Intro

First significant trip of 2018, and I'm kind of sad to be leaving Calgary.  I know, I know...... the general population wouldn't feel this way, but we're having the biggest snowfall of the season and the mountains will be magnificent for skiing and snowshoeing for the next few weeks!  Not too much compared to Ottawa standards but a big dump for Calgary.  Also, my trip appears to be coinciding with the Olympics and I'm a huge fan.  Oh well; gotta go.

What is this trip?  It's perhaps a bit unusual for me in that it is totally provided by an outfitter.  We just have to put in the gruntwork.  It's called "Costa Rica, The Coast to Coast Adventure".  The outfitter is BikeHike Adventures out of Vancouver, although they subcontract to a local guiding company.  Over the course of 12 days we will travel from the Pacific Coast to the Caribbean Coast under human power.  We will bike, hike, raft and kayak.  Most days we will do more than one of these activities.  The outfitter will be there to swap out all the necessary equipment.  It is marketed as a trip "for the physically fit and the insanely energetic".  What did I sign up for??  Should be fun!!

Some "quick facts" about Costa Rica that we were given:
Population:  4.7 million
Language:  Spanish
Major Industries:  coffee, tourism, bananas, textiles, sugars
In 1821, Costa Rica joined other Central American provinces in declaring independence from Spain.  The country's first president built roads, schools and gave land grants to anyone willing to plant coffee.  By the mid-1800s, coffee was Costa Rica's principal export and coffee growers were a powerful and wealthy elite.  In the 1880s a railway was constructed to connect San Jose to the Caribbean Coast.   A US businessman was responsible for this, and in exchange for completing the railroad the Costa Rican government granted him large tracts of land and a lease on the train route.  He used these grants to produce and export bananas to the US and as a result, bananas came to rival coffee as the principal export of Costa Rica.  Historically, Costa Rica enjoys greater peace and more political stability compared with the rest of Central America.  However there was an armed uprising and 44-day civil war in 1948.  The new government abolished the military and instituted a new constitution with a democratically elected assembly.  Costa Rica is located 10 degrees north of the equator.  It borders both the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean, with a total of 1290 km of coastline.  Costa Rica borders Panama to the south and Nicaragua to the north.  Its origin is volcanic, so it is very mountainous.  The highest point in the country is 12,532'.  Temperatures are pleasantly moderate all year long, and vary significantly by elevation.  With nationalized medical and social security systems, Costa Ricans enjoy healthcare that is on par with that of industrialized nations. (I hope not to test this claim while I am there!).  The country has dedicated 23% of its land to national parks, biological reserves, forest reserves and buffer zones, wildlife refuges and indigenous reserves.  While Costa Rica has only about 0.1% of the world's landmass, it contains 5% of the world's biodiversity.  There are many ecological zones, from sub-alpine dwarfed vegetation to unspoiled rainforest and coastlines of white sand tropical beaches.  These diverse ecological zones are home to a rich variety of animals and birds including jaguars, monkeys, toucans, parrots, green sea turtles and roughly 850 species of birds (more than the entire North American continent).