Not your Father’s Costa Rican vacation

Nicaragua was harder to leave than it was to enter, with horrible signage at the border for exiting, and with every helpful soul asking for a tip. After about an hour, we escaped to Costa Rica… only to find an incredibly massive line for immigration. When we first stood in line, there were at least 300 people in front of us. I had my Dad, who was watching the bikes, bring me my book, and I made it through a good 40 pages or so before entering the building to have our passports stamped (side note: my Dad was still watching the bikes, and they stamped both passports without looking twice at me. What could the possible point of the process be if it doesn’t even matter who’s passport is being stamped?). Next up was customs, where we always have to deal with the vehicles. Of course, there was no one in the customs building when we arrived, and I stood around outside for 15 minutes waiting to talk to anyone. When he finally showed up, he gave papers to fill out for the bikes, and walked away again. We finished them, waited another 10 minutes, and he came back and told me we needed copies of our paperwork, and to go to the copy place inside the immigration building. This time, I already had the copies from a previous crossing, and despite only having to walk back to the bike and retrieve them, he was gone another 10 minutes before taking them, scowling the entire time. “Insurance?” he asked in gruff and impatient voice. Again he points to the immigration building and walks away. We pay the insurance scammers $16 each for 30 days worth of insurance, and waste some more time outside Customs before finally being sent on our way with a casual wave of his hand, saying we’re good to go.

Well, it’s of course never as easy as they make it sound. We made it to the final gate, only to be turned around again lacking a permission slip. We double back and to another building off the path where rooms full of massive piles of stapled papers loom in dusty corners, and crowd empty desks. One room so stuffed with 6 foot tall stacks a US Fire Inspector would hardly be able to contain his tears also had two men at desks and a line out the door. We waited in the line for awhile, staring in awe when at one point, a woman from another office enters and spends 10 minutes sifting through the most recent stack of papers before pulling out the one she was looking for for some other people. Finally, we entered and I was greeted by a jovial Costa Rican who retyped the same information we’d filled out for Customs into a computer so he could print out and stamp additional paperwork, one copy of which he stapled and put onto the top of the stack, and the other which allowed us to finally leave the border crossing. At least… almost.

This time, we approached the guard who’d turned us around previously by jumping in front of a line of trucks (with all the drivers waving us by), and he allowed us by. Directly after his booth, however, was a traffic jam of enormous proportions. There was a line of trucks jammed together waiting to head into Nicaragua, and pushing outbound traffic far to the right. Buses and cars on the way out were completely immobile, and stretched farther than our limited vantage would allow us to see. We jumped across a ditch on a small bridge and started driving over rocks, lawns, and driveways in an attempt to circumvent the insanity. At one point, I was completely stuck behind a car and a large van that was being used as a small bus. After waiting 5 minutes, I discovered we were only waiting for the truck, which was halfway off the road because of oncoming truck traffic, was waiting for the small roadside restaurant to finish a plate of food for him, and backing up all the traffic behind him. Insanity.

Immediately after the border craziness, we were greeted by lush Costa Rican countryside. It was like someone flipped a switch after the border. Nicaragua, whether flat or mountainous, was a lot of grassland and sparse trees, and mostly arid. Costa Rica was home to lush impenetrable jungle, and dirty brown, fast-flowing rivers every other mile! I’ve never crossed so many rivers in so little space in my life. The country also rolled out the red carpet and treated us to multiple rainbows over the mountains. The first real city we reached was called Liberia, and discouraged us nearly instantaneously when the first three hotels we went to were $67, $72, an $77, in that order.

We managed to find the road into the old downtown, and after one more disappointingly expensive hotel, we stumbled upon a Hostel where we paid only $20, could keep our bikes inside a gate, and the room included a free cocktail at a nearby restaurant! We moved in, got our cocktails, and began getting used to the new money, which had seemingly managed to devalue itself to ridiculous proportions: the ATM dispensed $10,000 bills (worth <$20 USD) and spat out a receipt saying I’m a millionaire in Costa Rica! Regardless of the large bills, Costa Rican prices were by far the highest to date, with meals costing as much as they do in the US.

We had a relatively uneventful night in the Hostel, had breakfast at a Peruvian restaurant where I had a nice conversation with the owner, a Peruvian from near Machu Picchu, about our trip and his country. I went to Peru 12 years ago and have been excited about going back ever since. After breakfast we hit the road, crossing a few dozen more rivers on our way to the Capital, San Jose, where we planned on cutting up to the Caribbean coast. The closer we got to San Jose, the larger and more crowded the road became, eventually becoming 10 or so lanes and jammed with cars, and with no signs for our northbound highway, we were dumped into the middle of San Jose when the freeway ended.

With no signs to guide us, we wandered through the downtown part of the city before stopping to try to figure out what our next steps should be. We were approached by a man on the street who was strangely wet from head to toe, and offered us directions for some change. He told us to turn left on the next road, which we did, and as we followed it out of the urban part of town, it had signs saying we were on CA-5, a decent road! Our good fortune didn’t last long, and we ended up at multiple dead ends and strange turnoffs, getting suitably lost several times, asking more people for directions, but eventually ending up on the road we were after with most of the day behind us.

We gassed up at the outskirts of civilization and as the road went up into the mountains, rain began to fall, and the daylight began to wane. As we climbed, we entered the so-called cloud forest, and the fog slowly but consistently thickened into hardly passable soup. The road wound dangerously through the mountains, traffic was bad, the road was wet and dotted with downed branches appearing in the road, and the fog was impenetrable in the pitch-black night. I was riding in front, gazing into my silhouette projected in front of me from Joe’s headlight behind, with the edges of the illuminated fog killing my peripheral vision (and I had no way to tell him to stay back a little farther). The closest thing we had to salvation was reflectors that had been installed on the edges of the road, red to our right and yellow to our far left, with no indication to the center line. The red reflectors illuminated perhaps 30 feet in front of me, and disappeared entirely when approaching sharp corners, where the vegetation creeping onto the roadway would finally show up and indicate the way I had to turn. Oncoming traffic made the fog and rain light up like Times Square. We maintained 20-30mph for what seemed like an eternity, with some cars still zooming past dangerously, and others lining up behind us, when we eventually came up behind a big rig truck in another slow-moving caravan in front of us, and things were temporarily better. With the trucks lights to follow, it was far easier to stay in our lane, and headlights from oncoming vehicles were partially blocked. We followed along at about 25mph for maybe 20 minutes before the road turned uphill and the truck we were following slowed to a crawl that was nearly unsustainable on a motorcycle. I passed the truck, but as soon as I did so, my Dad’s headlight disappeared from my rear-view mirror. I once again slowed to a crawl, and a van passed by waving at me, and I once again knew something had happened.

The road had practically no shoulder, instead quickly disappearing into mud, rock, and dense jungle. I found a spot wide enough to pull off the road and got on my radio, but received no response. I put the parking light on the bike on, grabbed a flashlight, and began walking back along the side of the road. It was slippery, completely black, foggy, muddy, and dangerous. I came inches from falling into a massive sinkhole along the side of the road. Just a few minutes after I began walking, I got a call on the radio from my Dad. He’d fallen off the road, was OK, and needed help getting the bike back up. I continued walking, but less than a minute later, he radioed back that someone had stopped and helped him lift the bike. I turned around and slipped and slid my way the quarter mile back to my bike, and about 2 minutes later my dad showed up. A few minutes later, and we passed a ridge and the fog mostly dissipated, leaving us to contend with just rain, dark, and mountains for the last 20 minutes before we hit the valley and stopped for coffee and recuperating.

Not far from the restaurant, we came to the first hotel after the death-defying road from San Jose, a small white building called Casa Blanca. We considered moving on since, with no visible lobby – just a bell to ring, we weren’t quite sure what to make of it, but rang the bell to at least get a baseline for what to expect from hotels in the area. I rang the bell and we stood around a minute, noticing a sign next door to the hotel for Mecanico Gringo, and were laughing about that when a woman’s voice in spanish rang through an intercom on the wall. I asked about the price for a room for the night, the girl said something I couldn’t understand, and then a man’s voice came through and after a minute, he asked in Spanish what language I preferred. I answered in Spanish that English was best, and the voice answered back in obviously American English, and explained they’d been hesitant to open the door because they saw I was holding a motorcycle helmet, and the area had problems with bandits on motorcycles.

While we waited for the voice on the speaker to emerge, a man on a motorcycle pulled up to the place next door and began speaking to us in English with a full-on North Carolina drawl – the resident Mecanico Gringo, James. The door opened and out came the owner of the Hotel, one Pete Muñoz, who we quickly got along with. The rooms were nice and affordable, the place was pretty, and Pete was fun to talk to, so we obviously decided to stay. We hadn’t had dinner yet, and he assured us Kattia could take care of it for us. A few minutes later, we had an amazing meal of smoked pork chops, eggs, fried cheese, waffles, and plantains, and all for the most reasonably price we’d seen since hitting Costa Rica. What a find! We stayed up awhile and talked to him before it came time to sleep, during which he sold us on accompanying him to a sauna by a river the next day.

I awoke bright and early at 9am and continued into the dining room where the free coffee was already on, with the free crackers on the table. Pete was out and talking to us, and breakfast followed shortly. Once again, we were entirely spoiled by the delicious food. Kattia is truly an excellent cook. After breakfast, we accompanied Pete to the nearby town of Guapiles, where he showed us around and ran an errand, and then we collected Kattia and were off to the Sauna! Along the way, we passed and stopped at a few glorious rivers…

Then we hit the Sauna. It was a wood fired sauna in someone’s back yard, way out in the wilderness. They charged us $1 a piece, and another $1 for a big bag of volcanic mud. Kattia had brought a giant bag of leaves from medicinal and good-smelling plants, and when the sauna had heated up, we went in and tossed the leaves on top of the stove. After more than a month on the back of a motorcycle, it felt absolutely wonderful! Sweating, breathing fragrant and minty plants, covered in the kind of mud they’d charge you $20 in the USA, we were really living it up for $1.25 a piece. When we couldn’t take the heat anymore, we followed a handmade stone path through the jungle to a river the guy with the sauna also had in his backyard…

The water was an absolutely perfect temperature. Cold, but not too cold. We sat at the base of a pile of rocks and let the water rush over us. We played like children, piling rocks to try to dam the rushing tide. Eventually, we went back to the sauna, cooked awhile longer, showered, and left extremely happy. On the way back, Pete said he had a friend with a bunch of coconut trees that she wanted someone to cut the coconuts off of. We were happy to volunteer, and were brought to a beautiful property where an old woman’s driveway was lined by more than a dozen coconut trees simply stuffed with giant bunches of coconuts. Soon we were armed with a machete and ladder, and we each went to work…

For our efforts, and trust me, cutting down bunches of coconuts with a dull machete is not easy work, but we were handsomely rewarded…

We hung out at our hotel afterwards, enjoying another wonderful dinner, catching up on the news, and even getting a chance to quickly check my email on Pete’s computer. The next morning after our final delicious Casa Blanca meal, we managed to continue on our journey despite Pete’s hospitality. Thanks again Pete and Kattia! You guys are excellent hosts!

From Guapiles, we headed north to Puerto Limon, a large port on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. Obviously not a tourist spot, an unsure where exactly to head next, we first tried our hand at heading west along the coast. We found one beach, but no real civilization…

So next we tried our hand at heading east, again following the coast, and heading towards a small border crossing with Panama that we figured could save us from having to backtrack all the way to San Jose to cross on CA-1. We’d also been told that Puerto Viejo was the place to go, and we figured we’d spend the night there if it seemed interesting. The ride along the coast was fascinating. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica is nearly completely virgin and uninhabited. There were certainly no big hotels or condos marring the beautiful coastline, and there was hardly even a village to be found. Rivers were still abound, with the added bonus of the bridges on the way to Puerto Viejo being one lane, nearly always on blind corners, and raised above the regular road elevation to make it difficult to see if oncoming traffic planned on crossing at the same time as you. Ahhhh Central America! Miles of jungle and volcanic beaches (sometimes called “black sand” beaches, but in reality, almost a brownish color) later, the road split, with one heading to the border and the other to Puerto Viejo. The road to Puerto Viejo was nearly instantly massive potholes and gravel.

After our bumpy ride and still in the early afternoon, we arrived in the very small, and obviously touristy town of Puerto Viejo. The center consisted of about 5 blocks of bars, restaurants, hotels, hostels, and convenience/tourist stores, with the main road into and out of town covered with an endless scatter of hippie-inspired cabanas, small hotels, and campgrounds. The entire place had a serious 60’s vibe, and the crowd screamed Hippie, much like Palanque (or at least the place we were in Palanque) had in Mexico. We stopped outside the first hostel we came to to decide where we wanted to stay for the night. While there, an ex-pat on the street came up to us and talked to us for a few minutes. Now a local, he told us the place to go was Rockin’ J’s, and gave us directions. He said there were tons of options in the area, but Rockin’ J’s was an institution, and that everyone stayed there. Who were we to argue? Rockin’ J’s here we come!

As our friend had said, the place nothing but easy to find. We opted for a cabana for $20 a night. Though it was obviously a bad year for tourism in Costa Rica, something many locals told us, Rockin’ J’s still managed to have a decent sized crowd, and the place was huge. Around 20 cabinas, over 100 tents setup for rent, and hammocks to boot. They also had a bar/restaurant (with a hookah), pool table, TV, wireless internet (for a fee) and their own beach. Argentinans, Spaniards, British, Americans, Canadians, Germans, and more, mostly young, often tattooed, and commonly sporting dread locks, wandered grounds, which were done up in never ending brightly colored tile work, paintings, and graffiti. After the drink of the day, an Obama Slammer, we unpacked our bikes, and the rain of the day came in. Our friend on the street had mentioned that the restaurant there had good food, and we had a great meal (Costa Rican super burrito’s still can’t beat Big Ten Burrito in AA) at the bar. Afterwards, we hung out with a business major who was about to start a job in Mesaya, the place we had a problem with the cops in in Nicaragua, and he bought a Banana flavored hookah for that end of the bar.

We mostly stuck around Rockin’ J’s, having the occasional drink, catching up on our internet duties, and relaxing, and venturing into the city in search of a good cup of coffee and some cubans to restock our supplies with (no luck). The crowd dispersed into cliques, which deteriorated a singing group of Argentinians eating hot dogs dipped in mashed potatoes (!) and a big hippie drum circle, that eventually moved down to the beach with a bonfire. We tried the downtown again for some sort of aperitif, and discovered it mostly closed and the few open bars mostly dead. We came back and after checking out the drum circle, which was as ridiculous as it was amusing, and went to bed.

The next morning, we began the short ride from Puerto Viejo to the Panamanian border. Away from the ocean, we crossed a mountain range and began a beautiful descent into an endless valley of banana farms. At one point we were even stopped by a gate that came down over the road, and beside which men rode horses pulling bunches of bananas on a track that ran through the trees and along the gate itself.