Why paradise needs good weather -Puerto Viejo

Trip Date: Feb 2026. £1= 623 Costa Rica Colon (₡) & $1.33 USD May 2026

When doing our research on Puerto Viejo all the images we saw were of paradise. The sun shining down on aquamarine seas, sandy beaches shaded by aesthetically leaning palm trees, couples walking along the beach while waves gently lap against their feet, surfers chilling out beyond the break waiting for the perfect wave. While I'm sure it sometimes looks like that, during our visit mother nature had some different ideas.

Before I get too ahead of myself, first we needed to get there. In San Jose we had to make our way back to the rather sketchy Terminal MEPE where the buses to Puerto Viejo depart from. There were 6 daily buses, and as reserving tickets in advance wasn't allowed, it was suggested that we arrive to the bus stop an hour before departure to snag a seat. We did, but I can understand the advice as the bus filled up fast, and well before the bus even arrived all the seats were sold. At ₡6410 per person I was expecting a nice bus, but the one we got was just okay. The aircon struggled out, the legroom was poor and it lacked an onboard toilet - but we did stop a couple times for loo breaks so I guess that's okay.

What surprised me most about the journey was the views. After the rather underwhelming sights of Costa Rica's capital I just about forgot how beautiful the country is. As we left the city streets behind we found ourselves rumbling along winding roads, as the bus hugged the mountainsides we occasionally glimpsed views over the vast valleys spread out below. Unfortunately it wasn't to last and as we approached our destination, and the mountain views were replaced by miles of banana plantations, it began to rain.

When we chose our accommodation we went for quirky over comfort. The wooden structure was beautiful but not exactly weatherproof, the rain never entirely came in, but it was hard to keep the wind out when there was a massive gap between the walls and the eaves. So the room wasn't stuffy, but it was home to critters apart from ourselves. One evening when we had returned from our attempt to stay dry while going out for dinner (we failed), we noticed a small amount of yellow liquid and matter scattered across our bathroom floor. Strange, we thought, we hadn't left that there. Feeling like we were being watched we looked up, and there, with his tiny paw clinging to the tattered lampshade was a bat. Our new fury friend, once he noticed he'd been spotted, dropped the fruit he'd been messily eating and flew the scene... leaving us with even more mess.

My bat photography leaves a bit to be desired.

With the weather being changeable our initial seaside plans of sitting on the beach, swimming and relaxing were completely out. Well it wasn't just the rain that was putting us off, but the sea as well. It was fierce, roiling waves were pounding aggressively against the shore and what little beach there was left was covered in debris and downed trees. We saw online that in some spots along the coast the sea had broken free from the beach altogether and waves were reaching the roads... not the idyllic paradise we'd seen online.

Well weather can't be helped and we weren't going to let it keep us inside. Instead of chilling on the beach we decided to go for a bike ride instead. Although the initial plan was to bike ride to the nearby beaches, we decided we'd follow the road along and see what animals we could spot along the way instead.

First up was a troop of monkeys. Although they were being fairly quiet, the large amount of half eaten fruit scattered underneath a tree was a dead give-away. We parked up our bikes, careful to be out of the drop zone, and watched as the monkeys lazed about in the canopy of the tree. They were stocky and black, most likely howler monkeys, but it was hard to be sure as none of them were howling to mark their territory.

We continued peddling our way along the road, keeping an eye of the foliage around hoping to spot something else. For a long while there was nothing, just fields of tropical trees on one side and the roaring ocean on the other. As our path veered away from the water, we noticed a lump in one of the trees that didn't quite blend in - time to investigate. This wasn't the first lump we'd examined, keen to find something we'd mistaken many gnarly twisted branches as potential animals, but this time we were in luck. A sloth! Not just one, but two. Each hanging onto a branch slowly reaching around for leaves to consume.

I wish I could say we then whipped out our camera and snapped the perfect picture as a memento of our first wild sloth sighting... but with the weather vacillating between shit and shitter we hadn't even brought our camera with us. Even if we'd wanted to risk it getting caught in a potential downpour, the sloth wasn't exactly close or in a very photogenic position. Our camera's zoom just isn't that impressive and if it was, who wants a close up photo of a sloths upside-down backside anyway.

Just in case you did want that photo.

Leaving the sloths be we continued on, steadily cycling our way along the coast. All was going well until I started to lag behind. Ben, being a gentleman, eventually pulled over to let me catch up. As I cheekily cycled past he halted my antics, informing me my back tire was entirely flat. How annoying! At this point we were a good 8 or 9km away from where we started, not that far in terms of cycling, but quite a long way to push a bike. We needed another solution. We hadn't passed any bike repair shops along the way, but google maps promised one another km down the road.

When we first pulled up things weren't hopeful. There was a garage space and in that garage space there were scattered bikes in various states of repair, but when we asked the assistant of the attached shop if anyone could help us, he gave us a simple one word answer: No. We searched the shop for things we could use, there were inner tubes, but none of the right size. Maybe one could work in a pinch, but we didn't have any tools anyway. We returned to the shop assistant with a request, if we could borrow some tools to pop the rim of the tyre off we'd be out of his way. He decided to take pity on us, telling us to bring the bike in and he'd take a look.

Together, he and Ben wrestled the rim off the bike. The initial plan was to remove the entire wheel to make it easier to work on, but nuts holding it on were rusted through. With the inner tube exposed we could see the problem, it had a rather large hole in it... one that was suspiciously on the inside, an odd place for a puncture to be. As we couldn't actually remove the inner tube, our new friend and saviour had one last trick up his sleeve and he called it the "English solution". Instead of blocking the hole or repairing it, we were just going to tie up the inner tube tightly on either side of the hole with some twine slowing down the rate of deflation so I could ride it back.

It worked, but with the solution being slightly less permanent than we'd hoped for our bike ride was still over. Before we started the cycle back, we noticed we were opposite an access road down to the beach and decided to have a quick peek. Along the way we encountered some more monkeys, Geoffroy's spider monkeys this time which were playfully chasing each other up and down the swaying palm trees. Happy with this last encounter we headed back the way we came.

With the weather staying stormy and the forecast showing no change in the foreseeable we decided our time in Puerto Viejo needed to come to an end. Costa Rica isn't the cheapest place to visit, and although we had eked some enjoyment out of our time there despite the terrible weather it hadn't made us want to stick around. The scenery was beautiful, we'd managed to spot some of our bucket list animals out in the wild, and the people were friendly but I'm not sure that countered the high cost of food, transportation and activities. Perhaps if the weather had been on our side of experience of Costa Rica would have been different... but in the end it just wasn't as mind-blowing as i'd been led to believe.

There is always one paddle boarder.