Day 72: Puerto Viejo and bellies

The agreed upon hotel - after several disagreements.

Yes, the turd that landed on our sushi plate.

Mike found some Christmas presents for himself here.

The belly dancer's finale.

An advertisement mural for Puerto Viejo businesses.

You can't tell from a polaroid...but she could shake it.

Getting to Puerto Viejo was a bit more difficult than we had anticipated the paved road to be. It appeared as though someone went jackhammer happy and drilled various sized potholes, both in depth and width, for miles into town. Dirt roads with moguls are tough but pothole-riddled pavement can do a lot more damage to a car so we had to trudge along with care.


Unfortunately for Matt, the sushi hotel didn’t live up to my requirements (nor his, but he’s gotta tough it out for the sake of his brother who claims they can both sleep on palm leaves in the jungle should the need permit). I could tell that declining a room that was equivalent to last night’s with a bit more feng shui was a relief to him (even though he won’t admit it). I could also tell that after about fifth hotel, when I found an affordable one on the beach with A/C, TV, pool, jacuzzi and breakfast included, he was equally as happy as I was.

Just because we didn’t stay at the sushi spot, didn’t mean they barred us from enjoying the all you can eat sushi special, which we promptly did. Our first plate was barely smaller than our table and loaded with sushi rolls selected by the chef. Seeing as we liked all the options, we didn’t care and proceeded to wolf down the entire plate at an impressive rate before we dove into plate two, a smaller portion of the same selections that started to fill us up.

Fortunately, we had finished all but three of the rolls before we got a special side. Mike noticed that something fell from the ceiling onto the edge of our white ceramic plate that looked very similar to the tiny pellets we’ve discovered on our bed - except with a moist freshness to it. Our premonition was confirmed when we looked up and found a gecko positioned directly over our heads. We can leave the house, but can’t escape being pooped on. I was just glad it didn’t land in the black pool of my soy sauce where chunks of rice and wasabi could easily mask a fresh turd swimming around. Just in case, I emptied it before refilling for our third and fourth rounds.

After four giant plates, we couldn’t bear the thought of putting any more food in our bellies and headed to Chile Rojo to watch the Spanish belly dancer bare hers. We threw away most of the flyers that were handed to us as we strolled in and out of vendor booths and souvenir shops, but we hung on to that one and we clearly weren’t the only ones. Her show was a big hit with the men and women that lined the bar while she jiggled and jingled through the crowd. I was jealous of her skills (and a few of her other assets) but thoroughly impressed.

With her show ending around 9:30pm, we were spent. We’ve succumbed to the fact that none of us are the party animals we once were. Making it past 10pm without snoozing is one of our biggest challenges here. Not that we need the extra rest. We have a long day of sitting planned for tomorrow since we’re headed back to San Jose to enjoy some city life before Matt’s flight home.