I was probably more excited to go to Puerto Viejo than anywhere we’ve been so far. This however has nothing to do with Puerto Viejo itself, but the fact that I was here 21 years ago with Tom and Nadia during the summer holidays after our first year at University. I have many fond, if slightly hazy memories of Costa Rica, and remember Puerto Viejo as a lazy little Caribbean town with hippy vibes, good food and a hammock hostel off the beach where we spent a few days relaxing.
Obviously a lot has changed in twenty years. We arrived in Puerto Viejo at the end of a short drive from Siquirres in Ingrid’s car. Ingrid is the owner of the Spanish school and travelling classroom, although for various reasons we haven’t seen much of her during the trip. Ingrid suggested a stop for an ice cream in the town which was a great start to the week. Afterwards we drove to the hostel and checked in.
Our hostel for the week wasn’t owned by the Spanish school but was across the road. It was probably the worst we had stayed in so far, our double room was accessed through a dorm (which was a little odd) and everything felt very much in need of a coat of paint. That said everyone was very friendly, the cleaners came in regularly, and it had a comfortable common area with enough hammocks that I was never hammockless!
On Sunday night we went out for dinner with the remaining students, Luisa, Berglin, Holly, Alex and I plus Ingrid and her daughter, Mimi who we’ve got to know pretty well over the last four weeks. Both Holly and Berglin were due to head back to Bocas del Toro the next morning so this was our last goodbye. After some food and, for some reason that I can’t remember, three goodbye hugs with Berglin we went to bed with the knowledge that by the next morning, Luisa, Alex and I would be the final three remaining students.
Spanish classes this week were Alex, Luisa and I, and after passing our A2 exam last week we were onto B1. This week we had two teachers; Ingrid, and Tania, a Spanish lady living in Puerto Viejo. Our first class was in the afternoon giving us a first lie-in over a month. Not for long however as Puerto Viejo was hot. Despite the two fans in our room, by 09:00 we were up and ready for breakfast, driven out by the sun baking down on the tin roof.
We used Monday morning to explore the town a little, although quickly realised it was best to try and dash between air conditioned shops as by midday it was unbearably hot. A quick lunch at ‘Como en mi casa‘, an arty vegetarian cafe, was followed by our first lesson of the week. This week we started B1 and the subjunctive mode, which proved to not just be an education in Spanish but in language in general. With only three of us now in the group, I felt like it was a slog to keep up with Luisa and Alex but I did my best and just about managed.
Luisa was in the last week of her last gap year trip and was keen to go out to a few more restaurants than we had been doing in the previous weeks, we were happy to join her and started with a nice Italian restaurant to satisfy our pizza cravings!
On Tuesday I joined Luisa on a surf lesson and was pleased to find both a super enthusiastic instructor and calm, consistent waves which meant I could just constantly improve, spending most of the lesson surfing and very little time waiting!
On Wednesday we went to Cahuita national park, 20 minutes drive from Puerto Viejo. As Ingrid was free she offered to take us, driving us there and accompanying us on a walk, searching for wildlife and culminating in a swim off a near-deserted beach into a still sea that was, if anything, too warm!
That evening we went to Chile Rojo a restaurant that, from the outside, felt familiar. We got talking to the owner, describing my experience of visiting a restaurant in torrential rain when I visited 20 years ago. While the location had changed, the owner was the same English guy I remembered from 20 years ago and the pan Asian menu was a welcome change from rice and beans.
Enthused by my experience of surfing on Tuesday, I signed up to two further lessons on Thursday and Friday afternoons. I was pleased to be steadily improving, standing up consistently on Thursday and getting the hang of pushing my weight forward to keep on the wave for longer, even making a few turns by the end of the week.
This week also had the customary cooking and dance classes. This week’s dance class was a Zumba class at the local community hall, notable in itself for a connection with the Jamaican hero Marcus Garvey who lived in Costa Rica for some years. The class itself was energetic and above all sweaty, with us all crowding around the fans during breaks!
The cooking class was by far the most interesting that we’ve had during the travelling Spanish School. It was run by Glenda Brown, a lady of Jamaican descent, and was a Caribbean cooking class, making Rondon, a coconut soup containing starchy vegetables and, since I am vegetarian, jackfruit meatballs. What was most interesting about this class was the way that Glenda not only explained the ingredients we were using, many of which we hadn’t used before, but also the historical and modern techniques for preparing them. For example with the coconuts, explaining how they would traditionally break off the shell with a machete and then grate the meat, squeezing the oils out of it for the best results. In this method we also learned how to prepare breadfruit, jackfruit, plantains, and a weird purple thing that looked a bit like a sweet potato but had a name that none of us recognised. Three hours later (!!!) dinner was ready and we enjoyed our meal. Followed by a delicious dessert that Glenda quickly threw together from frozen fruit!
One problem this week however was that I really wasn’t sleeping well. I don’t sleep particularly soundly at the best of times and I don’t need a lot of sleep, but this week I’d been waking up hourly and struggling to get back to sleep. I’m not sure why, although the hostel wasn’t great, the bed was comfy, the pillows were the best we’d had, the room was hot but we did have two fans to at least circulate the air. I mentioned this in passing to Ingrid during a lesson and she said that if I wanted I could camp in her unfinished house at the Spanish school.
The Spanish school in Puerto Viejo is a work in progress, with beautiful little open air classrooms set in a pretty garden on a quiet plot with trees behind. In fact the noisiest part of the school was the howler monkeys who often inhabited the trees. Eventually the school will have a hostel as well, but for now next to the classrooms is a small unfinished house with bathrooms for the school downstairs and an entry for the upstairs which will one day be a small apartment for the owners to stay in. At the moment they are reworking the water system so there is currently no water or electricity. When water is available the owner usually camps in the apartment where there are a few mattresses at the top of a ladder with mosquitos nets over them, as although there are shutters for the windows there isn’t yet any glass in the windows so the apartment is open to nature. I love an adventure so happily accepted the offer of camping at the school, and with toilets at the hostel only over the road it was quite easy. Alex decided to join me so, after we returned from dinner on Thursday evening we snuck our bedding and comfy pillows out of the hostel and over to the Spanish school. There were candles in the apartment along with a small table and a couple of chairs and after a brief search we found a near empty lighter and managed to get a couple of candles lit. While it was still hot, being on the second floor there was a light breeze (although no fan) and we drifted off to sleep to the sounds of nature (and a bit of noise from the town). I still woke up nearly every hour but this time I feel asleep again immediately. It rained overnight and at one point I woke up feeling the tiniest splatter of water landing on me but it was was a welcome relief from the heat and I slept better after.
Friday was our last day of Spanish classes and I was happy to be finished. The pace this week had been a little fast for me and, although I’d learnt a lot, we were now studying grammatical structures that were more useful to sound like a native than to be properly understood. Really my focus was to be able to be understood in present, past, and future tenses and to make sure I practiced enough to be comfortable using them in my day to day speech.
On Friday evening we went out with Ingrid and some of the other Spanish school students for drinks and dinner to Puerto Pirata, a bar with a view of the sea. During the meal we had torrential rain which, in the heat of the evening, we welcomed as it brought a rare moment of relative cool! After the rain we went back to our camp in the Spanish school and got an early night, ready for another early morning start as we headed to Tortaguero national park for the weekend!