February 14. Day 5. Up and over the Continental Divide

Today's Description:  Today we tackle the hardest, steepest climb of our adventure.  The challenge before breakfast is mountain biking a 14km uphill stretch to the Continental Divide, leading us to an altitude of 2330m, the highest peak of our journey.  Following the rule that everything that goes up must come down, the remainder of the day is mountain biking at its best, mostly downhill on dirt roads and singletrack trails.  We finish the afternoon in the lush and beautiful Orosi Valley where rich pastures and dark green forests of coffee carpet the land.  Overnight at a lodge.  

Altitude at the Continental Divide:  2330m/7700 ft.
Ascent:  1290m.  Descent:  1800m.
Biking:  47 km.

Today was billed as the toughest day, and it lived up to its billing!  And that was before breakfast!!  It was rather chilly last evening.  I had all my layers on for our outdoor dinner, prepared by our host Cecilia.  It was a terrific dinner.  Not too much lounging around after eating, though.  Fez gave us the briefing on today's outing.  We are to leave in two groups - "fast" and "slow" - an hour apart.  The "slow" group will have breakfast (a bit of coffee, fruit and bread) at 5 and start riding at 5:30.  The "fast" group will follow an hour later.  We self selected into 2 groups of 5 riders each.  As much for the extra hour of sleep as for my riding ability I will be going with the "fast" group.  I didn't have a great sleep as I listened to the wind howling all night.  Yikes - we have to ride in that?!?  Yes, indeedy......  14km of uphill to the Continental Divide.  The wind made it difficult to keep a straight line at times.  Mostly a head- or cross-wind, but sometimes a pleasant push from behind.  I did get off the bike and walk a few times.  Right near the top I did finally pass the last person from the "slow" group.  Once we were at the top, we were treated to a big breakfast in a restaurant.





After a nice long break it was back on the bikes for 13km of downhill.  The first 5 were on the Inter-American Highway and then the next 8 were on a dirt road.  We have a few hard-core mountain bikers in the group and a few like me who are really novices off-road.  Fez cautioned us about the dirt road ahead so I quickly found my spot at the back of the group and went really really slowly and cautiously.  Unfortunately one of the other novices went over her handlebars and is pretty sore and scraped up tonight.  There were lots of places where I didn't feel comfortable so I just walked those.  Oh well - might as well take a picture while I'm off the bike.



We ended up at a little town where we re-grouped.





Six more km of milder uphill................





A good example of a Costa Rican guard rail.



Then came a section of 3 impossibly steep uphills.  I didn't even try to ride them!



Seems simply riding his own bike wasn't enough of a challenge for our super-guide Fez.  He's also pushing someone else's bike in order to make the walk up easier for her!



Some nice views along the way.









Well....... what goes up must come down!  Eight km of "technical" downhill.  One of the guys and the assistant guide managed to ride the whole thing, but I walked lots of it and even had trouble walking with the bike on some parts of it.





We finally reached the bottom, all in one piece.  Whew!  A little bit of lunch at the truck.  Amazing just how many dogs suddenly materialize when there is a bit of food around!  A little river crossing and then about another 9km of mellow riding to the town of Orosi where there is the oldest still-operating church in Costa Rica (18th century).









A nice break at a local coffee shop and then off to our lodging for the night - Tetey Lodge.  Very nice accommodation.  And - we get to sleep in tomorrow!  Breakfast at 7:30 - woohoo!