HideoutThe Hideout

After I spent another night (alone) in San Jose in a very cheap and sketchy area I went to the very south-east of Costa Rica, close to the border to Panama. At 10am my bus left and after four hours I arrived at this popular beach place. I was told that it has the whitest beaches you could imagine. I tried to find them, but I was a bit disappointed at first.

I went to the Hotel “Puerto Viejo” where I got a little cabin/hut for $10 a day. It was a nice place, maybe not as nice as the Rocking J’s that everybody was recommending, where you could sleep in a (rented) tent and even in a hammock, which was the cheapest way. However it was a bit off the center, but not so much.

Puerto Viejo is full of bars and restaurants and it’s almost completely covered with wireless internet (but you had to pay for it). I went to a nice place where a woman from the States sold delicious milkshakes. She’s already there for five years trying to make a living. She seemed to have a good life, less stressful as she would have had in the States probably.

I walked a bit more around and came to another place where they offered free movies in the evening. I was interested and came in contact with a man, who “organized” it. He was tall with curly golden hair, who always wore sun glasses. He told me about the movies he wants to show to the people, to “wake them up”. Hmm … I was wondering what he meant, but I didn’t have to wait long for a reply. For him the whole world was fiction, made up by politicians who want us to believe what they want to let us believe. And most people don’t know the “truth”. He also refered to the Matrix-movie and he scared me a bit. He said that he devoted all his life to wake up people and even left his family. He always talked about saving the people we love and laughed about all the people that passed us, calling them idiots. When I asked him if he could “save” his family, he got angry and talked about courage. It was time to leave then … the movies I never watched.

One day I spent on the beach reading a book. I didn’t really find a good place to lay me down, since many places are scattered with coral riffs, which made it impossible to access the water. But finally I found a place that was okay and I spent there several hours, making visits to the sea and drying on the towel. It was something that I haven’t done for a long time. Dominical and Uvita you cannot really count!

Another day I rented a bike from one of the many places you could find on every corner. My destination was Puerto Manzanilla which is 13km away. The road was quite good and after some kilometers I went to the beach. This beach was much nicer and it was more pleasant to stay there. So I enjoyed the water a few times before I moved on to the other town. On the way I met two girls from Belgium, which I joined since we had the same destination.

When we arrived in Manzanillo, we were a bit disappointed. It was really small and offered actually only one bar, that played music and attracted music. We went to another little restaurant where we had a juice, since we were thirsty from the ride. The place was nice but very quite and didn’t seem to offer much. One of the girls, Lien, was interested in WWOOFing and when I told her that I just did it, she wanted to hear more. I also told her that she might go to Providencia to support Claire We stayed in contact and she finally made the decision to go there. She should be there by now, when however not for long.

After being in that place for just a few days I left on a Saturday for Panama. I was a bit worried, as always when I cross a border, if everything would went fine, but more about it in my next post.