During our transition from the jungle, we were fortunate to meet up with Lee and Scott Bowen, Mike’s family from Omaha, NE, for a short visit including a trip to the Caribbean side of the country. We loved having visitors and being able to take this quick road trip with them to eastern coast of Costa Rica.

The weekend adventure began near San José, in Alajuela, where Costa Rica’s largest international airport is located.  We met up with Michael Stevens, an old friend and business colleague of Lee’s, who showed us around the town.  Michael has a factory in Alajuela where he designs and builds custom seat covers for cars with a wide variety of fabrics.  If you are in the market for a seat cover, we can highly recommend his business, Exact Seat Covers.  We got the grand tour of the factory and Scott and Lee talked shop with Michael while we were busy re-packing and stowing our massive amount of luggage in a tucked away corner office.  After a nice dinner at a local restaurant where we had fried fish, paella, chicken, guacamole, and several bottles of Imperiál, we crashed at a beautiful bed and breakfast in the hills of Atenas.

Caribbean Sea

Caribbean Sea

The weekend plan was to drive out to the Caribbean coast, so after our nice breakfast in Atenas we all piled into Michael’s Suzuki  SUV.  It was a tight fit with Scott, Lee, Mike, and Michael all in the 6’3″ to 6’5″ height range, but the Suzuki handled it like a champ.  The drive east was entertaining; between a traffic jam caused by an impromptu parade in the city, and Michael’s european driving style, we had no lack of entertainment.  After five hours (see map above) we arrived in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, a small eclectic beach down in the Limon province, near the Panamanian border.  Upon arrival, we visited a local restaurant that served delicious coconut curry shrimp that we all devoured along with a few more Imperials to wash it down.  One highlight was the challenge of eating the spicy Panamanian peppers that we were offered by the owner; he told us they would make us dance, and we found that was quite true.After this amazing meal, we checked into our hotel and saw one of several sloths hanging out in the trees above.

Puerto Viejo has a different vibe than the parts of Costa Rica we had seen, as it is heavily influenced by Rastafarian and Caribbean culture.  We enjoyed the change of environment, swimming in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, and even had a chance to see some live reggae music.  Unfortunately we only had one night here before we piled back into Michael’s Suzuki to drive back across the country.  It was a short visit but very enjoyable and we hope to return some day.