Jaco – Orotina – La Garita – San Jose – La Fuente – Rio Blanco – Cahuita

7 cycling days   |   3 rest days   |   418 kilometers   |   5.822 meters elevation gain

I just said goodbye to my parents and spending time together was simply amazing. Like always on days like this a dark cloud is hanging over my head. It was like that with Jacko, also in Cuba when saying goodbye to my brother and sister and of course today is no different. So I put on some music in my headphones and let the sadness sink into me. It is fine, not all days are party days. It helps that by now I know that this feeling will disappear within one or two days.

The last days I’ve been hesitating to either cycle the Pacific or the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and Panama. Some thoughts that came into play when making this decision were:

Pro’s for Pacific sidePro’s for Carribean side
I’m already on the Pacific sideI hear it’s beautiful
I found a place to stay with a Dutch family on the Carribean side in Panama
Dodging the boring Pan-American highway that follows the Pacific side

So in the morning I decide to change my plans and go to the Caribbean side. This means I have to circle back north a little bit, and that also means I have to cross the mountains again, but it’s fine. Many more mountains to come down the road anyway.

It’s freakin’ hot again and sweat gusts down my long sleeves onto my steer. I’ve seen a river on the map and I plan to go camp there, but then I see a nice country house with green grass. The gate is open and I see some people, so I wave and ask if I can camp. Little brother has to call his big sister, but big sister doesn’t seem to have cell reception so we wait and talk a bit. In the end his sister tells us that their landlord wouldn’t appreciate a camper for the night. I get some mango’s to make up for the disappointing result of the phone call. In the meantime I’ve seen that the fire brigade is next doors, but also there I get to hear a “no”. However the house next in line gives me a green light. It is some kind of municipal building where I can pitch my tent in the backyard.

I’ve had a good nights rest in my good old tent, it has been a while. I’ve promised the guy yesterday that I would scram around 7AM so that’s what I do. I have breakfast in the central park of the first town and then start my way to Atenas. I choose the smaller and calmer mountain road over the highway. Views are pretty but the steepness of some sections of the road pushes me to go deep into my red zones again.

Luckily i can take it easy: I’ve been sending out messages to WarmShowers hosts in San José and Al has responded me that I’m welcome, but rather tomorrow than today. I take many stops. I make it to Atenas and visit a library to work on my website a bit. I cycle a bit further and again I have the plan to camp on a river bed, but just like yesterday it will turn out that I am not going to end up there. This time the sides of the river are just going straight up and there is no ‘bed’ at all. It looks more like a canyon. I cycle a bit further and keep my eyes open for sleeping opportunities. I feel comfortable and safe here in Costa Rica so I don’t mind asking around. In the end I end up in the garden of a dental practice. The dentists are just done working for the day and we have a little chat. The owner of the practice lives next door and let’s me use his shower.

In the morning I get apples and a rosary for good luck from Thomas the Dentist. Later during the day a van comes driving next to me with his windows open and screams “Fruit for you! Fruit for you!”. First I think he is a mad man, but when I look closer I see that he actually is holding something that looks like some cookies and some fruit and he is holding it out for me to grab. Still cycling I reach out through the window and grab the food. He throws me a thumbs up, shifts in gear and off he is. These acts of kindness, these little encounters really mean a lot to me. They’re a great boost to the morale and thanks to these people I feel supported by the whole world.

I cycle into downtown San José and just like cycling into any other big city these are not the prettiest rides. Traffic, highways, ugly suburbs. I find the best bread in Latin America so far in the Walmart in San José. I visit another library, go to a bike shop and a camera shop (my camera has fallen and the display stopped working).

Then it’s time to go and meet Al and Kinz. Two international teachers from the US that have been living in South Korea before and are now stationed in Costa Rica. I also meet Greg, and later Chris. Two other biketourers that found shelter with Al and Kinz as well.

And then suddenly I’m back in Jaco. Whut?!

It’s weekend and yesterday, Al dropped the idea to drive down to the beach with some teacher colleagues to do some swimming, drinking and chilling. Me and Greg were down. So early in the morning we take the car and in a few hours I suddenly am back in Jaco. Funny to realize that with the car a few hours equals like two or three days worth of cycling.

It’s a nice bunch, these international teachers. Lots of stories about their time in Ghana or their other exotic destinations. We drink some beer, swim in the ocean and play Spikeball. It’s too bad that the group was here way earlier than us and therefore also already leaves two hours after we’ve arrived. We chill a bit more with the three of us and then make our way back to the capital.

So there are two other cyclists at Al’s place, Greg and Chris and their both from the UK. Absolutely wonderful guys, with that same sparkle in their eyes when it comes to cycling and traveling. Just like me, they also started around May last year somewhere in Canada. There around my age as well. It’s actually quite crazy that we’ve only bumped into each other almost a year later following almost the same routes around the same time of year. It’s fantastic to exchange stories, things that we learned along the way, likewise events or places that we’ve visited.

But it is also a bit hard for me. I automatically start comparing myself to these other adventurers.

His bike is nicer, his set up is better, do you think he cycles faster than me? Am I doing it right? I know it’s bullshit, I know I should do whatever the hell I want to do, make my own plan and create my own adventure. But with these guys, that are so similar to me, undergoing such similar adventures, it’s just hard not to compare myself to them.

Another thing I’m struggling with these days is the fact that I might have to be in Patagonia within 10 months from now to be able to cycle there in summer time. The south of Argentina can be quite brutal in winter and to enjoy it the most it’s best to be there around December/January (take note that seasons on the southern hemisphere are flipped compared to Europe’s seasons). But that fact automatically puts a spell on my “go with the flow / I have no plan / we’ll see where I end up at what time” attitude that I want to cherish so badly. The plan was not to plan. The plan was to let myself be guided by whatever crosses my path. And now I find myself here, stressing about a certain timeslot I want to be somewhere in almost a year from now! Not good… I wonder if I should start planning my time then, to make me feel more at ease. Or is the trick to wait this little brain storm out and wait until I have my ‘go with the flow‘ mindset back. Maybe it’s just a phase.

I cycle to the park downtown, where I get lucky with a food/music festival that is about to kick off. I accidentally finish a six-pack of beer and have a good time. The storm in my head already seems far away…

It’s funny how before I went on this big trip I had no clue what I was going to do when all this fun was going to be over. I mean, I do understand that you cannot live like this forever. I don’t have income right now, so of course that wouldn’t be sustainable. On the other hand I also came to understand that you can live like this a little bit. Let me explain. I’ve been meeting such incredibly wonderful people that live different lifestyles. Not your regular couple, working a 9 to 5 job, to pay for the kids’ school and for the mortgage. I met people living on a boat, I met people working summers in Europe to travel the other half of the year, I met families traveling the world in a campervan and ‘home schooling’ the kids in the camper, I met people that moved to an exotic country to buy a piece of land and generate enough income by playing music gigs at restaurants. And, just like Al and Kinz, I’ve met international teachers. Working 4 years in the country that they like to live and work in and then moving on to explore a different corner of the world. And all these people are such an inspiration to me. They show me how it is done in a different way, a way that might suit me too, that might suit me better. I’ve never really cared about making a career, being glued to a home that one day will become boring and predictable. And all these little sources of inspiration have formed ideas in my head. Maybe I will become an international teacher myself, maybe I want to buy a piece of land and build two off-the-grid tiny houses to rent out and generate some passive income, maybe I want to start up a company to facilitate cycling holidays.

It’s actually been fun thinking about the future and I already know that I will be grateful to myself for making this dream come true which gave me the opportunity to cross paths with these inspirations to change my mindset for the rest of my life.

In the night, Kinz has a big End of the Year Exhibition that is being hosted by all her graduate art-students where they show their work from the past years. Kinz has to make sure everything runs smoothly and give a big speech, so it’s a big night for her as well. Me and Greg are invited (Chris has started cycling south already).

Al is a musician and is asked to play music at the exhibition and me and Greg help out with carrying his stuff and setting everything up. The night is super nice, the art is amazing to see and everything goes smoothly. Feels funny to be back at school again.

It would be fun to do some cycling with the other two guys, but our plans are not synchronized. Greg is flying from San José to Colombia and Chris is planning to take a boat from Panama to Cartagena and he had to hurry a bit to make it to the boat so he set off a few days earlier. It was good to meet them and I might see them again somewhere down the road in South America.

That means I start cycling solo again, towards the Caribbean sea. I say goodbye to Al and Kinz and set off. The roads are beautiful with rolling green hills and stone walls that mark the borders of the farm lands. I meet a mountain biker and he tells me that the city that we are in right now marks the absolute centre of all the Americas. That would be quite the landmark but when I try to google this later I cannot find any piece of information verifying this. I also come across a guy on a recreational electric mountain bike and to my surprise he cannot keep up with me. Later at a traffic light we meet again and he tells me that he couldn’t keep up with me because the battery of his electric bike makes his bike too heavy, ha!

I climb higher and higher into the mountains and at one point the clouds start touching the tops of the green hills, which makes everything just that little bit more magical. Everything is so green here, moss is covering every stone and every tree. I’ve never been to Scotland but this is how I imagine Scotland to be. The fog becomes thicker and gradually starts to turn into a drizzle. I hide in a bus shelter for a bit before starting my final kilometres of the day over gravel roads. I come across some tiny villages with tiny churches and ask the villagers if I can put my tent under the roof of the church. They call with the priest and he gives his approval. I am at 1500 meters altitude and the night is chilly. It’s been a long time that I’ve slid into my sleeping bag and I like it.

After a lovely breakfast with smashed bananas and oats and coffee on the side I pack up camp and start cycling as soon as the clouds disappear. After a nice poop in the bushes I continue my way and soon meet up with some recreational full-suspension mountain bikers. At first I think it’s a bit exaggerated because the gravel road is pretty smooth. However not much later the road turns into terrible rock beds and soon I start understanding the full-suspension. At one point the road becomes so bad that I have to start walking for like an hour straight.

Back on tarmac I give the road a traditional hand kiss. Praise the inventor of asphalt! Some more climbing follows and in the end I’ve only covered 20 kilometres in 3 hours! Later it’s flat towards the coast and I can make up for my slow start. Eventually I still do a hundred kilometres today, but I’m not going to make it all the way to the coast, which is fine.

I end the day in the most ugly village that I’ve ever seen. There is a harbour nearby, so it’s swarming with smelly soot-puffing trucks and container storage areas. These big trucks just blaze through the village centre and I cannot stop thinking about the kids in this village and their risky every-day street crossings. I start looking for a place to set up tent, but I’m in a very densely populated area with no rivers or lakes to quietly set up my tent. First things first: my well-deserved beer that I buy in a little shop. I ask the shop employees if they know about a place to camp. Eventually they give me a phone number of a guy that I should call. This guy in turn sets me up with another phone number and when I text the latter I get a location and a You’re welcome. When I arrive I ask where I can put up my tent, but Gerardo and Helen are just too nice and they prepare a room for me. I have dinner with them and they even let me wash my clothes.

They work at a touristic centre very close to their house and in the morning they invite me to drop by. Gerardo is a tour guide and Helen works at the restaurant. Brisas de la Jungla is the name of the place and the owner has made a smart business out of all the cruise ships that dock in the nearby port of Limón. People take a short taxi ride and suddenly find themselves submerged in the jungle. They can swoosh down the jungle with a zip line, there’s walking tours over hanging bridges and they might even see monkeys, sloths, poisonous bright-coloured frogs and much more.

It’s funny that suddenly I find myself in between tourists from a cruise ship and I feel so different compared to them. I try to help out when I see Helen struggling with an annoying Canadian that wants his money back because things are taking to long for his taste. I try to calm him down a bit and function as a translator between Helen and the man. It feels good to give something back, although it’s not much.

I say goodbye to Helen and Gerardo and hop back on the bike. I make it to Limón and it’s the first time I see the Caribbean coast this trip. I’m greeted with palm trees and coconuts. I buy bread from a real bakery but of course it is not up to my standards again. I should really stop trying to find good bread, because it just doesn’t exist on this side of the ocean.

During lunch I see an ant walking away with a little crumb of my “baguette”, and I can’t help but think that the ant could probably as well pick up the whole baguette and walk away with it. That’s how light the bread is.

I make it to the little laid-back touristy village of Cahuita and buy myself a delightful one-liter bottle of beer (something that Europe in turn doesn’t have). I’m sipping on a beer on the beach and there is literally a sloth and some monkeys hanging in the trees next to me. What a place.

After that I go looking for a spot at the beach which is a bit quieter and remote for camping. When suddenly I bump into two different groups of people that start talking to me on the streets because they are interested in my bike adventure. I happily tell a bit more about my travels, when one of the two groups tells me that “if you want we have a spare room and a shower that you can use”. Something I won’t let them say to me twice. So suddenly I walk along with Christel, Mael and their daughter Neha towards their house. They are from France and live here in Cahuita now for one and a half year. I immediately feel super comfortable around them. It’s a gift that some people just have: to make other people at ease straight away. We cook together and yet again I sleep in a bed tonight!

What a lovely warm nest I’m finding myself in. And fun to have a little 3-year old walking around as well. I didn’t plan to stay long in Cahuita, but Mael and Christel tell me that I should stay a while so that’s what I do. We have a nice breakfast together every morning. I visit the Cahuita National Park that reminds me a lot of the National Park I visited with my parents: rain forest meets white sandy beaches. The next day another visitor swings by the house: Letitia. She is also from France and knows Christel. So now we’re a family of five. She is here to do a Ayahuasca ritual that supposedly offers a deep introspective journey within your soul with some help of a psychoactive brewed drink that originally is used by indigenous groups in the Amazon territories.

Chris and Mael have always dreamed about setting up a community in a country far away and that’s how they ended up in Costa Rica. They rent an apartment for now but have serious plans to buy a big piece of land in the mountains. They want to build a house, grow their own vegetables, plants and fruits and have enough space to whoever would like to join the community. They invite me and Letitia to come and check out a piece of land that they are hesitating to buy. The road to get there is already quite the experience. Only 4×4 cars would make it up this hill. It’s raining, the muddy earth is sticking to our shoes, everywhere the sounds of howler monkeys. The 28 hectares of land are beautiful but also very primitive. This is no project for the faint-hearted but I think it is really brave what they are doing. They have a dream and the’re going for it. And so the list of inspirational people that I meet along my road grows.

They are musicians as well and that’s their main source of income. They play in a bar on Fridays and in a restaurant on Saturdays.

And of course I am happy to go and see them play. On Saturday I get to bring Neha to the restaurant in a carrier for toddlers which makes for funny scenes.

Something that I think is brilliant and is a great example of these alternative lifestyles that I’ve been talking about is something that Mael en Christel do on Sundays. They play music at the farmers market in the little town and with the tips that they get they buy their groceries at the same market. When they told me this it blew my mind. This goes way back to the old barter style of economics and I absolutely love it.

Time to leave the warm nest, because Panama is calling. My last Central American country, the last country before I will pedal my first kilometres in South America! Another morning full of rain however is not putting me in higher realms. There has been so much water the last days and I’m afraid that my dry days have ended. The rain season is about to turn around the corner and I’m not excited for it. Luckily the rain stops when I say my goodbyes to my three hosts and hop on the bike.

The road to the border is short and flat. The border itself is also without any hick ups so in the beginning of the afternoon I find myself in Panama! Much to my sorrow I cannot find any “Welcome to Panama” sign to have a picture with.

Shortly after the border I’m treated to a brand new tarmac road without any cars or other users on the road, straight through a lush green rain forest. It feels surreal to cruise through this jungle and to feel like I’m all alone in the world. I find a church in a village where I can put my tent under the roof and have a good first nights rest in yet another country.

Next up: A heavenly roof over my head offered by a Dutch family that is building a resort on a paradise island in Bocas del Toro, Panama.

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One Reply to “Costa Rica II: Warm Encounters, Cold Nights.”

  1. Nou jij bent ook geen angsthaas! Jij bent ook moedig en gaat je droom achterna! Dat doe je goed! En wat hierna komt…….och wie zal het zeggen! Op dit moment gewoon genieten!

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