When drugs don´t work (or aren´t even needed, indeed)

Puerto Viejo

Wednesday morning started off well. I had a massage near the beach in the open air, to the sound of the Caribbean ocean. I could hear the howler monkeys above along with numerous birds, it was heaven! The massage was the best I´ve ever had in my life and just what my poor over-worked "muscles" needed. I was even able to forget my toothache for a moment.

Then it was laundy time (or more like dropping off the laudry for someone else to do... well worth the 3 quid), bank time, tour booking, and a taxi to the dentists, who was located in the next village called Hone Creek. I was really scared of how much it would cost and my insurance company hadn´t got back to me to confirm what counted as an emergency treatment, but it had to be done... two days of agony was enough. There was a slight communication problem with the taxi driver, who took me to the middle of a jungle first, which must have been called Hone Creek as well. By pointing to my teeth and acting like I was in pain I managed to get him understand that it was the dentists clinic in a village called Hone Creek that I needed. The dentist´s clinic was behind bars and locked doors with Jesus posters on the walls and the receptionist singing gospels. The treatment room was very cute, straight from a 50s American movie with a pastel blue chair. I really wanted to take a photo but felt it wasn´t quite appropriate. The dentist was very nice, and luckily spoke fluent English. She kindly confirmed that my teeth were a mess, and that I urgently needed to have a root canal, that would take several operations. I opted for the option b, which was antibiotics and strong painkillers to keep me going until I get back home. She suspected it had been the change in temperature that could´ve triggered the pain. Then it was time for the treaded bill. 5000 colones. That´s 5 pounds. My taxi to the dentist and back cost 12 pounds. It just didn´t feel right, but again it didn´t feel appropriate to tip a dentist.

Almost as soon as I left the clinic, the toothache mysteriously disappeared. No, I´d never heard of psychosomatic toothache before either. I decided to start taking the antibiotics anyway to reduce the swelling, but the painkillers have remained untouched.

Returned to the hostel to find out that there had been a cockup with my tour booking, and I could´t leave to Tortuguero after all in the morning as planned. There was a place for me the day after on the tour, so I had to settle for another lazy day in Puerto Viejo.

I´d decided to be adventurous and sleep in a hammock instead of a dorm bed that night since I´d never tried sleeping in a hammock before. The hammock quarters were covered but there were no walls, so it was almost like sleeping in the open air.



It was very soothing, and I drifted off almost immediately to distant guitar music and occassional whiffs of weed. A few minutes later I was woken by a drunken chorus singing Drugs don´t work, not so distant guitar noise, bongo drums and a thick cloud of smoke right next to my hammock. I got to enjoy the show until the early hours, hearing all the classics from Bob Marley to Oasis until I was tired enough to sleep through anything.



Thursday I slept in and missed a bus I´d planned to take to the Cahuita national park for a day trip. I waved goodbye to my Aussie mates who continued their journey, and then the heavens opened. For some reason (probably because I was desperate for something to do) I decided it was a good time to go surfing, so I rented a board and walked 20 minutes in the pouring rain to a surfing beach, only to discover it was completely flat, so I walked 20 minutes back. It was a big board, an 8ft softtop heavy as hell so at least my arms got a good workout.

Had lunch at Veronica´s Place, a cute little vegetarian restaurant whose owner also prepares herbal remedies. I lunched watching two blue crabs dancing on the floor, and reading about how Veronica discovered the power of plants (the plants talked to her, in case you were wondering) It was slightly surreal (and no I hadn´t been smoking anything).


The rest of the day I spent finishing my uni work, and IT IS NOW FINISHED. Spent another sleepless night in a hammock (my cunning plan of moving to the other side of the hammock quarters backfired, as the concert was held on the beach that night, i.e. away from where I´d slept the previous night and close to where I was now). (You may wonder why I hadn´t changed hostels by now, and the answer is ´cause I just couldn´t be arsed)

My alarm clock was set for 5.50am for a 6.15am pickup for the Tortuguero tour. I woke up in the morning to the sound of the birds and checked my watch. It was 6.23am. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

To be continued