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Published: September 29th 2008
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My Room!
This is a picture of the room that I stayed in! Hola! A white sand beach, Carribean music & food and fruity smoothies with umbrella straws.... Yes that was my weekend in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica! But before I share with you my weekend travels, I do go to school the rest of the week....
Thursday & Friday I had school in the morning, On Thursday afternoon I went to Grecia to go for the afternoon. It is such a cute town with great restaurants! I like to go to my favorite café called Café Delicias for coffee & pastries or cake, like the double chocolate or German chocolate. It’s a great way to enjoy an afternoon! On Wednesday night, Lauren & I decided to try a ‘Spinning Class,’ on stationary bikes at a gym in a nearby town. It’s hard enough sometimes taking a class in English or in the United States, let alone in Spanish. Needless to say, I knew all of the important words like “Faster, slower, sit, stop etc...” It was a lot of fun and the gym is really neat! This week, I think we are going to try an Aerobic class! That could be interesting for sure, I’ll let you all know how it goes!
The front of our Cabina!
This is the front of our room, there were 5 girls who I stayed with! 😊 Although I’ve found a new love for walking. I have to walk everywhere around here, but it really is great exercise and since it is all hills around here, even better exercise!
So the good stuff now.... my weekend travels!!! I went to Puerto Viejo, which is in the southeastern part of the country. It took about 4-4.5 hours on the bus to get there. And an additional hour to get from school to San Jose (the capital of CR and where all of the busses depart to go basically everywhere in the country). Anyways, we arrived at about 6:30 PM on Friday night. We found our hotel, Cabinas Jacaranda, for only $10 per night!! I was in a room with 4 other girls. The hotel was really cute and the hotel was run by this super nice lady! It was one block from the main road and all of the restaurants, which made for peacefully sleeping! The town is situated literally right on the beach! The main road runs parallel along the beach and all of the restaurants and shops are along this road. Puerto Viejo is in the providence of Limon (one of the 7 of
CR). Limon is very different than the others culturally speaking. It has a lot of Carribean influences. I didn’t think that it was going to be true until I got there. Everything from the music to the food to the people definitely has a Carribean flare! The food was delicious too! On Friday night, right after we arrived we went for dinner. I had some Carribean Jerk Chicken - a little spicy but so tasty! Also a side note, the roads here are really not paved, they are mostly just big rocks and dirt really packed in. Basically this made for tons of pot holes and dirt everywhere, not to mention sand as well. It was also really humid and tons of mosquitoes and bugs because we were surrounded by either the ocean or palm trees! But don’t worry, I slept under a mosquito net!
We woke up bright and early Saturday morning to hit the beach to find that it was raining! So we headed for some breakfast instead, at a delicious restaurant called Bread & Chocolate. I think it was made for me! They had all home made breads, pancakes, fresh fruits, waffles, eggs and much much
A pretty flower!
i love the flowers here! more! Finally it stopped raining by 10am so we headed to explore the town. (Btw, here was a group of 10 of us who traveled to Puerto Viejo). We walked along the beach for a while, but then decided to rent some bikes to ride for the day and to ride to the better beaches which were down the way farther. For $2, we rented bikes for 24 hours! What a great deal - that’s why I love CR! Although, see picture, these bikes look like Wizard of Oz bikes or Brady Bunch Family bikes with the funky old handle bars and baskets in front. After getting acquainted with my pink bike and learning that I didn’t have handle breaks, we were off to find us a great beach. Even though the it was cloudy and humid, it was still really warm! We rode for about 15-20 minutes and found a gorgeous beach just like the postcards! If it would have been sunny it would have been perfect, but needless we still had a great time!
For dinner we headed to TE’s! It’s the restaurant in the hotel that a couple of kids from our group were staying at.
My Bike!
We rented bikes for the day! Although this is no regular hotel, you rent tents or hammocks for the night for $6 or $5! Yes there is a huge concrete place with a roof and rows of at least 70 tents. They are all numbered and you even get your own locker. Hammocks are the same way, you rent one for the night and they are all hanging in rows! Interesting concept! Anyways, the owners are brothers from Arizona, one who is a chef! They had great food, live music, and fire dancers! It was a great start to our night! Then we headed to the Discoteca for more dancing and great music! Along with playing a majority of reggae music, they did play a couple of American songs which was awesome! This place was literally steps from the ocean and of course it was all out door with an awesome atmosphere and candles everywhere! Also all along side the road were people who hand-made all kinds of jewelry from shells and really neat beads. I bargained with some of them and got a great deal on a turquoise necklace for $4!!
Of course, Sunday we woke up to the most sunny sky and perfect
beach weather, but we had already bought tickets for the 11AM bus home! Traveling really stinks sometimes because it takes so long and so often it is best to leave in the morning!
All in all, I think we all had a great weekend! It’s crazy to think that I have been here for 1 month already! I have loved traveling and seeing the country and I can’t wait to see what the next 2.5 months has to come!
Thanks for reading & God Bless 😊
Courtney
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