Sunday, April 14th, 2019

Start and Day 2 of Full Costa Rica adventure by Bamba Experience

Todays itinerary:

“Around 8:00 am you will be picked up from your accommodation and transferred to the beach town of Puerto Viejo. Make your way to your accommodation for check-in and enjoy the rest of the day at your leisure. Relax, explore, and make yourself at home in this Caribbean paradise.

Overnight in Puerto Viejo”

I pack my stuff, leave heavy hiking gear in the hotel (5 USD per day, 11 days, pay upfront, first hotel in 4 months Latin Americas where you have to pay to leave stuff, remind: NEVER go HILTON).

I get a coffee at the restaurant.

At 7:15 am my shuttle to Puerto Viejo is here, right in time. I enter the interbus, get a ticket for my luggage in the trunk, another information, that I somewhere on the way to Puerto Viejo will have to change the bus, but that the driver will take care.

The ride starts. My driver tries to win the 1001st GP with his Toyota mini bus. When we wait at a traffic light, the bus sounds like a F16 before catapult-start. A dashcam puts that ride live on youtube, I assume. Hopefully traffic police has no youtube.

20 min break on a grass field of Guápiles. Interbusses meet here and exchange passenger and luggage. New driver, new people in the bus.

The otherbus goes even faster. he is unhappy as a pitstop is required. we stop, then we continue. 10 minutes later next pitstop at a souvenir shop. Aha. We drop couple after couple at hotels on the path to Puerto Viejo. Last hotel, we should go off, too. Not our hotel. I call the hotel inteded to be our hotel, yes, they have a renovation. The driver resignes and brings us there.

We change to a 40+ years yellow Toyota Landcruiser. He drives up a hill.

At 12:30 room is not ready, yet. The guy at the reception if samsati yoga and wellness retreat is super friendly and recommends us to go to Cahuita National Park. We just take swimming stuff, take a taxi there for 20 USD, go to the supermarket for ice cream and enter the park for a donation of 5 USD. We walk a bit, swim, walk, swim, then the ranger, who closes at 4 pm the park comes the hiking path along. So we turn around, swim once more, and leave.

I whatsapp the taxi and we drive home, next 20 usd.

I get the room. fatanstico.

I go to the jacuzzi – cold during the day, hot in the night. It seems to be nicht already.

Dinner. Vegetarien. I eat a lot of sides. Glutenfree beer. It is short before armageddon.

Accommodation: Samasati Yoga & Wellness Retreat and Rainforest Sanctuary, Puerto Viejo

Hall of Fame in Tripadvisor for 5 years, voted by Travel & Leisure magazine as a TOP5 yoga and wellness retreat, vegetarian gourmet kitchen; next time I rwad what I boom, good luck I had a HardRock cafe burger yesterday. At least beer is vegetarian.