Oct 31- Find that bus to Puerto Viejo!

Oh look! A Wal-mart! Ha. Not the best view, but since we arrived at night, I was excited to open the blinds this morning and see mountains in the distance.

We passed out around midnight the first night and set the alarm for around 7am the next day. We had to call an uber to take us to the bus station in downtown San Jose, as a taxi would be a lot more money. I had no idea that they had Ubers in Costa Rica, and they use the Waze app to get around! Must be a city thing.   I checked Waze the night before and it said it would take us around 20 minutes to get downtown seeing as it is only 15km, but we woke up in the morning to lots of traffic outside, and the “20 minute” ride now says 1:10hrs……UNNGGGGGG

Thankfully we did plan on leaving around 8:30am to get to the bus station early for the 10am bus, so we grabbed an uber just after 8am instead. We skipped the morning coffee since we were pressed for time, which was just as well because the bus has no washroom and wouldn’t stop for a break until it hits Puerto Limon, 4 hours away.  We made it to the station around 9am to buy tickets and wait with everyone else.  The buses can sometimes be really early and they don’t always wait, so we wanted to be early as possible. This one showed up on time and we hit the road at 10.

Sweet success. The best way to get from San Jose to the Caribbean side (Cahuita, Puerto Viejo, Manzanillo) is by bus, as it is approx $11us/person. You can obviously rent a car if you want to, or grab a shared shuttle for around $50-$60us/pp, but one is no faster than the other. We know we will end up using shuttles for the rest of the trip, so we are saving some moola where we can;). This is not a local bus making multiple stops, it is an express coach bus and we only had 2 stops before we made it to our destination.

The drive was scenic, we were into the mountains within minutes of departing. There was like, 300ft of jungle on either side of the bus for a bit, with some narrow bits with a guardrail that wouldn’t do shit if we hit a puddle and plummeted down the side of those cliffs. At least the roads were dry and our driver looks like he could drive this blindfolded, so that was AOK with me. I did spot about 8 monkeys along the coast inbetween Puerto Limon and Puerto Viejo;)
Total driving time was 5 hours, getting us into Puerto Viejo at 3pm.

We are staying at a sweet AirBnB just outside of Puerto Viejo called Hone Creek. Jayr is the “superhost” and since we were not renting a vehicle he offered to pick us up from the bus station and bring us to the house and show us around!  He owns a few rental properties and works with a local hotel (Banana Azul) as well. He had to drop off another couple at the Azul on the way, so we got a quick tour of this beachfront boutique hotel, and were told that we can go hang out there,  use the beach or pool and rent the bicycles if needed.

The house is a 5 minute drive from the beach, but would be a 40 minute walk on the windy road.

Click Here to view the listing on Airbnb

This place is big for 2 people, it can sleep 10! But for the price, it was still cheaper than most places closer to the beach. It is open air concept but with air conditioning in the bedrooms. The top and bottom floor are similar, both with kitchens/hammocks/bedroom/bathroom/sitting area. It isn’t too far from the road, but you feel like you are in the jungle here. We took a few hours to get settled and decided to go into town for some dinner/drinks as it was Halloween!

Jayr gave us his friend Roberto’s phone number, as he is also a local and can show us around/take us anywhere we wanted. We called him up and he was here in 10 minutes to take us into town and show us the grocery store/pharmacy and good places to eat/hang out. We ended up staying for dinner and drinks at Nema’s, which is right downtown across from the beach and the decor is much like our tiki hut in the backyard. It is a great people watching spot and a favorite spot of a few of the locals including Roberto. We had some shrimp tacos/chips/guacamole and a bunch of Imperial beers. We met a few of Roberto’s friends as well, and they helped us get a cab home at the end of the night. We are still working on our Espanol, and the house doesn’t technically have an address so its difficult to describe to the cab drivers even in Spanish. ($6 cab ride home)

We got home around 11 maybe? I was so ready to come back a few hours earlier but I pushed it, as Jay could have stayed all night.  I was tired from the travel and it will take me a few days to get used to the time difference. Sunrise here is around 5am and Sunset is closer to 5:30pm. It’s not like it’s a 12 hour time difference I KNOW, but if you know me well you know that I love my bed. After it has been dark for at least 2 hours, my body thinks its bedtimes. By the sounds of the jungle, people say you wake up when the howler monkeys go off around 5am, and usually go to bed earlier. That works for me! (Going to bed early, not sure about up at 5……)

Stay tuned…