Puerto Viejo

For our fifth weekend, Jillian and I decided to head to the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. After talking to a few people at Maximo, we decided Puerto Viejo would be the place to see. This trip began much like all of our others, with a really REALLY long bus ride. And when we finally arrived, nearly everything in the entire town was booked. One of the hostel owners explained that it was because of the Costa Rican national holiday happening the following Monday. We eventually found a place though, and after getting settled in, we headed to the grocery store to buy our stuff for lunch over the next few days.

After that, we decided to head off to one of the Lonely Planet recommended restaurants. The food there was rather sub par, but Jillian and I made the best of the situation by playing cards while we waited for our food. On our way back to the hostel, we wandered around the little town and looked at some of the wares being peddled by the street merchants.

The next morning, it was raining pretty heavily, so we waited in our room until about 11:00 for it to finally let up. It was then that we decided to do a late breakfast at one of the places recommended by Lonely Planet and we were pleasantly surprised by its awesomeness. The place was called Bread and Chocolate, and naturally with a name like that you can guess why Jillian and I loved it. I actually had the best french toast I have ever had in my life at this little place. Anyway, by the time we finally made it out to the beach it was close to noon. This turned out to be just perfect though because as we made our way along Playa Negra (Black Beach), there were hardly any people around us.

Okay, I know this is place was a "black sand beach," but I seriously could not get over the fact that the sand was actually BLACK! 

Playa Negra

Once we'd walked a little ways away from town, we set our stuff down and played around in the gigantic waves. It was honestly one of the most fun times I have ever had in the ocean. The waves were big, but didn't have extreme riptides. At one point, Jillian and I decided that we needed to build a sandcastle and so we set out to recreate the central watt of Ancient Angkor. We got pretty far along, and for the most part our dual-ditch-defense system worked well. But then a huge wave came and over took the entire thing leaving us with this...

The once great sandcastle of Angkor. 

With our architectural dreams somewhat dashed, we returned to the water for a little while longer and continued to get dossed around by the Caribbean. 

Beautiful rock sitting in the sand along the beach.

From the beach, we decided to head back to the hostel until we were ready for dinner as we were both totally exhausted. We ended up dining at a little place that specialized in fish dishes and while it was good, it far from knocked our socks off. The next morning we decided to take a little walk around the town and the beach since we had to catch the early bus home. 

Birds resting on some drift wood on the beach

Playa Blanca

Never smile at a crocodile 

Tide Pools of Playa Blanca

More drift wood. 

Random pretty flower.

Looking across the bay at Playa Negra

Mangrove Tree. These things are freaking amazing. They have the ability to live in salt water because they siphon off all the excess salt into certain sacrificial leaves to allow the rest of the tree to live. 

Upon seeing this, I decided that I wanted to live in a beach house. 

Tide Pool. 

Playa Blanca looking out to Playa Negra

Little boats in the harbor. 

Little purple flowers on the side of one of the buildings. 

Hammocks hanging out side of one of the many souvenir shops. 

Local grocery store

View of the beach from the main road

Quaint little church. 

More cool buildings. 

On our way out of the city, Jillian and I decided to do something we've never done in Costa Rica: return to a place we'd already patronized. We set up this rule so as to experience as much of the food of this county as possible. But Bread and Chocolate was so amazingly good, that we just had to come back and try their desserts. 

One of our favorite places in all of Costa Rica. 

And so, two decadent and chocolate filled desserts later, we were ready to head back to San Jose. All in all, Puerto Viejo was not all that amazing, but it wasn't terrible either. The tourist focused "Rasta" culture was not too appealing to us, but the beaches were fun, even if they were a little buggy... More than anything though, I think Jillian and I enjoyed having the chance to relax, feeling the sand between our toes and just letting time pass us by.