February 13. Day 4. Naranjillo to Santa Maria de Dota

Today's Description:  The adventure continues by trekking towards the Continental Divide, challenging the infamous "Cemetery Hill" - a strenuous 10km glute burning climb up a steep, winding pass.  We then switch to pedal power and head for the pueblo of San Lorenzo ending in the quaint village of Santa Maria where we refortify with some typical Costa Rican fare and rest up in cozy cabins for the night.  

Hiking 13km.  Biking 13km.
Ascent:  1390m.  Descent:  445m.
Hiking: from 600m elevation to 1400m elevation.  Biking: from 1400m to about 1500m.

Breakfast at 6, on the trail by 7 and we finished about 3.

The guides prepared a lovely breakfast for us - fruit salad, granola, yogurt, pancakes, eggs & juice.

Here we are going through final preparations............

Some nice flowers close to the shelter, showing off in the brilliant sunshine.

Let the hiking begin..........  mostly a series of steady climbs, but there were a few downhills to river or creek crossings and then back up again.

We're definitely in coffee country today.............  Fez gave us a quick lesson on the processing of coffee beans.  As in the US and Canada, such harvesting is backbreaking work that the locals don't want to do.  In Costa Rica many of the coffee pickers are from Nicaragua or are indigenous.

It took us about 5 hours to get to the top, but we had lots of breaks and great views along the way.

A tad windy, as shown above....................

I didn't take any pictures from the bike; I was busy paying attention to the road.  About 3km into the bike ride we had a great restaurant lunch in a fairly substantial town along the way.  Although we only gained about 100m on the bike, there were lots of ups and downs.  Today's ride was all on a paved surface, which was kind of nice.

It was another hot, hot day.  We're staying at some really nice cabins (Cabinas Cecelia) tonight.  Unfortunately I didn't think to take any pictures.  The wind continued to blow and I was busy for a while chasing laundry around before finally bringing it inside. Cecelia whipped up a very tasty traditional Costa Rican dinner for us.  After hearing plans for tomorrow morning, everyone retired to their rooms rather early.

February 12. Day 3. Quepos - Naranjillo

Today's Description:  The active adventure begins!!  Today we begin our journey from coast to coast.  We awake at the crack of dawn and enjoy a light buffet of fresh fruit, yogurt and coffee.  Mountain bikes are our mode of transport as we leave Quepos and climb into the steep mountains and beautiful valleys of the sparsely populated Pacific Coast.  In the small town of Esquipulas we have a hearty breakfast, rest up and prepare our packs for the next leg of today's journey.  Trading our wheels for hiking boots, we continue by trekking into the cool mountains of Central Costa Rica.  We camp overnight in the valley of Naranjillo.  


25 km bike ride + 14 km hike
Ascent 1440m.  Descent 825m.
0m elevation to 900m elevation on the bike.  Down to about 600m on the hike.

Here are two pictures of our Best Western hotel - front & back.

Apparently this is not a trip for sleepyheads!  Breakfast at 6:30, followed by bike fitting outside at 7:30.  The bikes are 29-inch front-suspension mountain bikes.  They look pretty well maintained.  The trip notes mentioned bringing your own pedals if you wanted but didn't mention anything about seats.  Silly me to think they might have female-specific saddles since over half the clients are women.  Guess my butt will be hurting on the longer days............

Group shot by the Pacific Ocean.  Look how clean we look!  And we smell pretty good too.

We're starting out with a beautiful almost cloudless day, although Fez is forecasting rain for the afternoon.  In any case, it's going to be a hot one!

We biked for about 2 hours and gained about 200m - a bit up & down.  We were on some paved and some dirt roads, and traveled through a couple of little villages.  It's interesting that most of the houses and other buildings have metal fences completely surrounding them.  Not sure whether it is more tradition or safety.

Oh - here's a picture of a nice-looking tree.  Not a native species, though, and apparently the bats here get caught where the stems meet the main trunk and can't get out alive...........

We stop quite often to regroup, so I won't be taking very many pictures from the bike - it just holds up the whole group............  It was a pretty good ride this morning, although by the end the road (particularly the downhill) was at about my limit of comfort on the mountain bike.  We finished biking by about 10:30.  We walked a short distance to a nice refreshing waterfall while Fez, Graham and Memo got lunch fixin's ready for us.

Here's where the bikes go when we're ready to hike.

We packed lunches and lots of water, changed clothes and shoes, donned packs and started walking.  The hike was on a dirt road - up about 700m and then down about 300m; ugh!  We hiked from about 11:30 until about 4:30, including a break for lunch.

Tonight we're camping on a soccer field in a tiny town in the valley of Naranjillo.  As Fez had predicted, we did get some rain this afternoon.  Just sprinkles while we were walking, but within moments of getting to our destination shelter the skies opened!  Cold showers for us tonight, but a nice big shelter for cooking and eating.  Our guides provided us with some yummy snacks just after getting in.  What a life!

Some sights along the way today.............. toucans,

Leafcutter ants (fascinating but too complex to describe here.  Look it up if you're interested),

hawks,

pretty flowers,

etc.  There were great views into valleys and over to the Pacific, especially as we got higher.

We had our first sighting of coffee plants, at about 1000m.

I wouldn't want to be a picker; very rough terrain!

Tents on the soccer field.........

Once again I have camera envy.  Mine is pretty old and has served me well, but Heather had a really nice camera with 26x zoom (mine is 10 max) and really got some great shots.

Great day!

February 11. Day 2. Getting to the Pacific Coast.

I know I was first in to Costa Rica yesterday, but by the time I had finished exploring town I had expected to find a few other people here.  Not so.....  Shortly after 6, though, as I was getting ready to head out to dinner, two other people had arrived.  Pat and Kathleen, both from California, had arrived at the hotel.  There are 10 of us on the trip.  Four I don't know yet - a couple from England and a couple from Chicago.  Six of us, though, met on Ride Idaho last year.  Three ladies have known each other since college - Pat, Kathy and Vicky.  Pat & Kathy are from California and Vicky is from Arizona.  Jean & Mary are from Utah.  Vicky, Mary & Jean arrived on the same flight and got to the hotel around 9.  Looks like a fun group!

Today's Description:  The day starts with a transfer to Quepos, a fishing village on the Pacific Coast.  You have time to relax, chill out on the beach or visit Manuel Antonio National Park, which is famous for its abundant wildlife.  After a few hours of hiking, swimming and exploring the hidden coves of this unique park, we'll meet in the later afternoon to get sized for our bikes and then have the evening to discuss the details of the trip and tend to any necessary prep-work.

We enjoyed a lovely buffet breakfast at the hotel before meeting Fez at 8 for the 3 hour bus trip to the coastal town of Quepos.  Just one brief stop along the way to look at some crocodiles hanging out below a bridge.

Our hotel rooms were not yet ready so we stowed our luggage and hopped a local bus to the seaside town of Manuel Antonio.  Lunch at an open-air restaurant (note to self - find someone to split lunch with next time; the portions were huge!) across the street from the beach.

Then a short walk to Manuel Antonio National Park, said to be one of the most picturesque bits of tropical coast in Costa Rica.  The park itself is the country's smallest national park at 16 sq km.  It is known for its lush tropical vegetation and outstanding wildlife.  Some of the folks had the foresight to hire a guide, and I'm so glad we did!  Our guide, Wilbur (aka Raccoon), carried a portable stand-up telescope that he quickly set up for us several dozen times.  We saw lots of stuff - two types of sloths, two types of monkeys, iguanas, chameleons, bats. spiders, birds, crabs, venus fly trap, etc., etc. Here are some of the pictures from the day:

So..... by 3:30 I'm just drenched from walking around.  A quick dip to the knees in the ocean and then back through the park for the return bus trip.  After check-in and a shower we had a nice dinner at the hotel tonight and met the final two members of our team - driver/cook/right-hand-man Memo and shiny new assistant guide Graham.