Cahuita & Puerto Viejo, Part 1: Animals, Chocolate and jungle

After our jungle experience in Tortuguero we traveled to Cahuita on the East coast of CR. It was a four-hour drive from La Pavona and it was almost a pleasure because the whole way was a good proper road! We had heard that it should be a nice town. Unfortunately, the town was really dead. There were not many people on the streets and everything seemed more or less closed. We stayed in Buena Suerte B&B. The room was okay, but didn’t look very fresh. We also had a small lizard in our room. Markus tried to calm Edda down by saying that the lizard will eat the spiders. :D We had booked the place based on recommendations online that said that the place has great breakfasts ;) And they were really nice, indeed. We could choose between salty or sweet breakfasts. The plates looked a bit different depending on the day, but the salty could be for example eggs, a wrap, rice and beans, cooked vegetables, meat, cheese and a fruit plate. The sweet one was e.g. pancakes, tiramisu, cookies, some other cake and a fruit plate. The plates were really generous. One night with breakfast was around $30 for two people.

The patio in front of our room

Room #2 

A fruit plate was always a part of breakfast - both sweet and salty

Salty, vegetarian breakfast

In Cahuita we visited Cahuita national park, which was very close by. The entrance is free, with a voluntary donation. We went to the park with Estella, a woman from Spain who lived next door at the B&B. We hoped to see some sloths in particular, because we had heard that there would be many of them in the park. The trail is very easy to walk – no hills at all, and it is maybe a bit less than 5km long. The path goes close to the beach so it is possible to go for a swim if one wants. We guess it is just based on luck whether if the experience is great and if you see many animals. Otherwise it’s just another jungle walk. The best part for us was seeing a group of raccoons in a tree staring at us.

Hey,  who are you?

Los turistas

There was not a silent moment in the jungle

We managed to see one sloth, but it was high up in the tree and we only saw its ass… :p Other than that, we saw coatis running, big crickets, crabs climbing in trees and unfortunately for Edda – soooo many spiders! It was from Edda’s nightmare – wherever you looked, you could see big spiders. Many of them had built their webs on top of the road so we had to “dive” under them. Not the idea of fun for Edda. :p Markus went also to take few coco nuts from a palm that was leaning above the sea, and yes, he dropped and got a wet shoe :D

One spider looked like it had came from outer space 

These ones were everywhere. In one spot you could easily find even 10 of them.

One day we decided to go to Puerto Viejo to check that town out and we wanted to find Chocorart, an organic cacao farm. The town was bigger and looked nice so we decided that we would come to Puerto Viejo after Cahuita. We even found Chocorart and tasted the best hot chocolate we have ever had! The cafe is located alongside the main road and it can even be found on Google Maps. There were many options to choose from and we took the thick ones, that you drink from an espresso cup. Markus took the basic one and Edda Choco Azteca. It was a spicy hot chocolate with chili and some other secret spices. SO GOOD! We booked the chocolate tour as well for the next day.

One of our favorite places :D 

We could have drank the hot chocolates all day long... :)

We also visited Jaguar Rescue Center in Puerto Viejo which was recommended by our neighbors at B&B. It is a place where different animals are brought when they are found in places where they shouldn’t be or if they are found hurt somewhere. The idea is to release all the animals to their natural habitat when they are ready for it. The rescue center has many volunteers who work with diverse tasks. We had an excellent tour guide, a young woman from the UK. She was passionate of her job and interested in the visitors too. We had a tour of about 2h and saw finally sloths from close range and even baby sloths :p Even a wild sloth had come to the area for a visit that day! There were some snakes, baby monkeys, different birds and two wild cat animals. They were sleeping, but we could see them a bit. We even saw the smallest frog we have ever seen – it was about 1cm long!

The municipalities don't like when parrots swear in public places :p Tourists had been teaching parrots in the rescue center some bad words and the parrots had not forgotten them when they were released.

The smallest frog we've seen! 

This snake is poisonous  

There is a frog almost looking the same, but it is poisonous - this one isn't 

Kikaboo!