Puerto Viejo Part 2

The remainder of the trip went pretty quick. This could be because we were watching movies. On the entire trip from San Jose to La Selva and then to Puerto Viejo we watched the entire Bourne trilogy. A couple of interesting facts…1.) I never sleep on buses 2.) I have seen the first and third Bourne movie but not the second…on this trip I finally slept on a bus and it happened to be while the second Bourne movie was playing, oh well. When we got to Puerto Viejo we checked into our hotel immediately. I roomed with Marty and Bob. We had a pretty sweet room and the guys next to us Plump, Peter, and big John had what we called the honeymoon suite. It was amazing with a master bed then a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a second bedroom. The biggest room anyone had on the trip hands down. Several of us took time before dinner to explore town with g-money. The coolest part of town was little shops along the beach where vendors sold lots of cool souvenirs. Some people bought stuff here but I thought I would save my money for the market in San Jose which has similar stuff for cheaper. Puerto Viejo is a nice little town but I like to call it “Jamaica Jr.” There was Rastafarian stuff everywhere, and if I were counting on my fingers and toes how many times I was offered drugs I would have ran out in a few hours. My favorite encounter came in a small shop and it involved Bob, Matt, and myself. We were looking at the guys stuff and a huge “piece pipe” caught my eye so I picked it up. He said it cost 45 dollars but for us it would be 35…this is what all the vendors do to make tourists feel special…he then proceeded to tell me he had the best weed to. Then he also offered us cocaine. Then Bob in all his infinite wisdom told the man that his hats were stupid. This is a bit of an exaggeration. Bob actually said the hats would look stupid on us because we were white, but in any case I felt it was the wrong thing to say at the time. We left shortly after that and never returned to that shop. We had a so so dinner at a place in town and did some more shopping then it was time to check out the night life. We all hung out in the honey moon suite for a bit playing games and watching bad music videos then we made our way to a karaoke bar. We sang some song from a limited selection and had a few drinks then we decided to find a good reggae bar. We never found the one we were looking for but in our search we heard loud base and followed it to club roots. This was a typical bar that played lots of techno, rap, and local music and it was very fun. Once again every time someone went to the bathroom we had to fight off the drug dealers. We all some great fun drinking, dancing, and watching the late night entertainment and also watching people light every time the fog machine turned on. I have never seen so many people smoking weed in public before. One really cool thing is that the bar was on the water so some of us hung out by the water for a while. It was really cool when the lightning in the distance lit up the whole sky…even though Stephanie never seemed to see it despite me telling here when and where to look several times. We made our way back to the hotel in waves and pretty much everyone was asleep by 3 or 4 and we had some fun taking picture of certain people in their various states.
The next morning we had some serious breakfast before we left for the other place we were staying Manzanillo (spelling?). This place was amazing. The resort we stayed at was called Las Palmas and it was the best place yet hands down. I stayed with Marty and Bob again and our room was awesome. The shower was huge, we each had our own big bed, the t.v. which we rarely used was nice, and basically you had to see it to believe it. Las Palmas had a really nice pool which we utilized to the fullest and a solid beach which we also use quite a bit. The food here was amazing and everyone had an amazing time there.
Right when we got there we all hit the beach. It took a while to get everyone in the water but it happened eventually. Some people played Frisbee or swam around for a while others were hanging out on the beach then some of us took off down the beach looking for the big waves, and we found them pretty quickly. After a good body surfing session we headed back to find some people swimming and others playing volleyball so a few people decided to check out the pool. I realized how much more I like fresh water than salt water at this point. We had an amazing dinner then me and Bob rounded up a nap crew to take a nap in our room. I think there were around 9 people at one point in the nap session. We woke up to find that everyone else was doing the same thing. I myself never got a nap because I was watching the movie. We played some cards, had some drinks, and swam for the rest of the evening. Peter, Bob, JC, and myself had the longest game of hearts ever and after that Bob, Diane, Steph, and I decided it was time for night swimming in the sea. That lasted for about 10 minutes when Peter said this is when the sharks were out and we were all knocked over by a wave. We hit the pool after that. We had a fun time swimming and I tried to get everyone to stay up all night to watch the sun rise with me which was an idea many people had been throwing around. No one felt like it so we decided to play a few card games then nap and get up for the sunrise. While we were playing cards P.J. and Evan found their way to where we were because apparently everyone else was asleep. This is when the idea of staying up was brought up again and one way or another me and P.J. got them all to commit. Evan, P.J, me, Bob, Steph, Heidi, and Diane was the late night crew. We hit the beach and decided we had to do something or all of us were going to fall asleep. We played some fun games that never get old even though I usually reserve them for high schoolers and girls but they were fun none the less. We had a ton of fun that night but it was cloudy in the morning. We had a long debate over whether the sun was up or not in the morning. We are pretty sure now that the sun came up around 430 or sometime close to that and P.J. and myself were trying to convince the group that it still was not up at 515. Some of the highlights of the night were Evan falling asleep mid sentence, Evan trying to use the bathroom in the ocean (it would not let him), Bob and P.J. posing on the log, shots at four in the morning, and the hole that P.J. dug with one foot all night that no one saw until morning. Everyone went to bed at different times. P.J. was third to last but Steph and I did not get any sleep except a twenty minute nap until the next night. We were up all night and pretty much all day. The next day we did more of the same. Pool, cards, reading, pictures, beach, food, and some took a trip to town. Around three some of us decided to get a jump start on the night to come. Chase, Morell, Emily, and myself made good friends with the bar tender and after dinner everyone joined us…even g-money. We all had a good time that night but some of us more than others. The nights events included a bon fire, more swimming, beach time, bar time, and JC, Bob, and myself trying to make a wave pool in our huge shower right before bed.
The weekend was amazing and the next morning it was time to head back to San Jose. The ride home went pretty quickly and this is going to be a long week. We have to finish up our final paper, our final presentation, take our final, finish blogging, go shopping for souvenirs, and try to go bungee jumping. Should be an interesting last week.