Wednesday 30 January 2013
Highlights: The Beach at Puerto Viejo, Mountains during bus ride.
An early morning start for the first full day of this tour as we had to be at reception at 5.30 am for a taxi to the bus station. Everyone managed to be on time so that is a good start. Our Tour Leader Lisa organised allocated tickets the night before which was good foresight as people buying tickets on the day had to stand up on this 4 hour bus ride and that would not have been much fun.
I was allocated a seat next to Lisa which gave me a chance to get to know our new tour leader. I appreciated her insights. The views of the mountains were spectacular especially with the mist partially covering some of them . The bus ride did start to warm up as we went with no air-conditioning. Lisa paid the bus driver extra money to drop is of in front of the hotel in Puerto Viejo and is she knew the driver he was happy for the arrangement as was the group 🙂
The hotel overlooks one of the local beaches, this one has dark sand due to underwater volcanoes. We are located on the Caribbean Sea so sea food is back on the menu. Lisa reminded us not to drink to local water, anywhere else in Costa Rica is fine but not in Puerto Viejo.
An orientation walk to the town and lunch was the major activity for the day after arrival. A few of us also went out to celebrate Dotty’s birthday for dinner and returned to the hotel bar for a few drinks.
The weather is more humid here and I understand that it will only get worse from this point onwards, a fact I should have remembered when I changed into jeans for the dinner. That is the last time I suspect I’ll wear them in Central America!
Nathan's Insights 