The journey to Costa Rica involved catching the boat back to Almirante on the Panama mainland. From here (once again with boat stroke) we caught a shuttle bus to the Costa Rican border. The crossing was very straightforward and involved walking across a bridge that looked straight out of an adventure film with its wobbly wooden planks over to Costa Rica.
Another shuttle bus was waiting for us on this side to take us to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca where we were staying.
The scenery en route to Puerto Viejo (as it is known to the locals) was very similar to Panama albeit with more jungle and wildlife. During our journey an iguana the size of a dog (seriously) ran in front of our 4x4 to cross the road. Thankfully our driver saw it in time and managed to miss it. I imagine Costa Rica needs iguanas this big to eat all the giant spiders we saw en route - their webs were hanging on pretty much every bush and telegraph pole! Monkeys on the other hand have their own walkway to get across the road...
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| Monkey crossing.... |
Having been travelling all morning our stomachs were rumbling so we headed straight to a bakery/cafe called Bread & Chocolate in Puerto Viejo which my travel friend Gigi had recommended. We ate the most delicious bacon sandwich I've had outside of the UK and it even had Heinz Tomato Ketchup on it! Needless to say we returned here quite a lot during our stay.
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| Best BLT outside of London |
Being on the Caribbean coastline, Puerto Viejo quite aptly had rather a lot of Rastas walking around. I've also never seen so many pictures of Bob Marley in one place! (Apparently many Africans came over by way of Jamaica in the 1800s to help build the Costa Rican coffee rail roads). The Caribbean connection also made its way into the food we ate - rice, beans, plantain and hot sauce which I've discovered I can now no longer live without...
The beaches in Puerto Viejo were beautiful and stretched all the way down the coast. I discovered the beaches here are famous in the surfing community for the biggest and most powerful wave in Costa Rica known as Salsa Brava. It turned out we were visiting during the wrong month of the year to see it, but that was fine as it meant I could swim without the fear of drowning.
We hired bicycles (mine couldn't have been any more girly pink) and cycled the five miles along the quite flat road through the jungle to Playa Cocles which I think is by far one of the most stunning beaches I've seen.
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| Pretty in pink |
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| Its a stunner |
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| *sigh* |
En route to the beach we couldn't help but stop at the Chocorart Cacao Farm which is run by a Swiss couple. Unfortunately the farm was shut for tours but its chocolate factory was open for a quick drink of Arazá juice (a fruit native to the Brazilian rainforest which tastes AMAZING) and to scoff a couple of chocolate truffles : D
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| Nom nom nom... |
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| Arazá juice |
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| These are amazingly where cocoa beans come from! |
Id heard Puerto Viejo had a reputation as a bit of a party town but I cant say we saw much of it whilst we were here. I think this was due to it being low season. One night a group of us from our hostel had a few drinks at Rocking J´s hostel which really wasn't at all rocking. Thankfully Tasty Waves Cantina further up the road was a bit more lively.
The next day, despite having drunk a few too many Cube Libres the night before, we thought it a good idea to go to Cahuita National Park which is a forty minute bus ride north of Puerto Viejo. It actually turned out quite the hangover cure walking through the jungle and along deserted beaches. You´ll be pleased to know that after my previous jungle freak out on Bastimientos Island, I made sure I was fully prepared clothing wise and covered up against any insects.
The wildlife we saw whilst in the park was amazing. We saw everything from White Headed Capuchins (like Marcel the Monkey from the TV series Friends) to Howler Monkeys, lizards, geckos, hermit and normal crabs. We heard the Howler Monkeys way before we saw them, they scared the hell out of me with their dinosaur like roaring! I later discovered that the novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton was set in Costa Rica (although the film itself was shot mainly in Hawaii) which made sense as the countryside here does look very prehistoric.
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| Marcel... |
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| ...makes a swift exit from the paparazzi |
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| Gordon Ghecko |
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| Inter Milan loving grasshopper? |
Whilst stopping to eat some lunch in the park we discovered that hermit crabs are quite partial to BLT sandwiches. A bit of my sandwich fell on the floor and within seconds a hoard of hermit crabs were fighting over it! The scene was hilarious. They also cracked me up the way they greeted each other like Dr Zoidberg in the TV series Futurama.
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| Woop, woop, woop, woop, woop as Dr Zoidberg would say... |
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| The big fight! |
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| The winner! |
In addition to hermit crabs, there were sea crabs everywhere in the park. They ranged from being blue to purple and then orange in colour. One section of the park we walked through was literally swarmed in them. You couldn't move for fear of treading on one!
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| One of the many crabs crawling around |
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| Check out this ones eyes! |
Unfortunately we didn't see any Sloth's which I have to say I was pretty upset about as two of my friends who had previously been to the park had raved about how cute they were. Hopefully elsewhere in Costa Rica we´ll spot some...
You may be wondering why I've made reference to Costa Rica also being know as Cost A Lot as the title of this blog? Well, funnily enough it is because everything from food, to wine to petrol in this country is expensive! I had no idea Costa Rica would be one of the most expensive countries in Central America. We've still got a fair bit to see here but I can safely say I am looking forward to getting to Nicaragua where I've heard it is meant to be much cheaper albeit not as developed as here. You win some, you lose some...
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