A Beach Guy

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

Puerto Viejo turned out to be a pretty tolerable expat beach town. It was basically one road along the beach littered with hostels, bars, and other tourist temptations.

One day I rode a shitty cruiser bike 15 miles down to a nature reserve and back. It felt therapeutic to be on a bike again. I was still stinging from the dissolution of my relationship with Dyan in San José. Exercise and the Caribbean breeze suited me just fine.

The highlight of that trip was hiking an hour and a half through the nature reserve and being about to turn back when I came upon a sign I recognized (No alimenta los animales) and realized I had gone in a circle.

*

I spent my other full day in Puerto Viejo watching football.

The early and afternoon games I watched at a tiny expat bar called Tasty Tuesdays. They had NFL Gameday on a projector and sold tacos and whatever meat they had on the grill. The owners and their friends were all in a fantasy football league together and I got along with them really well. Non-douchey expats for a change.

For the night game I stumbled across town to a bar called The Point. There I met an American bartender who was a diehard Chicago Bears fan and an older Tico named Coco who was pretty good at pool but after I beat him a couple games totally mailed it in. The only other people in the bar were an awkward American circa 30 and his dropdead gorgeous Brazilian girlfriend.

That night I spent some time by the toilet, trying to and succeeding in not vomiting. It occurred to me that I hadn't had a single interesting conversation with anybody during my stay there. Just football and pool talk.

But that was okay. I wasn't feeling up to a whole a lot in Puerto Viejo. I'm not much of a beach guy anyway.