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.