Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

A small surfing town on the South Atlantic cost of Costa Rica, Puerto Viejo is surrounded by amazing jungle that's teeming with wildlife. We surfed, we stayed the night in a treehouse, and we wished we were sad to leave. There's plenty to do around the area and even though we were there 5 days we barely scratched the surface.

Surfing on Cocles beach is a highlight

Getting There

We got a 10am bus from the "Atlantic North" terminal in San Jose, there is one every two hours (8am, 10am, 12am, 2am) run by MEPE. Tickets are around the 5000 Colon mark so it's quite expensive and it's better to show up early so you avoid getting a standing only ticket. It takes about 4-5 hours.

Where we stayed

• Playa 506 - great hostel to camp at though it's about 2.5km out of town. Great cocktails and right on the beach.
• Selina - Puerto Viejo - A little expensive but a great pool, bar & restaurant, and surfboard hire make it a great place to stay. Also a bit further out of town (around 1.5km)
• Nature Observatorio - A treehouse you can stay in about 20 kilometres out of Manzanillo.

Things to do

• Surf - Cocles beach can be a little rough but we went out on our own with no problems, you can rent boards at the beach but we got a far better deal at Selina.
• Stay in a treehouse - detailed in another blog post.
• Jaguar Rescue Centre - We didn't go but we heard this is a great place doing great things for the animals around Puerto Viejo. They don't have any Jaguars anymore, but that's definitely a good thing, if you ever want to see a baby sloth then this is the place to go.

Food and Drink

• Chile Rojo - Thai and Sushi place that does surprisingly good burgers.
• Gelateria Deelite - Incredible ice cream shop just opposite the bus station.

Journal

Arrival

The last blog post ended with us waiting to board a bus to Puerto Viejo from San Jose at the North Atlantic Terminal. The main issue with this was that we were waiting to board for a 4-5 hour journey with no seat, our tickets were standing room only. We boarded the bus and Kate immediately found a little bit of space down the bus where it was possible to sit down on the floor. She took up the position and wasn't going to give it up easily. I stayed standing next to her but would be able to sit on the floor too, if anyone else boarded the bus I'd sit down and stake my claim. The bus started moving soon after and started to pick up a few more passengers. I'd noticed that one of the seats hadn't been taken at this point and took a gamble and took it. I say a seat, it was more half a seat as the gentlemen in the window seat was a little overweight.

Standing room only (though you could still sit on the floor)

I read for a bit and and then tried to convince Kate - who was still sitting on the floor - that she might want to swap. We agreed that she'd take the seat from halfway. The bus stopped a few times for bathroom breaks etc, though we were keeping very close tabs on our spots as we didn't want to be left standing when we left the area free. Kate eventually took my seat, though unfortunately by this point the overweight gentlemen had started to not only generate an immense amount of heat, but also a rather pungent aroma. I took up a spot on the couple of steps at the front of the bus just behind the driver. It wasn't overly comfortable either, but it was okay for a couple of hours. After four hours on the bus it stopped at Limon which is Costa Rica's largest town on the Caribbean coast, however it is more a port than a tourist destination. At this point half the bus got off and I gratefully took a seat that had been left unoccupied.

After Limon the bus continued on through Cahuita, and then to Puerto Viejo on it's way to Sixoala on the boarder with Panama. We jumped off at Puerto Viejo where we were greeted by a beautiful Caribbean beach town. The hostel we wanted to stay at was called Playa 506 and it was about 3km down the coast on Cocles Beach, a popular surfing beach. We knew it was a little too far to walk with our bags so we were looking for a taxi when a woman working for Selina, Puerto Viejo asked us if we'd like to stay there. I knew that Selina was a little further out of town at the top of Cocles beach so we accepted the offer for a lift if only to get closer to our destination. When we got to Selina we were extremely tempted to stay on, it had a beautiful pool and not to mention some awesome surfboards for rent. We asked at reception for availability and though they did have some rooms available we decided to head to Playa 506 to check out their camping area which would save us a fair bit of money.

It's a bit of a walk to Playa 506

Even though the ride down to Selina had saved us a bit of a walk there was still a fair way to go to get to Playa 506, and even more than we expected as it turned out our maps application- maps.me - was incorrect about the location of Selina. By the time we got to the hostel we were very hot and sweaty, thankfully the hostel had a very nice, open reception area with trees and flowers providing shade. We booked in to the hostel and went to put the tent up. The tent area was a large, slightly overgrown grassy area, with a few palm trees and surrounded by a fence for security. It was probably the best camping spot we'd come across so far so we put the tent up in a shady area at the front of the grass a short walk away from the toilets and showers. There appeared to be a few ant nests, as well as what seemed to be some astronomically large grasshoppers, however they all seemed to be keeping themselves to themselves.

Some very hungry grasshoppers, luckily they didn't eat the tent

Day 1

Tent up and looking good

By the time we got the tent up it was getting quite late, we took a look at the menu at the Playa 506 restaurant and found it was a little more than we expected, we decided to walk back in to town to find some food there. When we got in to town the sun was setting over a sea and it looked awesome, we decided to look around a little bit to see what might be good and eventually settled on Chili Rojo which is a thai and sushi restaurant that also seemed to have cheap deals on burgers. Kate was going to get the thai curry and I was going to get the burger, so we both were happy! The food ended up being great and well worth it considering it would have been one of the cheapest deals we'd seen, we also got two for one cocktails so that was even better.

After dinner we decided to look for a tuktuk or a taxi to take us back to the hostel, after a couple minutes of looking around and waiting we gave up. We'd heard the road could be a little unsafe at night but at this point it seemed pretty busy and well lit so we decided to start in the direction and flag a taxi if we saw one. This turned out to be an awesome decision. About five minutes walk down the road we encountered a slightly busier stretch of road where people appeared to be standing around gormlessly and doing their best to make it very difficult to walk past. Kate followed many of their gazes and let out an exclamation! "What. is. that!?". Up on the power lines above the road was a very hairy looking alien.

The alien appeared to be trying to clamber across the power lines and weird looking limbs were being tentatively extended in order to find a better hold. It took us a couple of seconds to identify this funny looking thing as a sloth, and after a bit of research, a two toed sloth to be exact. This was amazing! There was a sloth just hanging out in town. We were slightly worried that the sloth would come to a grizzly end as it's arms and legs felt each powerline in turn, luckily no such thing happened. After a couple of slow minutes the animal started to make its way across the powerline to the otherside of the road where it was able to climb in to a tree. Meanwhile we had joined the gormless onlookers on the road and taken our cameras out to record the action. After 10 minutes or so the sloth had disappeared in to the tree and we decided to continue our walk back to the hostel,

The road definitely did get darker at times on the walk back to the hostel but overall it didn't seem to take that long and we made it back safely. When we got back it was still swealteringly hot so I took off the outer layer of the tent and planned to sleep with just the fly net. Hopefully I wouldn't have to get up in the middle of the night to put the outer on when it started raining.

Day 2

Despite having only the fly net over us it had still been a rather hot night with very little breeze. Overall though, it had been a very nice night, and it hadn't even tried to rain. For breakfast at Playa 506 (our hostel) you were provided with fruit, eggs and bread and you were able to cook the eggs as you like. We thought this was a great idea in theory, however as many of the other people staying at the hostel seemed to lack the ability to clean their pans in a timely manner it meant you either had to use a dirty pan (and then have to clean it through guilt), or clean the pan for them. Either way, those who got to the pans first ruined it for everyone else. We ended up finding a very small pan which we could use to leave the dirty pans to be cleaned up by those who used them!

The tent up at Playa 506 (with the outer layer off)

After breakfast we wandered in to town to have a look around. We looked around a few shops and Kate bought a very nice necklace. We also stopped off at one of the ice cream shops, Gelateria Deelite, in town which was absolutely delicious, definitely one I would recommend! We bought a couple of avocados from the supermarket and some bread from the puerto viejo bakery. We were originally planning on having this for lunch but as we were so hungry we got some small pizzas from the bakery which were nice and cheap and saved the rest for dinner.

When we got back to Playa 506 we went down to the beach for a few hours and I rented a surfboard from one of the guys on the beach. The board was a little old and I'm pretty sure we got ripped off but it was nice to tick surfing off the list on this trip! We had an early dinner and afterwards a couple of happy hour drinks at the hostels bar. At this point we saw a sign that if you do a review for the hostel online and show the bar you get a free cocktail. The cocktails were very expensive so we hadn't even considered getting any up until now. Within a couple of minutes we were showing the bar staff the reviews and we were placing our orders. The best bit was you could order any drink so we obviously went for the most expensive, Kate's even had chocolate on top. We were extremely impressed with the cocktails, they were on par with drinks we'd come to love in Melbourne where standards are extremely high. We had to use all our will power to stop ourselves from ordering more, the best way of doing that was to head to bed. It was a little cooler and so we drifted off to sleep with the sounds of the jungle around us.

Day 3

We got up early and excitedly made breakfast at the hostel; Today was the day I would redeem my birthday present! For my 30th birthday Kate had got me a night in a Costa Rican treehouse in a secluded part of the jungle; I was really looking forward to it, though Kate, with her fear of spiders was a little apprehensive.

We packed up the tent and got all washed before setting about packing our bags for the night in the treehouse. It's always a pain doing this because our main bags are already jam packed and we often need to move things around meaning we immediately forget where we've put things. We were aiming to get the 11:45am bus which goes down the main coastal road to Manzanillo where we'd meet the owner and guide of the treehouse. We made an early lunch and got told off by the hostel staff for being in the kitchen after checkout before we ran out to catch the bus.

The trip was an easy 15 minutes on a relatively empty bus down a very pretty and jungle fringed road. In Mazanillo we sat and waited at one of the restaurants and around 1pm Peter showed up to take us to our jungle destination.

As it was so spectacular I will cover the night in the treehouse in a separate post!

Day 4

We were given a lift by Peter back in to town, this time we decided to stay at Selina as we felt we needed a good nights sleep. Not because we slept badly in the treehouse, but because we were up with the dawn to see all the animals come out. Peter dropped us outside Selina and we wandered in to inquire about a room. They had a private room with shared bathroom available, it was around 40 USD a night so a little above our budget but we decided it was worth it, plus we might save money on surfboard rental!

After we dropped our things in our room we immediately got our dirty washing together and gave it to the hostel to wash - we'd been needing to do it for a while! Next we jumped in to the delightful swimming pool. The pool is right next to the bar and as we were a little peckish we also ordered some chips, and of course a few beers. They were definitely worth it. We spent a few hours by the pool and in the bar area, mostly in the shade as the sun was seriously hot.

The pools at Selina are truly great

As it got to the afternoon we though we would make use of the surf rental at Selina - they have a wide range of good quality surfboards which you can rent out for 20USD a day, or 10 USD for a half day. We took one board out for a half day with the aim of me teaching Kate everything I know about surfing - which is really very little. We took out a large training board also called a softtop as it's made of foam; The perfect board for a beginner to get the hang of standing up without having to worry about a very hard surfboard possibly hitting you in the face. The walk down to Cocles is about a kilometre or so with down a sandy track, and then along the beach to the save surfing area. Luckily the board had a handle built in otherwise it would have been a difficult walk!

We went out on Cocles beach which was rather crowded and a little difficult, with strange and varied currents along the long stretch of beautiful, golden sand. We both had a little go and surfing and Kate got the hang of standing up with me pushing the board when a wave came along. This allowed her to get the used to her balance without having to worry about paddling. I learnt the hard way that it's very important to make sure the leach is not wrapped around your arm when you give the board a push! After a few hours of catching (and also missing) waves we headed back to Selina and had a couple of happy hour beers before cooking up some spaghetti for dinner.

After dinner we were extremely tired after having a very long day. We decided we would stay another day rather than heading to Panama the next day. We were enjoying Selina and felt we'd enjoy another day of surfing. We slept extremely, extremely well.

Day 5

We had a well deserved lie-in in the morning and had a very slow start. We booked in for another night which was easy to do then after a breakfast of joghurt and muesli we headed in to town to buy a few things for lunch and dinner. As the walk to town is about 40 minutes this actually took a couple of hours as we looked around some of the shops again. By the time we got back it was time for lunch so I rustled up some omelettes which we had with a very nice salad a couple of other people had just made and couldn't finish. It really made the lunch!

Next up for another afternoon of surfing. We took out the same board as before which was a large and nice looking training board. We felt a little sore after the day before but also a little more confident and within an hour Kate was out paddling for waves on her own. I was free to watch and give pointers from the safety of the beach. We swapped over a few times and changed areas as the waves were very changeable, and some areas were also filled with oblivious swimmers. We did our best to not anyone with our boards, but some of them did like to make that as difficult as possible!

We wandered back as the sun started to set and had a few more Imperial beers to celebrate a good day of surfing. It was our staple of spaghetti and sauce for dinner followed by a night of blogging and an early night. We needed to be up in the morning to head to the 7th country of our trip. Panama.

Day 6

We woke up around 7ish to catch breakfast at the hostel. Selina hostels put on a breakfast buffet in the mornings which you can grab for 5 bucks, it's a great idea though the food wasn't amazing. We went up to pack up our things for Kate to notice one of her socks hadn't come back from the laundry. Either that or it was lost or maybe somewhere in the room (possibly in my things). We looked everywhere and it didn't turn up, on the off chance I went down to reception to ask if anything had shown up. The man at reception didn't seem overly confident but said he'd check and disappeared for a couple of minutes. He returned with the missing sock. I'm not sure whether he'd seen the sock in the machine, or where it had been the whole time but the prodigal sock had returned....it was still very wet though.

Kate packed up the wet sock and we put on our bags and decided to walk back in to town. It was a long way with our big bags but it was pretty overcast and once again there didn't seem to be another way. At the bus station we got a couple of tickets to Sixoala on the Costa Rica, Panama border. We had to wait about half an hour for the bus and then the bus took about an hour.

Waiting for the bus to Sixoala