Costa Rica

I fell asleep one day for 20 minutes like this. Using my little
purse as a pillow. It was 3pm in the afternoon, 42°C.

Costa Rica has a reputation amongst cycle tourers as being SOO expensive that you need to cycle through AS FAST AS YOU CAN.

It's kind of hard to imagine having hauled yourself through the never ending Guatemala, the heat of El Salvador, the empty mountains of Honduras and the endless sugar cane fields of poor poor cheap cheap Nicaragua that suddenly I'd come across this lush, first world, expensive-as-London Central American country. But actually, that's kind of how it was.

I had been told that you can pay for everything in US dollars in Costa Rica, which actually isn't at all true. They have their own currency called the Colon. To give you a brief example a 330ml bottle of beer in Mexico costs .50c. The same bottle in Costa Rica costs 2USD. Ok, it's not exactly London prices but you feel like you are being totally robbed.

Growing in the fields

So this is where pineapples grow. A baby one here.

A butterfly landed on Laura's front handlebar bag.

Costa Rica is safe, has been politically stable for ever, has a tropical climate with loads of rain and good infrastructure. Put all this together and you get a very successful and productive agricultural sector. Bananas and pineapples rank no. 2 and 3 in the list of Costa Rican exports. It easy to see why. For days we cycled through fields of 'Piñeras' (pineapple farms), this was followed by days of cycling through banana fields. The big bunches of bananas high up in the trees were often wrapped in blue plastic bags. See photo below. We wondered if this was to keep the bananas from ripening too soon, or to help them to ripen faster or to keep them free from bugs and insects. Who knows?

Cycling along surrounded by banana trees.

2 rivers merging in the mountains in Costa Rica. One brown. One blue.

Herbie and Laura
I had bumped into Herbie (Irish) and Laura (English) in California, 6 months previously. You may remember the photo from the California blog, when I was so excited to meet another Irish cyclist. We had kept in touch since then. Herbie had sent me lots of 'hey Shell, how are you, where are you, please tell us you are still alive' Whats App messages since California. I think as an Irish male he felt in some way responsible for my safety. It was really sweet but I was always fine. When I got to know him better I learned that this is typical Herbie, taking care of the world.

The pair, who live in London, are pretty hardcore athletes. He used to row for Ireland, she was a personal trainer and both were marathon and ultra marathon runners. When we met again on Ometepe island in Nicaragua they invited me to cycle with them for a couple of days. They were planning two easy flat'ish 60km days so I said why not. I thought I might enjoy not being billy-no-mates for a couple of days.

Never in a million months of Sundays did I think I'd be able to keep up with them for a longer period of time. But what do you know, almost 3 weeks later we were still pedalling and camping together. We were a good little team. It was fun. We spoke a lot of Spanish, ate a lot of porridge and myself and Herbie had quite a few beers in the late afternoon sitting on random benches outside Chinese-owned supermarkets, sweaty and grumpy and moaning about the 40 degree temperatures. Good memories.

Herbie and Laura with me in Costa Rica.

The pair of them cleverly wrapped their high viz jackets around their back panniers.

Love is...

Myself and Laura throw our bikes on the side of the road while we climb a
tree for fruit.

River crossings and dirt road adventures
After crossing the border into Costa Rica from Nicaragua I had some vague notion of heading over the mountains to the Caribbean coast as opposed to doing what most cyclist do and continuing along the Pan American Highway into Panama. Where I got this notion from I have no idea. The road less travelled springs to mind. But sure that's just a book. After a 50km day mainly on dirt roads including 5 river crossings which took us 8 hours in the saddle and ended with a rain storm and me getting lost after night fall in the village we intended to stay in... I questioned the idea. After the most intense and tough day in the saddle since leaving Vancouver, we found ourselves 1000m above sea level and heading toward the northern shores of Costa Rica having passed by Monteverde and Lake Arenal.

The advantages were that the truck traffic stopped, the scenery was spectacular, the roads were smaller and much quieter. It was gloriously cool at night so we could slept much better. But the terrain was tough and rough and steep.

Myself and Laura kept each other company as we
got on and off the bikes all day long.

I think this was river crossing 3 out of 5.

It's so steep even Herbie is struggling. But only a little. He's still smiling of course.

Monteverde is one of Costa Rica's most visited National Parks. Costa Rica is full of lush stunning jungle and rain forest. However it costs about $45 per day to visit these National Parks. Even if I could afford that price this trip really isn't about visiting fee-charging National Parks. It's more about following the road and finding some beautiful quiet spots of my own to camp and admire the scenery.

The roads in Costa Rica were full of little white mini buses taking tourists from one tourist attraction to the next. I hadn't seen this type of developed tourism in any other country in Central America. I guess Costa Rica can cash in on it's reputation for being a 'safe' country amongst it's poor, seemingly crime-ridden neighbours. But if Costa Rica can manage to charge such high park entrance fees to tourists - fair play. Or as they say in Spanish - Juego Limpio! (learned while watching Sing Street with Spanish subtitles)!

Both myself and Laura HATE descending on loose gravel. We slip and slide.

I have never spent so long on a loaded bike on gravel roads.

Empty Motorways
After a couple of days of climbing we came across a 30km stretch of brand new closed motorway. It was such a treat to cycle 3 abreast and chat and laugh at the randomness of it. The 3 of us and a horse of course.

Us and a horse enjoying 30kms of empty motorway.

I remember once being allowed to cycle on the M3 in Co. Meath before it was
opened. Such a great feeling.

Camping in Costa Rica
Unfortunately the Bomberos didn't let us camp at the fire stations in Costa Rica. Boo hoo. When I was first told 'no, you can't camp here' I felt almost personally offended. I stated that I had been camping at Central American fire stations since Tijuana in Northern Mexico. I have to admit I had developed a feeling of entitlement and suddenly I was being turned away. They were of course the nicest, cleanest, best equipped stations but it was not to be. In busy towns when wild camping wasn't an option we headed instead of the police stations or better still the Red Cross.

Great to swim in the warm Caribbean after a hot sticky day on the bikes. This is
Puerto Viejo.

Sherpa waits while I take a dip at sunset.

An $8 campsite in Costa Rica gets you your very own plastic tarpaulin and table and chair.

On this particular night poor Herbie didn't sleep a wink. Some locals had come down
to the river to drink some cans and do some drugs. With my magic wax ear plugs, I slept through it all.

Sometimes Herbie and Laura opted for a hotel. On this occasion the local police
allowed me camp in their garden and fed me breakfast of scrambled egg sambos and coffee the next morning.

The troops are getting porridge served by a trowel.
The best light-weight pot stirrer known to man.