Puerto Viejo

I was really excited to get to visit the Caribbean coast! Puerto Viejo is a small, laid-back tourist destination, less than an hour away from Panama. 

Our hotel

I woke up early one morning and spent a couple hours reading in this green hammock in the hotel's courtyard. It was so nice! A bunch of the people who went decided to stay in a hostel, which was awesome, but I opted for the private rooms with bug nets.

Here are some pictures of the hostel that most of the kids stayed at, it's called Rocking Jay's. I'd never seen anything like it:

Costa Rica's national slogan, used for pretty much every situation

On Saturday, after an awesome breakfast at a café called Bread and Chocolate, we rented bikes and went on a long ride out to 3 different beaches. Even though it poured on the way back, it was one of the best days ever.

This creeped me out a little:

It was a really fun weekend! 

But the way back was not the smoothest. On the bus ride back on Sunday afternoon we were stopped at a police check point and everyone who did not bring their original passports was told to get off the bus. Pretty much everyone I was with only brought copies of our passports, as our school advised us. 

So we got off the bus, and luckily took all of our things, because the bus that we had just paid for did not wait. The policemen were saying they needed to call the embassy and make sure we were all here legally. We were stuck in this small town, about an hour ride away from restaurants and hotels, and we had to get back for class on Monday morning. 

When the policemen started letting other buses and cars go without checking, we started to suspect they wanted a bribe from us. But we all waited it out, and eventually the policemen said they would just call the embassy and check on a few random passport numbers. Luckily for us, an empty tourist van came by and we were able to get out of there and back home after waiting 4 hours at the checkpoint. 

Overall, it was a great trip, with some pretty interesting experiences at the end. :)