Bike Trip Day 3

(José, one of our staff leaders and my boss)

We started the third day with two additions to the group, Katherine and Nicole B. who had ridden the bus up to Katherine’s the night before. We were still retracing the trip I had made up to Upala, so the ride was very familiar to me. Beth, Eric, Katherine, Alonso (the IT manager for the Peace Corps office) and I started out in the first group on a gorgeous, I mean gorgeous, morning in the hills around Venecia and San Miguel. It’s a very pretty area, with cattle pastures and rainforest dotting the various hillsides. Soon after Alonso, Eric and I headed out ahead. Alonso had been driving the first two days, and is quite the cyclist, so he was fresh and ready to push it through the hills. Which he did. It was impressive watching someone that really knows how to ride move up and down the hills, maximizing all the energy the downhills provided.

(view of Rio Sucio coming down from Central Range, Braulio Carrillo Nat'l Park)

As we were riding on the long flat part of the day, we ran into a friend of José’s (well, we were told he’d be there) who was doing some biking in the area. Eric and Alonso pushed ahead and I rode with José’s friend, who was nice and easy to chat with for the remainder of the day. We rode through my old site and luckily, do to the early start and quick pace, only had to endure about an hour of the bright Sarapiqui sun as we rode without any shade along Highway 4, heading south. By passing my site, I finished retracing my trek up, but I had also already ridden on most of this section as well. We arrived at the Highway 4/Highway 32 intersection well before lunch and sat for over an hour in the shade, eating watermelon, bananas, and mandarin oranges we had purchased from the fruit vendors. We were waiting there as some executive decisions were being finalized.

In the end a very sad, but probably smart decision was made: we wouldn’t ride the portion of the ride from this intersection to Limón, along Highway 32. This section of highway is super busy, as it connects the San José metro area (biggest city in the country-2.5 million people) with Moín-the country’s most important port (there are only two big ports-and Moín handles more than half of Costa Rica’s trade). Not only is it super busy, but it is also the most dangerous bit of highway in Costa Rica (more crashes than any other highway almost every year). It was sad, in that our border to border ride was now not exactly border to border, but considering how busy the highway is and that we were a large group of mixed-experience riders, a smart one.

So, after sitting and waiting for the jeeps (and the decision), I helped Alonso get all the bikes on top of the two support jeeps, and then grabbed a casado at a soda (a typical Costa Rican meal at a typical Costa Rican restaurant/café), changed out of bike shorts, and we all loaded the bus to Limón. The bus was coming from San José, and just stopped at the intersection bus stop/truck stop, so it was, of course, full, so we all had to stand for the two hour ride. Normally not a big problem, but with sore, sore, sore legs, it would’ve been nice to sit. Upon arriving in Limón and seeing a Pizza Hut sign, I knew where I was going to dinner. Eric, Katherine, and Beth were kind enough to join me and we thoroughly enjoyed the salad bar and pizza. Having already been to Limón a number of times, I wasn’t worried about missing the chance to have some delicious Caribbean food. Some deep dish supreme was what I was looking for! Our trip from Venecia to ‘El Cruce de Sarapiquí’ covered 73 kilometers on day three, you can see the route above.