Puerto Viejo de Talamanca
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| waiting, and waiting... |
It takes about 30 minutes to go the 8 miles from Manzanillo to here. As a matter of fact, I originally intended to drive up to Cahuita just to the north but the road was shut down because people were protesting the terrible conditions of the roads around here. The guy in charge stole the money and now he's in jail. I don't know where the money is. After waiting over an hour I turned around, drove back into Puerto Viejo and found a $25 room at the Pura Vida Hotel.
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| P.V. bay area |
P.V. is a town that is full of surfers and backpackers and is a place I got hit up to buy drugs maybe as often as over at Bocas del Toro, which is saying something. The coastline is mostly black beach and rocky points, pretty to look at, but it's really a surf destination. They have a bit of a crime problem around here (see: drugs) that was even reported on in the English newspaper,
Tico Times, when I was there. I tried the food at several different places but was never impressed, except by the size of the bill. Other people love it, but my money is on Manzanillo to the south.
Cahuita
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| view from the Piscina hammock area...very nice |
Less than another 30 minutes north is the small town of Cahuita. This town is somewhere between Manzanillo and Puerto Viejo in size and has just the one paved road. Most of the accomodations, at least the better ones to my eye, stretch out over the front of Playa Negra that goes north of the town. I found a place called Piscina Natural for $30 (they started at $35, but I always ask). The woman who lives there is Patty from Manitou Springs, CO. (Man, we're everywhere!). She has created this beautiful garden area that has to be seen to be appreciated. And the hammock area is pretty special. Rooms could use some more light.
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| square plates...here! |
A long walk into town brings me to Miss Ediths, a restaurant that has a certain amount of fame according to all 3 of my guidebooks. Gotta try it. It's about 1:30 and I'm the only one there. Things are supposedly cooked from scratch here and it does take at least 45 minutes to get my meal (most restaurants take forever down here, it seems). It's some kinda smoked Caribbean dish with root vegetables in a sublime (really, sublime) coconut sauce. It's good, but what shocked me was the square plate. Of all places. I'm a sucker for the square plate presentation.
Puerto Viejo Sarapiqui
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| my digs at La Selva |
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| some kind of guan? |
After almost 2 weeks on the ocean, it's time to drive inland. First, the road goes north through Puerto Limon, a place I'm only too eager to just get past, yet there is a cruise ship docked here for some reason. They can have it. The road west and then north up to the next Puerto Viejo is fairly uninteresting and made too long due to all the slow semis that use the same 2-lane to cross the country. I made a reservation at the La Selva Biological Reserve which is mainly a living laboratory of the rainforest and it's home to lots of students and researchers and serious birdwatchers. These guys all have fancy binoculars and super-zoom lens cameras. I'm probably the only one here without a clear "purpose" and my pocketsize camera is feeling a bit inadequate (too wet out to use the good camera). One man I met from Boston bears a striking resemblance to Wally Cox.
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| the walk thru a swampy area |
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my "backup toucan" pic.,
in a cage in Panama |
A woman I met over dinner - it's cafeteria food which means it really sucks - is from Iowa State U. and studies the carbon capture abilities of different trees. It sounds interesting and important but she is such a quiet talker I missed most of it. On my one full day there I had booked a guided walk through part of the rainforest with some other folks. Of course, it's raining most of the time (my golf umbrella is the envy of Wally Cox) and we don't get to see much. I see some toucans from a great distance and lots of the cool tiny red frogs. But, my little pocket camera can't zoom to the toucans (score one for Wally) and zooming into the frogs yields nothing but a red blur. Still, this is a nice change of pace from the busy beaches.
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