Puerto Viejo, 19th January

So I was never meant to come here, Infact I had bought a ticket to San Jose, but something told me to get off and see the place for itself...also I'd been told there was this really cool place called Rocking J's where you could sleep in Hammocks:

Also, I wanted to dive. Unfortunately the diving is shit here...the dive school said the visibility was 2 meters! No big fish and it costs 100 dollars for two tanks, that's 30 more than Bocas. Still this place is awesome. I only wish I'd been here at the weekebd.

As soon as I got to the hostel I went to sit by the sea (the hostel is on the beach) and I was offered a joint, so got immediately stoned. It was fun! Soon after I went to sit at the tables and got drink with this drag queen from San Francisco, Matthew Mullarkey. Anazing cause you never really meet people like him when you travel. Gay guys are always too prissy to want to stay in hostels or backpack. And here I am having a beer with a drag queen in a hostel on the beach in Costa Rica. Brilliant! Other than being hilarious and telling me stories of his trip round the jungle Matthew told me about this thing you can join where you have to reduce all your worldly goods to 100 things...I'd tried to reduce everything as much as I could over Xmas, but just 100 things, I'm not sure. Matthew said that whenever he moves into a house he always likes to leave with the same amount he brought and never add to that.

There were also some other great characters of the evening. Most notably this totally awesome dude called Silas from South Africa...he was telling me all these stories about his travels , and seemed similar to me, but most interestingly he was telling me about Burning Man festival...I never knew but the whole thing is based on a sharing economy. So when you go you don't need to buy stuff but you trade your skills with people for things....so it gets rid of all the shit you have to put up with in modern life, no need for money or greed cause you can't have it unless you can trade sonething for it. I'm still not sure what it would be like but it sounds interesting. Maybe I'll go to this festival and check it out. Maybe go with him! We then tried to play Uno but I massively failed, cause I was too drunk to play and remember the rules.

There were these really cool guys from Holland too, which was great chatting to them as I could talk about my experience of Ansterdam...also was fun to talk about the book what Dutch people like.

I can't actually remember the rest of the evening , but the general impression is it was fun and Puerto Viejo may not be a diving paradise but is a really cool backpackers town.