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28/08/2022 Puerto Viejo

Searching for our acai bowls

Struggling with the heat

We are sometimes really struggling with the heat here as it’s just so draining. It often feels like it’s sucking the energy out of our bodies. But no complaints! (It could also be raining all day. After all, its still rainy season. In Puerto Viejo it usually rains once in the evening but that time is always full on.)

The life of a backpacker

After carrying our dirty laundry through the entire town in order to find a good laundry shop, we took a cold shower again and then probably spent another hour in front of our fan inside our room.

Afterwards I relaxed in a café with a smoothie where Blake joined me later for dinner. (He had to lie in our room again after our main activity of lying at the beach.)

Bye bye, Costa Rica!

And just like this our time in Costa Rica has come to an end: 21 days in total. We liked Costa Rica, but we still preferred Nicaragua. And now we are excited for our last country in Central America: Bring on Panama! 

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