Cruising the e-coast on an e-bike

The bus ride down to Puerto Viejo was a very scenic one, with the caribbean ocean to the left and the jungle to the right.

As the bus arrived to Puerto Viejo, we were greeted with marching bands on the streets. As it turned out there was a school marching band competition with 4 different bands parading the streets and loads of people cheering them on. There are definitely more people and more life here in Puerto Viejo. One of the marching bands was even from a town called Cairo here in Costa Rica, unfortunately they didn’t win.

In Puerto Viejo they had normal hostels again as opposed to the previous towns, where there were more guest houses with private rooms and no dorms.

I shared the dorm with a singer from Mexico, who was about 40 years old and traveling outside Mexico for the first time ever. He was quite fascinated by all the experienced travelers he has seen on his trip and how systematic some of them are; Arriving, unpacking, cooking, eating, drinking, reading, partying and sleeping. He managed to make a lot of friends on this trip and is already planning to visit some of them on the next one.

I left Fabrizio to cook his dinner and went out to try some of the street food, which mainly consisted of empanadas (similar to sambousak) filled with cheese, veggies or chicken. They were really good here. Baked not fried. Another highlight were the barbecued meat skewers, which they glaze with a spicy sauce and served with a mini tortilla.

At night, there was some salsa, merengue and calypso dance classes at this bar, but the classes were on stage in front of all the people at the bar. So the classes were like a one hour show for the bar guests. It was a little weird but as soon as the band started to play some live music and everyone got up to dance, it was all good again.

The next day I decided to rent an e-bike and ride down the coast to the quiet and lazy town of Manzanillo and check out the beach there. It was my first time on an e-bike and it took some time to get used to since it’s heavier than a normal bike (due to the battery) and therefore has a different center of gravity as well. Basically it works like a normal bike until you turn the switch to “ON”. Once you’re in the “ON” mode, the motor will start to work as you pedal to help you pedal faster, but this also takes some time to get used to. It also has a throttle, which you can use to make the motor do all the work and ride it like a motorcycle. It was fun to try and very helpful on the uphills but I dont think I would buy one myself.

I grabbed some Mamon (similar to Lychi) and a Cacao fruit on the way and made my way south past many empty beaches and surfer spots. It was a beautiful route between the ocean and the jungle. On the way back I stopped by 2-3 other beaches to do some more reading until I found an ice cream shop. It was large, empty and had the word “artesanal” all over it. You should always be careful when you read that word because it usually means expensive. Kind of like a alternative way of saying gourmet. Anyways, the sun was too strong so I decided to take a break and have the most expensive scoop of ice cream in my life. The flavor was brown sugar and it cost 5$ for a single scoop!!

I think I know what you’re thinking and I agree 😉

But John, the owner, was quite a nice guy from the US, who moved to Costa Rica to avoid any armies or war. He has a brother who went in to the US army to make some money for university but he was called to the gulf war and he has been mentally ill ever since he came back. So John and his wife Alice, who makes the ice cream, decided to move to Costa Rica, since it will never go to war because it doesn’t have an army of it’s own. Imagine, a country without an Army, how can they live like that! :-p

I needed to get out of there fast and go to a normal country with an army again; “Is this the bus to Panama?”.