Puerto Viejo

Our first excursion to the very laid back Caribbean coast. Puerto Viejo is close to the Panamanian border.

Getting there
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The bus journey from San José goes along a national park as it negotiates the Central Valley and then into banana plantations as it descends to the coast. The scenery is luscious and green, and the banana plantations were huge and ranged in every direction. After reaching Puerto Limón we turned and continued the journey along the Caribbean coast until we got to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca itself.

Building the railroad
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When they decided in the 1860s to build a railroad to the Caribbean, the government subcontracted the project to an American entrepreneur. Most of the workers died from malaria (in some years, almost 90%). Locals stopped applying for jobs, and after employing convicts from the US and Chinese immigrants they started hiring recently freed and unemployed slaves from Jamaica. The main population on the Caribbean coast are still descendants of these former slaves, and they speak English and a Jamaican patois, as well as Spanish.

Surfers’ paradise
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Puerto Viejo is a really nice, laid-back village, with the lethargy supported by a lot of marijuana, the smell of which is everywhere. It’s hugely popular with surfers, mainly because of the ‘Salsa Brava’, a large wave that is out in the bay just before the reef. Puerto Viejo is like a little piece of Jamaica, with Jamaican flags and pictures of Bob Marley everywhere, and reggae constantly playing. There is a beach all along one side of the village. This time, we could sit on the beach and watch the lightning in the distance from hurricane Emily.

Cocles beach
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The beach in Puerto Viejo itself is quite crowded, and there is a reef, so has fewer places where you can swim. We walked along the coast to the nearby Cocles beach, which is quite beautiful. It has great big waves, but you have to be very careful to observe the life guard flags because there are very strong rip currents.

Farewell to Fionn
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Fionn left today, Monday. We headed into San José for his booze-up on Saturday. He’s been a great help to us since we arrived, and has become a good friend, and we’re going to miss him.

Harry Potter
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Harry Potter mania reaches as far as San José. The Librería Internacional has had a countdown clock to its release on Saturday. We went in to buy a copy on our way back from Puerto Viejo, and everyone in the queue was buying a copy, even though it’s currently only released in English.

We’re heading off on Wednesday to the little village of Tortuguero. Again it’s on the Caribbean coast, but it’s not accessible by road, and the last part of our trip will be by boat along canals.

Hasta luego