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Published: December 27th 2008
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Feliz Navidad from Costa Rica!
Our first impressions of arrival in San Jose were a bit mixed. First impression: it is just like any big North American city with McDonalds, Subway, and Denny´s everywhere! (a complete contrast to Nicaragua where there were no chains to be found as far as we saw). Second impression: it is like a city in South Africa, with many buildings being surrounded by high fences and barbed wire, the only thing missing was the electric fences. Third Impression: it´s seedy. For example, a conversation in the taxi went like this, "Gosh, that skinny girl in the short skirt and high heels looks kind of like a man!" to which the taxi driver commented, "Si, es un hombre" (a man) Hmmm, this city seems to be a fusion of North America, South Africa, and the dodgier parts of Thailand!
Needless to say, we got out as soon as possible and headed to our first real Costa Rican destination, the beach and surf town of Puerto Viejo. Scott came here on a surfing holiday many years ago and it was completely different - just a couple of places to stay, one or two reggae bars, and
no-one on the beach apart from Scott, his friend and a little local kid who´d follow them. Now, tourism has grown and the town has grown considerably. There are accommodations everywhere, everything from simple surf retreats where you sleep in either a tent or a hammock, right up to fancy $100+ a night hotels. We actually love our hippie hotel, with it´s colorful mosaic walkways and hand-painted flowers on the walls. There are also a variety of restaurants, each one with a menu more gourmet than the last. Gone are the days of fajitas de pollo in Nicaragua. This has been replaced by items such as mozzarella and tomato paninis with caramelised onions or organic wood-fired pizzas. The only problem is that they have US prices to match!
We spent three days here over Christmas. On the first, we walked through the forest path to Cocles beach to watch the surfers while drinking coconut milk straight from the source. The next was Christmas Eve and was raining off and on. We hired bikes and explored some of the more remote beaches further away. On Christmas day the sun came out again for a final beach day. There was obviously
a storm somewhere, though, as the waves were huge. The lifeguards had to jump in on one occasion to save somebody who´d ventured out too far, and rogue waves kept flooding everyone´s towels once in a while, keeping you on your toes, poised to pick everything up at the drop of a hat. The beach was pretty crowded, but it was actually a good thing as we were told that if you leave anything unattended on the beach, it will be taken ¨siempre¨(always!) Yikes! At lkeast there were plenty of other tourists to look after your things.
During the evening, we went to many of Puerto Viejo´s lovely restaurants and just bit the bullet in terms of price. The only downfall was that there was a crowd of seedy men hanging around, just waiting to pounce on all the girls and talk to them. For some reason, they thought that throwing fire crackers would impress us on Christmas eve. Wrong! One of them even had a tiny baby in his arms and was setting off huge rocket fireworks in the streets holding him - nuts! We all got up and left right away - I quite value my eyesight!
Wherever you spent the holidays, I hope they were fun, festive, and fire-cracker free! 😊
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