Cariblue hotel Puerto Viejo – where to stay on Cocles beach

Some of the best memories I had from my first Costa Rica visit were also from Totem Hotel Beach Resort, the first hotel I stayed at in the pura vida country back in May 2012. Now, going back to spend weeks relaxing on the beaches in the area once again, I found out that Totem merged with the hotel next to it, now found under the name of Cariblue hotel.

So here I was again for another week, this time to talk over some business ideas with a friend of mine Pablo.

What I enjoyed about Cariblue hotel Puerto Viejo:

• cuisine – breakfast included, oh my! I still remembered the yummy traditional Italian breakfast from Totem hotel and some pastries, bread or even pizza slices. I was happy to see all of those were definitely incorporated into the Cariblue breakfast buffet. I love breakfast time as when I am not on a tour, I reply to emails and schedule daily Facebook posts, or travel blog, and what’s the better way of doing so than munching on fresh fruits? Pineapple, melons, water melons, papaya, mango, bananas … aw, and the staff even learned to bring me ground cinnamon to go with it, so nice of them! You can even get typical Costa Rican casado – rice and beans, then yucca, tortillas, some meat meals, and freshly made omelette right in front of your eyes from whatever ingredients you wish. Two different fresh fruit juices, coffee, tea and hot chocolate were of course available too.

• location – Cariblue is located just across the street from the beach. To be honest with you, Cocles is not one of my favorite Caribbean beaches of Costa Rica as it’s wavy and mostly for surfing, but for a girl’s eye it’s nice to watch the ripped bodies of rough surfers, that’s for sure. When you are lucky, you might even catch a lovely sunset here. Cariblue is also just a 5-minute walk from Caribeans chocolate store where they do chocolate tasting and chocolate farm tour. Oh yes! (Of course I did both.) You can even easily walk to Puerto Viejo town, it’s a nice short walk, but I heard it’s not very recommended at night time though. We still walked it with Pablo every single day without any problems.

• jungle around – after months in Panama and Costa Rica I still cannot get enough of wildlife and all the thousand kinds of the breath-taking jungle trees, flowers and other plants I will never be able to learn the names of. Hibiscus flowers, birds of paradise, lizards, turtles, crabs (the holes in the ground are from the crabs), great kiskadee birds, tanagers, howler monkeys, toucans and of course butterflies – cariblue is the name of the most beautiful big blue butterfly = Blue Morpho. I also liked the fact, that some plants have name tags next to them together with an explanation so you can learn what they are used for (such as aloe vera, or vanilla.)

• swimming pool – I know there’s a few beaches close by but being a person who does not like swimming in the waves after a few bad experiences I had in the past, I much prefer calmer pool so I don’t have to be afraid of, let’s say, anything and concentrate on swimming :D

• jacuzzis – there’s 2 jacuzzis, one is down there next to the hammock area which used to be part of Totem hotel, the second one is connected to the swimming pool by the pool bar. Every single night after dinner we spent at least 2 hours with Pablo in that pool jacuzzi chatting over travel blogging, writing and other business ideas. I just wish after such a long time spent in the jacuzzi, the water got warmer as surprisingly it got a bit chilly at night. We literally had to go for a swim then to warm up :)

• when we were there, there was also crew from Atlantic Tours filming a video for Destinos Costa Rica for the national TV program about traveling. And guess what? Me and Pablo were filmed at the pool bar, and then also they filmed me when riding a bike (yes, you can rent bicycles at the reception here.) It was fun to participate in a video even just for a short time :) Thanks guys, for ”using” us. My non-alcoholic fruit drink was really tasty, too :)

• hammocks – great place for reading and just chilling out next to the jacuzzi in the old Totem Hotel area

• spa – well, it is no secret any more that I am the biggest spa lover you’ve ever met so being able to get spa treatments right a minute walk from my room was all I needed. Spa rooms are located just next to the pool, some are closed, but you can even get a massage on a massage bed under a palapa roof viewing the pool. It’s not going to surprise you at all that I had a chocolate treatment while there and my friend Pablo had his first massage ever (this was surprising to me though! Crazy, right?)

• room – simple but clean, with mosquito nets on all the windows (highly appreciated) and organic toiletries. We stayed at  the room 118 and unfortunately, the wifi didn’t work over there even though it should. We had to go to the reception (there’s a wifi area with nice pillows) or sit by the tables in the restaurant.

• decorations – all the wooden and stone statues around the Sole Luna restaurant and the other parts of the hotel were something to look at each time I walked around.

• souvenir shop with clothes and surf stuff, table tennis, tour leaflets

Together with Pablo, we appeared in the Cariblue video as mentioned above :)

My stay at Cariblue hotel Puerto Viejo was part of Adventure and Spa project in Costa Rica. Many thanks to all the people who made my stay very pleasant.

***It took me 4 hours to write this post.

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Posted in Central America, changes, Costa Rica, hotels, photo, press trip, travel Tags: Cariblue hotel, Costa Rica, Puerto Viejo Costa Rica