Our final trip to Puerto Viejo - We are leaving tomorrow

We decided that for our last weekend here we would take a trip to Puerto Viejo and get some beach time in before we leave. We got a rental car and headed out for two days. We stayed at Roberta's favorite hotel, Casa Verde. It was my first time there and I liked it. The room was great and the pool was awesome. My only gripe was that the beds in our room were well past the time to throw them out. The only bed big enough for me and Roberta had a huge divot on my side so I had to sleep in the other bed in the room which had metal springs gouging me in the back. If I would stay there again I would test out the beds before I accepted a room.

We had a great time there. We went down past Manzanillo and probably looked at the Panamanian frontier. Then we just pulled up a spot on the beach and chilled out. We were going to rent motorcycles and go for a mini tour but the guy who was renting them had a bad attitude so we decided not to. We made the better choice as I was able to finish the Culture Shock Costa Rica book. I will write a review of that in another post.

After a couple days in PV we decided to drive back and get into the real world. You know, to start packing since we are leaving on Thursday. I was driving from PV to Limon and I was going fairly fast but Roberta was prompting me to go even faster. We were railing along and I hit this big pothole and Roberta screams because the hubcap flies off into the ditch. We had to stop and try to find it. We found it but we had broken a piece off of it so we just threw it into the trunk to deal with later.

About halfway to San Jose I gave the wheel to Roberta and we continued. She was cruising along at about 60 and came across a car eating pothole. There was no way to avoid it so she just hit it with the front right wheel of the car hard. We made it home and got out and looked at the tire. It was half flat and the rim had a huge dent in it. I tried to put the hubcap back on but it wouldn't fit. I had to go borrow a hammer from the guard in our complex and pound it flat so that I could get the hubcap on.

It was Sunday evening and we needed to find some zip ties to tie the hubcap onto the car. We went to the new Hiper Mas in San Pedro but we couldn't find any zip ties. We asked the guard if he knew where any were. He was like, "No no, we don't have any" And we were like "Oh come on man, help a brother out" Costa Ricans can't stand to help if you act a little sad or aggitated. He went into the back and came back out with 8 zip ties and he gave them to us for free. He was a life saver since we had to take the rental car back at 9:30 in the morning.

We took the rental car back after zip tieing on the hub cap and they didn't charge us for anything. They were pointing at the rim and he called his boss over but there were no problems. Whew.

This will likely be the last post from Costa Rica. Expect the scenery to change and the stories to change. We have had a great time in Costa Rica and would consider coming back but the world is so big and unexplored.

Click for more pictures of the trip