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NYE in Costa Rica

NYE in Costa Rica

More Central America, New Friends, and a classic NYE Story

MS Travel Blog
January 13, 2023

Back on the blogging grind after a couple weeks of hiatus.

I left off last time on my way to Puerto Viejo which is on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. I had heard about it on my last trip to Costa Rica in 2021 when I went to the touristy and commercial Pacific side and knew I had to try this side as well. I arrived in the town on Monday after a grueling 4 hour trek by a mix of boat, shuttle and taxi.

Coming off of Christmas in Panama, I decided to book a hotel farther away from the city center in Puerto Viejo to avoid any nightlife temptation. When I got there on Monday the 26th and went for dinner, I realized I didn’t have much to worry about because the town was about as small as the one in Isla Colon in Bocas del Toro and a lot sleepier. There is not much trouble you can get into from Monday – Wednesday at nighttime.

Being on the Caribbean side, I felt that influence in the music, the food, the people and their laid back vibe. A lot of the music they played was Reggae, the food consisted of a lot of jerk chicken, beef, pork or any other type of meat. There was also a surprising amount of Thai food which was the best I’ve had in South America thus far. People clearly have darker skin than on the West coast and they have a very laissez-faire attitude when it comes to living. Unfortunately for them, Costa Rica is in the top 3 most expensive countries in South America so you can’t get by there unless you’re hustling somehow. It was pretty much Western Europe prices where you can find cheaper beer and drinks but an average meal is going to be around $20. Naturally, I thought, how could locals possibly afford this. I got my answer when I would go to a restaurant for lunch and then another one for dinner, only to find the same waiter serving me at both. I asked her how many jobs she has. She told me most of the locals who work there have around 3 jobs each. Maybe not so laid back after all?

After exploring the town and nearby beaches the first few days I definitely liked this place a lot more than Panama. It was a good mix of locals and travellers so not everyone was a 20-something year old drinking their way through South America on a backpacking trip. The beaches were walking distance and WAY nicer than the ones that I had visited in Bocas. Charcoal sand beach in the city. And a white sand beach with swimmable water and awesome waves a bit farther out in the town.

The only thing that I really messed up was that I didn’t realize that the hotel I booked didn’t have windows, only mesh to keep bugs out. I thought I would die of heat every night but that turned out to not be the problem. Every night at around 4 am the King Kong monkeys in the jungle would start having a screaming contest. The first night I was freaked out but quickly realized they were Howler monkeys like the ones I talked about in my last post. After a few nights there I moved to an Airbnb closer to the beach, and more importantly, with windows.

It's now Thursday the 29th and I am itching to have a drink and actually meet some people. I hit up a (Reggae) bar and see some guys playing beer pong. I make a beeline for the table and introduce myself. It didn’t take long to realize that who I thought would be some cool North Americans turned out to be some Canadian rednecks from Vancouver Island that wanted to talk about how much Trudeau sucked and how awesome mustaches are. I bounced around a few groups till I met this group of guys from Montreal who were my age and pretty much on the same page life-wise. They were Engineers just out of school and were travelling Costa Rica for vacation before they went back home to find work.

The next day (Friday the 30th) I woke up in very rough shape but got myself to the beach to heal myself. I met up with the Montrealers (Michael, Justin and Jinxe) and we spent the day hanging out at the beach and playing volleyball. Probably played some of the best pick-up beach volleyball players I’ve ever played in my life.

The next day (NYE Saturday) was probably the best New Years Eve day-time that I’ve ever had. We went back to the beach and drank beers, played a ton of volleyball and met a whole bunch of people that were going to join us later into the night when the party started. We all watched the sunset and then parted our separate ways with plans to meet up for dinner for like 8pm. We all met up and went over to the Montrealer’s hostel that was supposed to have a techno party that night (pass). We had many drinks and made many friends before we headed off to a clubby bar called Johnny’s place that was the only bar that didn’t play Reggae music in the town. Johnny’s was absolutely packed. There were so many people that the party spilled on to the beach where they also had speakers and projectors blasting music. Everyone in the group kept splitting up and randomly running into each other at various points in the night. Luckily, I ran into Michael and Jinxe right before the countdown and we took some very mediocre photos right on the beach. We also met a couple on the beach that was operating a drone, and they took some photos of us with the drone while it was flying. After seeing the photos, I think I’m gonna wait for newer models to come out before I buy one.

Me and Mike

At some point in the night, I ran into a girl I met the night before and she talked me into going to a rave that her friend was hosting at her house far far away from where we were or where I lived. For reasons still unbeknownst to me, I said yes and found myself in a pickup truck squeezed in with like 6 people doing 100km/h in the middle of the Costa Rican jungle. We get there and the terrible expectations I already had were met and quickly exceeded as the night went on. Let me try to paint the picture. Imagine you’re in an RV camp but instead of RV’s it’s people in tents and everyone is wearing (shaman pants), tripping balls, offering you god-knows-what drugs to smoke or sniff, and the music is just an endless deep house with no drop. Oh, and you’re wearing all white and have to sit on the grass while watching a bunch of hippies hazily sway to god-awful music for hours and hours on end. As the night went on and I sobered up, drugs seemed like a better and better idea. Anything to make the morning come faster. I ended up drifting in and out of sleep until I realized the sun was out and I looked at my phone and it was 7:30am. I expected Angie (the girl I was with) to have a plan of how to get back to the town. Turns out, she has no idea how to get back and expects me to wait another hour or two for her and her friend who hasn’t been seen for hours to drive back. I would rather have had a colonoscopy with a razorblade. So, I just start walking on the one road that connects every town. I pull out my phone and google tells me I’m 9 km away from my place. My white outfit went from white to brown, I’m tired af and I’m pissed at myself for getting myself in that mess. Nevertheless, I march on forward (at least I had my headphones to listen to music) for like an hour and a half until I finally get home and pass out.

Overall, my awesome new years eve day was met by a terrible new years eve night in some form of cosmic balancing act.

Pro tip: Don’t agree to go to random house parties in Costa Rica. Odds are, it won’t even be in a house.

The next day was a complete right off.

Now it’s Monday and I woke up at 8am for my weekly team meeting to find that my boss pushed it to Tuesday and that we actually had the day off. Woohoo! I was in need of a small victory.

I spent the day using on of the bikes that my Airbnb came with to explore the beaches far away from the town.

Pro Tip 2: Bike rentals are always worth it.

I found another cool beach with a beginners surf spot and rented a board to try my hand here after my miserable attempts in Panama. It was much more doable here. Before sunset I met up with the Montreal fellas to recap our NYE and have one last volleyball game together as they were off to the West coast of Costa Rica the following morning.

The next day was a work day so I didn’t do much except work and go to the beach. My last day in Puerto Viejo was Wednesday (Jan 4th) on which day I had a 5 hour bus ride to San Jose where my flight was going to be the next day.

My overall thoughts on Costa Rica after having been to the West and East coast are that it’s a great place to visit only if you are going for a couple of weeks at a time. Like most Central American countries (Panama, Nicaragua, etc), the way the country is mapped is having a capital city close to the centre of the country where almost everyone flies into. In Costa Rica the capital is San Jose and it is an absolute s***hole. Anyone from San Jose will tell you that as well. It’s a giant city that’s so spread out and not enough people living in it so it feels like a ghost town most days past 8pm. Once you get to the capital city, you have to take a bus ride that’s many hours long to get anywhere worthwhile which is mostly on the coasts. Because of this, it’s not a digital nomad friendly country to stay in. But if you have a few weeks of vacation, you’ll get to see a ton of spots in a little amount of time. There’s rainforests, volcanos, sick beaches, and a plethora of eco-resorts (if that’s your vibe) to visit once you’re there.

I’ll quickly recap my time in Cancun so far because I wasn’t still supposed to be in Mexico right now.

I landed in Cancun on Thursday Jan 5th and met a friend at the airport who I was going to spend the weekend in Cancun with before my flight back to Toronto on Sunday the 8th. When we got to the hotel that I purposely booked in the hotel zone so we could be right on the beach, it turned out I had booked a hotel with the same name that was 10km away from the beach, in the middle of Cancun downtown which is where no one visits. The best part? The one I booked was non-refundable. I soaked the loss and just got 3 nights at this resort that I had meant to book into the first place. Still praying for the Amex gods to refund me. What followed was an incredible but massive spending weekend because I thought it was my last. On Sunday I head to the airport, mentally prepared to see the snow again. I give my passport and ticket to the guy at the check in counter. He looks at me and is like: “You know this ticket is for next Sunday right?”. We both start laughing and so I jump in a taxi and head to my second home – Playa del Carmen. There are worse places to be stuck for an extra week other than Mexico.

I’ll cover the remainder of this trip in my next post which will come out when I’m back in the frigid tundra.

Hope everyone had an awesome NYE and a great start to 2023.

PS I managed to fix my phone and recover some pictures I wasn't able to post in my last upload.