Puerto Viejo Arrival!

Got up reasonably early in San Jose, we needed to drive about 4 and a half hours to Puerto Viejo but still wanted to buy some stuff in downtown San Jose. I drove and it was crazy. I've never driven in such a crazy place, people just do what they want. I accidentally stopped right in the middle of a crosswalk and people just start walking around the vehicle
without even acknowledging it because its so common. There are little motorcycles scooting in and out of traffic, going between vehicles and on the right or left side of the road. I kept forgetting that they were so close but they all got lucky and I never hit one of them. I got honked at many times for not going through the intersection when the light was red and there wasn't much traffic. Vehicles zipping everywhere and we also didn't know where exactly we were going so mostly just driving around trying to find stuff.

We stopped at a guitar shop and tried to figure where to go next, we were running out of time so decided to just leave the city instead of getting everything we wanted. Found the major highway heading east after a bit of time as there are many exits/roads that have no sign at them. Twice I came to a fork in the road and neither had a sign, its just taking the best educated guess. haha. Once we hit the highway we were cruisin though and the road was really good. In the city they weren't in hte best shape and the right hand side along the freeway had no rail and only a small edge beside a steep roll.

We started driving into the mountains, it was so lush and green, entirely different from driving through the mountains in BC or Alberta. Partway through on the mountain it started pouring. I've never seen so much water come down so thick at one time. The rain was coming down so hard that it was tough for the wipers to keep up at times, Vehicles were crawling. It didn't look like hte rain was going to stop so we just continued on slowly through it, there is only a place to pull over every so often anyways.

Mooks and Rob by the 4X4

Jungle Trail

I was a bit concerned in San Jose as I had read multipled times about tourists tires getting slashed and then being robbed when having to stop. We stopped in Limon to get some food, and it was alot sketchier than San Jose. Lotta rough looking people so we got some pizza as quick as we could and headed on our way.

We left Limon, heading for Peurto Viejo (about an 1hr drive) and about 20 minutes later we ended up re-entering Limon. Along the way the road had split and I looked like what appeared to be the more travelled road and apparently it was a loop back. Haha. We asked at each intersection after that and finally made our way into Puerto Viejo. The only problem was that the sun was starting to fade fast. The instructions that the chick gave us to find the house were very detailed so I thought it would be super easy to find the place, turns out they were ridiculous and made little to no sense once we got there. First try we had to head back to the beginning of hte town to start over again, second time we went down what we thought was the right road, over this small bridge/culvert and ended up in a dead end in the middle of the bush.

And its now pitch black out. We also find out that only one headlight is working and its very shitty and tough to see without putting our brights on. Oh ya, and the road is total shit everywhere, its one big dodgefest. Giant holes everywhere, and people on bicycles weaving along. On the way in along the highway tons of people walking along the roadway or sitting and highway watching (there version of people watching?).

We finally find this magic road and pull up to a green gate which the lady comes and unlocks and we drive up to our house. It was initally a little suprise because it wasn't quite what we expected. More to come....

House in the Daylight