Puerto Viejo

March 25, 2014

Puerto Viejo

I'm almost leaving Costa Rica and I didn't write yet any post from here.

What can I say about Costa Rica?

- nice beaches and forests

- reggae music

- drug

- danger

- good food (the traditional dish is rice and beans cooked in coconut milk)

- Italians everywhere

- lot of hippies, most of them from Argentina

Just few km from the border with Panama there is this little town called Puerto Viejo. Most of the beaches in the area are a paradise for surfers. I tried to swim in this water, but no way : the waves throw me out within few minutes. The town itself hasn't so much to offer, besides pubs, restaurants, hostels, souvenirs shops and drug. Yes, drug here can be found in every corner. You can find here also many Italians that immigrated here to live a simpler life. I saw more Italians here than in the whole trip.

Around the village there are lot of places to visit.

13 km from the Puerto Viejo there is a beautiful forest called Gandoca - Manzanillo. Me and a friend of mine decided to rent a bicycle to go there. I had to learn again riding a bike because it had no breaks, don't ask me why (no bike here has breaks) . Of course, during the ride it started raining, so we stopped after only 6 km at the Jaguar rescue center. No jaguar was there, but monkeys, toucans, snakes, anteaters, crocodiles and other animals. The centre isn't a zoo, but a refuge for wounded or sick animals that after healing will be freed again in their habitat.

After this stop, we managed to get to the park. It was worth the ride, the forest was beautiful but we didn't manage to see any animal.

Near Puerto Viejo there is another national park called Cahuita, that we visited the day after. Absolutely beautiful and full of life: squirrel, monkeys, iguanas, fishes, birds, snakes and insects.

Cahuita National Park

White headed capuchin

For the first time I managed to see also howler monkeys. In general you can easily hear them without see them. They usually hide themselves in high branches of the trees.

Howler monkey

When I decided to travel in Perù and Bolivia everyone warned me about the criminality in these countries. Some suggested me not to take tablet and camera with me. A friend gave me a bag with a lock to cover my backpack when travelling or when leaving the backpack in the hostel (D. Thanks so much, this bag is very useful and many tourists asked me where I bought it). Nothing happened there, I always felt very safe.

No one had much to say about Ecuador, probably because most of my friends didn't know that much about it (me included).

After that everyone was worried about me visiting Colombia, "the most dangerous country of South America". Everyone still associates Colombia to the Cartel de Medellin, but the country I visited was far away from that image. Very beautiful country and very safe as well.

I arrived to Panama but I crossed the country so fast that I can say much about it.

Then I arrived in Costa Rica, one of those countries in central America that we associated with beautiful beaches and forests, lot of tourism and richness. I wasn't worried at all about visiting this country, it seemed to me very safe. Till when few days ago I was attacked.

I was in Cahuita National Park, a beautiful forest on the Caribbean cost. I was walking with a friend, when he suddenly told me to stop and look ahead. Few seconds later one of them jumped on me and stole a plastic bag I had outside my backpack. Of course, they weren't satisfied (it was only garbage) and they tried to take my whole backpack with everything important I have (camera, wallet, credit card, tablet, passport) (in general I leave some of this stuff at the hostel, but where I was staying hadn't lockers). One of them jumped on me, grabbed my bag with all his strength and didn't want to leave it. He showed me his teeth and gave a bite to my leg. These two MONKEYS weren't afraid at all! I didn't expect at all this behaviour, so I really didn't know what to do. Fortunately my friend managed to take it away from me with a wood stick and then we run away... From what someone told me the day after, these monkeys were used to get food from guides and tourists and now that it's forbidden to feed them, monkeys became very aggressive.