Puerto Viejo Weekend

Another great weekend for the books! This weekend as mentioned previously we went to Puerto Viejo, which is on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. From San Jose it is about a 4.5 hour bus ride, so it is not too bad of a drive! We left on Friday morning around 10am after a long night out...We all slept most of the drive. Catherine and myself were joined by three of our other friends Aslak, Killian, and Austin this weekend. We soon found out that two of our other friends were also in Puerto Viejo when we walked down the road and saw Liz and Roberto walking down the road, so we had a decent size group. Of course, the perks of staying in hostels is we always meet so many other people so it was a great weekend away! 
Friday (late) afternoon when we got to our hostel. Our hostel was really cool too, we were basically located in the jungle and there were monkeys and sloths that were surrounding us...Unfortunately I know none of you will believe me because my pictures don't do justice and you can hardly make out what they are. They are hard to capture on camera when they are so high in the trees and then when they would come down closer I never had a camera or any thing on hand...I'm hoping I get some good pictures of the wild life here that I've been enjoying so every one can see what I mean. I did however, see the biggest, nastiest spider of my life thus far in Costa Rica. I took a picture of that...So enjoy on FaceBook. Catherine and I decided to hit the beach that was right across the street from us while the boys checked in to their hostel (they stayed a little ways down the road). There are a lot of stray dogs in Costa Rica and they are all pretty harmless but they love attention so we had about three follow us to the beach...The dogs started digging in the sand immediately and to Catherine and I's surprise crabs were being tossed out of the holes and then flung on to the sand where the dogs chased them around the beach. It was hilarious! That kept us entertained for quite a while. 
We met up with the guys at the restaurant attached to our hostel. We stayed at El Tesora and this bar we went to is called Tasty Waves. It is run by a bunch of young guys who moved to Costa Rica after a few months of traveling and they feel in love with Puerto Viejo. These people don't make it easy to want to leave Costa Rica. After that we all got ready to go out for the night. Catherine and I headed down to La Roca, the other hostel down the road where the boys were staying. They had a good group of people at that hostel too so we had a lot of fun there before we decided to go out. We ended up going in to town and hitting some of the bars that are located directly on the beach, we met up with some people we had made at Tasty Waves earlier too. The end of the night concluded with us finding a small cove where the reef is and where it is super shallow to go swimming. That was a good time. We also all rode bikes while we were in Puerto Viejo...You know how people say "Oh, it's just like riding a bike"? Well here's the thing, you do forget to ride a bike at first...Well at least I did and after, I don't know roughly 10 years of not riding a bike I drove myself right in to a ditch...Don't worry, I got better after that...But it was like I didn't know what to do and it was way too funny at the time. 
Saturday we actually slept in some because we were hurting from the night before..Catherine and I decided to go get breakfast at a nearby restaurant because we didn't want to try to make it in to town. After that we kind of went on a little hike through the jungle to get back to our beach where we told every one to meet us. The beach in front of our hostel is where all the surfers go, so it was really cool to get to hang out on the beach and watch them all day. The waves were massive so it was pointless to even try to swim in them unless you were surfing. Catherine, Liz, and I all went in to town later on in the day to check out the stores and every thing...Per usual we saw the same kind of stores one after the other but it is a cool little down town area. We ended up just staying at La Roca to drink on Saturday night with every one because we were so tired. This past week in general had worn all of us out pretty much so we wanted to take it a little easy. We just had pizza and drinks and relaxed the whole night which was absolutely perfect in my book. 
Sunday we decided to go out a waterfall tour with this really cool chick we had met on Friday, Manta. It was just $10 to go to this amazing part of the jungle and see these awesome waterfalls that we got to be in. There were jumps, waterfalls you could sit under, and we even had home-made mud masks..How fancy are we?! Unfortunately, I had a bit of bad luck when climbing one of my lasts rocks of the day to jump off....I slipped after many of us had been climbing up the last waterfall so the rocks were very wet and fell into the water below me only to land on the rock that we are suppose to miss hitting when we are jumping. *Don't worry friends/fam I am ok* Just badly bruised in places. My knee is the only thing that is really bad so I got really lucky. I'm not writing about this to worry any one I just want to document the things that happened on this trip and since I know I am going to have a little bit of issue getting around this week until my knee feels better I figured I would mention it now. But as I said, no need to worry. I plan to wrap my knee and take it slow. :) Our bus ride home went rather quickly back to San Jose which was good, I made it home around 8:30pm. 
I had a good conversation with Vicki when I got home as well and she gave me some ice for my legs. I really am going to be sad when she leaves on Tuesday. She told me that she is leaving at like 9am so I'll make sure I am up to say bye and help her with anything before she goes. She is such a sweet lady and I hope that every thing works out for the best with her sister. 
This also marks my official last week of volunteering before I travel! I cannot believe how fast the time is going....I know I say this almost in every post now but it's true. So much of me wants to stay in Costa Rica longer while the other half knows I need to go back and be responsible. I have met so many wonderful people here and have learned so much in such a short time about not only myself but about this culture and about other people. One of the guys at Maximo has been going out with us a lot and helping me with my Spanish, only letting me speak in Spanish while he practices his English....So look at that I got myself a private tutor. But it's been very beneficial for me! :)
I'll update more this week when I know what I am doing for sure on my travel week since I won't be updated that whole week while I am away. Again, family and friends please don't worry about my waterfall incident, I am fine :). It was a good weekend despite the injuries and I am fortunate it wasn't worse! Looking forward to seeing all of you when I return!