Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica
Cabinas Casa Verde
7:45 AM
The high pitched hum thing is back again this morning, though seems to be a bit less frequent than yesterday. I woke up itching again, and was awake in the middle of the night when the power went out for about 20 seconds. I think that’s a pretty common occurrence here as there’s a sign in the shower saying that in case of power outages, there will be no water.
We had a really mellow day yesterday. Walked to the grocery store (about 5 blocks from Cabinas Casa Verde) and bought some bread and cheese, found out what the llavanderia charges (1000 Colones per Kilo of laundry – about $1/pound of clothes – washed, dried, folded). Not as cheap as Argentina, but nothing here (in Costa Rica) has been very inexpensive, so not a big deal. Carrie said yesterday “I don’t really care what it costs. I just want to have clean clothes again.” (This was pretty odd to hear from Carrie who is always the more money saving person in our relationship.) I wholeheartedly agreed with her as far as just wanting clean clothes.

We went and had lunch/breakfast at Veronica’s Place, a Vegetarian/Vegan restaurant here in Puerto Viejo. It was delicious, although not as unique as I would have thought, being a vegan/vegetarian restaurant in a beach town in Costa Rica. However, we also met Veronica and had a great conversation with her. She let us try the bananas she grows on her farm. They were the little bananas, and the flavor was absolutely fulfilling… like the bananas we had in Africa. We just don’t get bananas like that in the US – at least not any I’ve ever had. Apparently, Veronica has a couple of different places for rent… one is a room in town you can rent for $20/night which includes breakfast at her restaurant (Bed and breakfast for $20?), and another is a house that is about 3 miles outside of town on a farm which she and her husband only charge $250/month for. She says you’d need a jeep or motorcycle to navigate the road that would take you there, and I don’t know what a monthly rental on a jeep or motorcycle would cost here in Puerto Viejo (or if it’s even available), but it sounds like a great deal for someone. I don’t know the quality of the places, but Veronica seems very nice, and if the places are halfway decent, this might be the way to go for when you visit Puerto Viejo.
We got back to Cabinas Casa Verde at about 3PM after visiting the two grocery stores in town. We got some bread, tomato, cucumber, and cheese. About the time we got back to Casa Verde, the rain started pouring down and lasted about 5 hours, so our grocery store run became our picnic dinner in our room, and we ended up not taking our laundry across the street. This was actually quite fine for both of us, since we fell asleep by 8:30.
I think we are still catching up on missed sleep from La Tortuga Feliz, as we both slept until about 7:15 this morning, and Carrie’s fallen back asleep as I’m typing this now.