Puerto Viejo - Days 7 & 8

Puerto Viejo - Days 7 & 8

Yesterday we started our day with what has become our morning ritual - walking leisurely to Pan Pay for breakfast by the beach. This time, though, we stopped along the way to rent bikes. Jonathan & I had been walking the 2 miles or so into town and back for the last couple days. It's totally flat and a lovely walk, and since we didn't have anywhere we needed to be, we figured, why not walk? But today we wanted to go farther down the coast, so we splurged on the $5 bikes!  Everyone around here rides bikes, and most all of them have baskets on the front. A lot of them have a little bike seat welded right in front of the real seat so that a child (or sometimes a fully grown adult) can ride there along with the person peddling. Kids also ride in the baskets in front, or in a baby seat behind the rider, or really anywhere.  No one wears helmets, and I'm sure the child safety folks would have a fit, but I haven't seen any accidents. And if there was one, I doubt it would be anywhere as bad as a car accident on our freeways!

After breakfast Jonathan & I ventured farther south down the beach, past Playa Chiquito and down to Punta Uva, which is a beautiful half moon bay area with much quieter water for swimming. 

Biking is the perfect speed for me- I get there faster than walking, but I still have time to look at every place we pass. We would have liked to swim at Punta Uva, but we had to head back up the road to make it to our next destination at 11:30. 

The Jaguar Rescue Center was our big plan for the day. It's a private animal rescue center run by 2 biologists (1 Spanish and 1 Italian) who used to both work at the Barcelona zoo. They moved here about 8 years ago, and local people started bringing them injured animals as soon as they heard there were biologists living in town. Now, there are no jaguars at the Jaguar Rescue Center. (Maybe there used to be? Unsure how that name came about...) But there are sloths, howler monkeys, a margay (like an ocelot), lots and lots of snakes, tree frogs,  big and small birds, iguanas, etc, etc. Most of the animals get brought in as babies because of injury - hit by a car, fell from a tree, etc. There are also many that are brought in because they were being kept illegally as pets. It is illegal to keep ANY wild animal as a pet in CR, but after seeing a baby Howler monkey, you can understand why someone would want to. We got an awesome tour and got to hold a 6 month old Howler - so cute!!  Also, we saw 4 & 6 week old baby sloths, possibly the cutest things you can imagine. 

Then later in the day we all reunited and iheaded north on our bikes to Playa Negra - a black sand beach just up the road. We all played in the ocean as the sun set and then wondered across the street to a pizzeria run by Marco. Marco is Italian but has lived here since he was a teenager. He has an outdoor wood burning oven where he makes amazing pizzas. We were joined by lots of folks as the night wore on. After pizza we shared a watermelon and stories with a big table that now included Marco, Fernando (a Spaniard), Luis (from China), Doreene (from Holland), Joy (from Alaska), and the rest of us.

The next day we rushed our bikes back into town, so that we wouldn't be charged extra, and then grabbed the bus that heads to the end of the road - literally - at Manzanillo. The buses here are such a great way to travel - very cheap and very on time. There are designated bus stops in a few places, but mostly people just wave the driver down from the side of the road and he stops. At one point during the ride, the driver suddenly stopped an threw the bus in reverse. I thought maybe he had missed someone on the side of the road. But then he turned and said, "Plastico!" to the folks in the first seats. He then jumped out and grabbed what looked like a dirty tarp wrapped in twine on the side of the road. He seemed thrilled with this find, but an older guy standing on the side of the road started yelling at the driver that that was HIS plastic, and the driver had to reluctantly put it back on the side of the road, which is, I guess, where the other guy stores his plastic? 

Manzanillo is a beautiful little beach town with a few houses, a very precariously balanced Baptist church, a couple restaurants, and miles of beautiful beaches with palm trees and fisherman's boats pulled up on the sand. The culture down here is very Afro Caribbean, and there is always, always, reggae playing in the background  The water here is super clear and the waves much less intense than up in Puerto Viejo. We spent the morning swimming, reading, sunbathing, strumming a uckelele, and tossing a frisbee before catching the bus back after noon. But not before sharing some ice cream. I can't think of a much better way to spend a morning!