The World Tour of Oopsies: Chapter 12—The Horse

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica-February 2018: Close up the colourful and old wooden signs on the coastline of Puerto Viejo. (Getty)

Aug.21.2025

[The World Tour of Oopsies is an ongoing series of travel stories about my first decade of travel. During these adventures and misadventures, I had to unlearn many things I thought I knew about life. Welcome to my miseducation.]

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Catch up on the World Tour of Oopsies:

Part I / The worst hostel in the world

Last week, I covered one of my favorite adventures from Costa Rica’s Pacific coast at Envision Festival (see: Ch. 11). But Costa Rica is a narrow country with plenty of coastline, and I preferred the more tropical Caribbean coast.

Enter Puerto Viejo, one of the most accessible towns in the province of Limon. It’s a perfect, lazy beach hub for backpackers—and my friends and I loved to visit thanks to those backpacker-friendly prices.

There was one particularly cheap hostel. A place with a few pavilion-style buildings abutting the gorgeous beach, with a basic lounging area and shared kitchen. And, most importantly, a pavilion with hammocks lining the room, each with a corresponding locker.

For just $7, you could rent a hammock and a locker.

The catch? You had to deal with the hostel’s owner, a noisy American, and his staff, who liked to tote around ice luges that they’d use to dispense free shots to women staying overnight.

That’s about as nice and vague as I can be about the hostel, considering it’s still up and running today.

(If you want to stay at a hostel in Puerto Viejo, stick with one of the top five choices.)

Part II / The horse & the bunker

Like you might be able to tell, the hostel is owned by an eccentric. And the hostel, when I visited, had two notable structures.

The first was a small stable where the owner kept a mare and her young colt. The second was a large bunker-style ship that was beached on the shore, which looked formidable and plain, sort of like a military vessel.

On our second night at the hostel, the hostel owner and his friends invited my friends onto the ship to hang out. (Fun fact: I was visiting with five friends, and three of us were named Taylor.)

We hung out for a while until the sun set, then decided to join the guys on the ship. Again, the ship was beached in the sand, making it seem like a slightly more reasonable suggestion to hang out.

(Later, we would find out that the hostel owner had purchased the bunker-style ship in case of the apocalypse. Sort of like a modest Noah’s Ark, I guess.)

On the way there, we passed the stable with the mare and her baby colt. The hostel owner pointed to the colt and said, “Don’t pet him, he’s an $%#hole.”

At which point my ears perked up. You’d think I would be more cautious of wandering into a grown man’s bunker-ship at night (and especially after my experience in Panama; see Ch. 9), but I was zeroed in on that baby horse instead.

The horse didn’t look like a jerk. It was adorable and awkward, with its long legs. At this point in my life, I was also a little bit like the colt; lawless, awkward, and full of energy.

I hung back a few minutes with two of my friends—I think one of them had forgotten something, so we waited for her before heading into the bunker-ship.

Of course, I wandered over to the stable and petted the mare. Much to my chagrin, I’m now forced to admit that I talked a little trash to the colt. Nothing degrading, just a little sass, like something I’d say to a cousin.

But I clearly upset the soon-to-be-stallion because it rocked its head out and bit me.

I won’t tell you where it bit me—just know that the horse had its revenge, and it was very well-played.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the first time I’d been bitten by a creature at night in a foreign country (see: Ch. 1), and the colt wasn’t venomous. Still, I was mortified enough to whip my head towards my friends and shout, “Don’t tell anyone!”

Part III / How am I still alive?

Looking back, it’s hard not to be thankful the colt bit me; it got my adrenaline pumping enough for me to realize that walking into that bunker-ship was not a good idea.

I mean, I did walk into the bunker-ship, desperate to get away from the mare and her spawn, but I was insistent that we leave soon.

That night, I lay on my hammock, embarrassed that I’d been bitten by a horse and deeply preoccupied by whether or not an apocalypse would come and, if it did, whether I’d need to follow a man like this hostel owner into a bunker.

Now, looking back, I think the bites (scorpion and equine) were wake-up calls. I’ll get into that more later on. (Fear not, this isn’t the last time I’ll be bitten during my world tour.)