Costa Rica

And traveling to Puerto Viejo

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Lots more photos today! We started at 8:30am with a buffet breakfast in the hotel. Standard hotel fare, but it was quick and convenient and at 10am our car rental place arrived to pick us up and drive us to our chariot for the next 2 weeks.

Miranda had done a ton of research on various car rental places and decided on Vamos, a decision which turned out wonderful so far. These guys were super friendly, and also the best deal in the area – because they don’t use brand new cars. Our RAV4 has a good number of scratches and a few dings, but whatever, we’re going to be driving it through some strange places anyway, so whatever!

Here’s a few photos along the drive to Puerto Viejo.

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We didn't want to drive through the city, but Google Maps lied to us, where a local map told the truth and we were forced to.
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Driving through the city.
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Dude is walking in between traffic trying to sell food.
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Drove past this sheet metal town on the road out of the city to the Caribbean.
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The view on the highway.
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The front of this truck had been completely ripped off. No idea how.
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Yay driving!
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We stopped at a little place called Soda Santa Clara. The food was cheap and plentiful. Rice'n'beans'n'chicken!

The drive was around 5 hours long, but it didn’t feel that long for some reason. There was a lot to see while driving, which is part of why I like doing it.

We arrived in Puerto Viejo and quickly found our accomodations for the next couple days. This town is neat – the guidebook says that it’s only just growing out of it’s rasta/hippie roots, and it shows. Lots of people walking the streets, lots of people on the beaches swimming, and a ton of good food to eat!

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Panorama of our place for the next few days.
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Miranda finds cats where ever she goes. This one lives in our place.
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This is just a side of the road kitty...he was sleeping on the porch of a local business in Puerto Viejo.
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Dinner/snack at Flip Flops. No booze and nothing was really gripping us, but the guacamole was tasty.
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Guac and ceviche. Lots of ceviche for sale around, but we didn't try it until we could see the ocean.
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For reals dinner, a meat pizza with rosemary and some drinks.

We were pretty tired after the drive, so we wandered and got some groceries and planned tomorrow and fought with WordPress about uploading the photos that Miranda took while I was driving. 😛

The SIM cards and data plans were $18 each, from yesterday. It was something like a $1USD a day for some megabytes per day, or $18 for the month for 4gb, so we spent the extra dollar not to care. Service isn’t perfect – ie, nobody puts up a cell tower in the middle of nowhere, but it’s good in towns and we’re using it lots for the maps and the translation.

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