Bike Trip-Day 1

(the Day 1 crew-without me or Alonso)

Despite not having too far to ride, as we were a large group and didn’t exactly know how everything was going to work out, it was decided that we’d start out nice and early to give ourselves plenty of time for mishaps. This ended up being a very good decision. Almost all of the trouble and complications that would occur (and did occur) during the trip can be summed up by one factor: riding on flat ground isn’t the same as riding in the hills. When stated like this, it seems ridiculously obvious, but when looking at a map (which is flat) and counting out kilometers and planning a bike trip, it isn’t. Luckily, I had learned this on my ‘warm-up’ ride to Upala. Not only does riding on hills require different muscles, it requires more skills (rolling down hills under control yet taking advantage of the speed gained), it requires much better awareness of when to shift gears, and importantly, a bike with the appropriate gears for going up hills. I say this at the beginning of these few blogs about the border to border ride, just so you can have in mind the number of requirements to ride through hills successfully, and that not possessing one or two of these requirements means for a long, slow, and unpleasant ride. 

Up before dawn, breakfast (oatmeal and coffee) was prepared, eaten, and cleaned up, bags were packed, loaded, and bikes were mounted with only fifteen or twenty minutes of daylight wasted. In order to keep it real, we rode up a gnarly dirt road eight kilometers to the border. I may have commented about these types of roads before on the blog. In Costa Rican Spanish they’re called ‘lastre’ and it’s decidedly not gravel, but rather a gravel/dirt/field stone mix-which means, that it’s ideal for horses or walking, but not at all fun for bikes-if you’re not bouncing off a fieldstone, your splashing through a pothole or powering through some mud. But, we took it slow and made it to the border. 

The border was all sorts of fun. I have been lucky enough to visit a number of land borders in my life, and I especially enjoy their diversity. As this road isn’t a border crossing used by anyone but the locals, it was by far the least built up border crossing I’ve ever seen. It featured a stone with Nicaragua/Costa Rica carved on it, a withering Nicaraguan flag, and a Nicaraguan soldier/policeman with a gun across his chest, who chatted up Eric S. A few young kids were riding horses across the border, usually with small packages or papers-doing errands for some of the farmers and property owners that have business in both countries. After group pictures, the border to border bike ride started in earnest. 

(border marker)

(border flag)

As the morning progressed, we made our way back through Upala and traveled southeast on Highway 4. As there were two Peace Corps trucks accompanying us, we split into two groups-one with a faster and one a slower pace. I rode in the first group, and everything went quite smoothly—at least for us. The second group either didn’t read the signs, or didn’t know which way we were headed, and José (one of my bosses), who was riding between the two groups to be of assistance (he and Alonso-another staff member-had the best bike repair knowledge) had to do some extra riding down the wrong turn and get some of that group turned around. Most of the ride was pleasant and flat, but as we started to approach Monterrey, where we’d be spending the night, it got much, much hillier. Eric S. and I were looking to keep up a good pace, so we rode out ahead of the two groups and rolled into Monterrey around lunch time. Hungry and thirsty, we stopped at the same little café where I had eaten a delightful breakfast just two days before. After filling up our water bottles and consuming a Snickers bar in mere seconds, we noticed a man working on his car in his front lawn. And that the car had Pennsylvania plates. We approached him, and he was happy to chat us up, talk about his son that had lived in Pennsylvania for many years, and let us use his hose to wash off our bikes.

The rest of the group rolled in throughout the afternoon, along with the trucks, which was fortunate, as Eric and I had just been hanging out in the cabin’s towels after showering. We had a nice dinner of arroz con pollo (chicken fried rice-a Costa Rican staple), did some shopping at the local stores for snacks for the next day's ride. Just before we fell asleep, Beth D. arrived, coming on the last bus, which she had barely made after just getting back to her site that day, getting everything packed and ready, and then lugging her bike on the various buses she had to take to arrive. With the 16 K trip to and from the border, day one amounted to 93 kilometers, and you can see our route on the picture below (sans the little trip up to the border).