When the monkey stole my cookie – A weekend in Puerto Viejo

Despite having a long weekend every week, it's not always easy to travel to new places in Costa Rica.

If one needs to travel a long distance, it might be necessary to plan a couple of extra days to match the bus schedules. In such cases, it's incredibly valuable that Kulturstudier assists in arranging private transportation so that one can experience different aspects of the country.

This week we traveled to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side.

We left as soon as the classes ended on Thursday afternoon. It was a long bus ride, and an early night as soon as we arrived.

The next day we got up early to go to the Jaguar Rescue Center. For 14,000 CRC (approximately 280 Norwegian kroner) per person, we got a guided tour through the center. There we saw various types of birds, including macaws. We also saw sloths, turtles, crocodiles, and monkeys.

The guide told us about how the goal was always to help the animals so that they could be released back into the wild after rehabilitation.

This meant that some animals lived more isolated from human contact, allowing them to lead as authentic a wild life as possible. We could not see these animals physically, but it was possible to observe them through a wildlife camera.

Unfortunately, not all animals could be safely released back into the wild after their stay at the center.

Among other things, this concerned sloths that had sustained major injuries from high-voltage power lines, birds that had their wings clipped in captivity, and monkeys that had been abused in animal tourism.

Fortunately, a new law has been passed in Costa Rica that prohibits both the captivity of wild animals and exploitative animal tourism.

Hopefully, this will mean fewer flightless birds and fewer frightened monkeys at the center in the years to come. We were also informed that animal selfies are not allowed, precisely to protect the animals.

After the visit, it was time to check out the Caribbean beaches.

We didn't need to go further than across the road and out to the beach before we found the coral reef. There we could snorkel with exotic fish such as stingrays, parrotfish, and pufferfish just a few meters out in the water.

There were also great opportunities to check out the marine life when we took a boat to the Cahuita National Park to snorkel.

There we had a guided tour, first in the water around the coral reefs, then in the jungle.

The highlight was when the guide pointed out a nurse shark right beneath where we were swimming. This created great joy among everyone, and we had plenty of time to observe the shark lying peacefully in the coral reef.

One might think that the shark encounter was the most adrenaline-pumping part of the trip, but it was the monkeys that stole the show.

As part of the tour, we were served fresh watermelon and pineapple on a beach in the national park. This stop was going to cost us three packs of biscuits.

One of the monkeys came up to me as I was opening my cookie and snatched it out of my hands. The same monkey had earlier unzipped the bags of two others and stolen their cookies. Experienced thieves, in other words.

In the evening, we went to the city to eat. We had heard beforehand that the culture on this side of the country had significant differences from San Isidro and the Pacific side.

Both music, food, and aesthetics were clearly influenced by Afro-Caribbean culture. The Caribbean dishes were to everyone's liking, so there were several dinners and lunches out over the weekend.

After dinner, there was karaoke and salsa at a venue nearby. There, the students greatly impressed – both with dance and song!

The trip to Puerto Viejo was both academically enriching and a very nice social activity for all the students. We saw the importance of experiencing animals on their terms, and were once again reminded of how beautiful and useful it is to see nature from a non-anthropocentric point of view.