Guanacaste Mountains, Costa Rica

While staying at the hot springs in Miravalles, the manager, Alex, had given us a suggestion for a route, a "shortcut", over the Guanacaste mountain range that would be "an adventure." He told us of a road that went over Cerro la Giganta (The Giant Hill). The road, on the map, was surely a short cut as it traded at least 50 kilometers of riding on paved roads for what he told us would be 4kms of flat, 4kms of climbing, and 4 kms of downhill on a "rough dirt road". His friend, Victor, who was sitting in on the conversation told us that not only would the road be an adventure but that it would be taking us right, "through the heart of my country" with no houses, only fincas (farms). Now, many times when people tell us that a certain road is rough, it ends up not being so bad, people generally exaggerate the conditions. We decided that it sounded like it would be a shortcut worth taking, so we followed Alex's directions. We headed toward Cuipilapa, the town where he was from. His directions and descriptions were right on the money for this first part, it was very beautiful, we passed the thermal energy plants and (most importantly) it was pretty flat and the road wasn't so bad (confirming our suspicions) and it was exactly 4kms until the hill started. We started thinking it may not be such a bad shortcut after all.

The hill started with a small river crossing. There was a man walking past us there and I asked him, "Is the hill starting?" He looked at me with a smile that seemed to be hiding something and said with a chuckle, "More or less." We shortly thereafter discovered that when Alex had said it would be an adventure, he wasn't lying. The road kept getting steeper...and rougher. Leah and I were able to push/ride our bikes individually for about 1km until La Giganta got so steep and rough that we had to set one bike down and both push one bike for a bit, set it down, go back to the other bike and repeat the process. Now if you do the math, that requires us to do three times the amount of walking and twice the amount of uphill walking. For this part of the route Alex had been wrong, it ended up being 5.5 kms of uphill, maybe half of one km of which we rode, one km of which we pushed individually and 4 of which we pushed together. If you add it all up we ended up pushing our bikes up 9 kms of steep, very loose rocky uphill and walking a total of 13kms. It had taken us over six hours, just to climb this "4 km hill".

At the top of La Giganta we had a beautiful view of the valleys to the east and west, Volcano Miravalles to the north and hills to the south. Also, in front of us laid more steep, loose, rocky road, but this time gravity was to our advantage. We got on our bikes and rode 100 meters before we decided we would be better off (safer) walking our bikes down. I was at the bottom of the hill when I heard a crash and looked up to see Leah's bike on the ground, her front panniers thrown off the bike (this was the second time, unbeknownst to me) and Leah sitting next to it with her head in her hands. As usual I wasn't sure how to react but decided to walk back up the hill and try to console her. I sat down next to her, put my arm around her shoulder and through her tears she said, "This isn't what I signed up for." Leah had been trying her little heart out, and I felt really bad, but there was really nothing I could do. I picked her bike up, put the panniers back on and walked it down the rest of the hill giving her time to shake it off. Most of the rest of the hill we were able to ride down slowly and carefully. We eventually reached the bottom around 4:30 PM, the whole epic had lasted around ~9-10 hours. We were exhausted and it was getting time to find a place to camp. When reached the highway we realized that we were within only a couple of kilometers of Enrique's father's ranch, Hacienda Miravalles and we decided to stop in for the night.

We arrived at the ranch and met Doña Mariksa. We told her that we were friends of Enrique and asked if we could set up the tent . She called the boss and obtained permission for us. Before we set up the tent she made sure that we understood if there was anything we needed we better just come to her and ask. She also told us to come to her when we got hungry. We slept like babies that night and the next day wandered around the ranch checking out the beautiful Brahman cattle herd, watching part of the artificial insemination process (donning an arm's length glove, lubing it up, and sticking an arm up the cow's butt to probe the uterus while at the same time using a huge syringe to inject the semen into the cow's vagina - not exactly child's play - or my idea of a good time).

We were also treated to a horseback ride through part of the ranch. From the ranch you could see part of La Giganta which we had ridden (pushed) our bikes over, Volcan Miravalles, Volcan Tenorio and the valley between the two. While riding around we contemplated trading our bikes in for a couple of horses but decided that although crossing mountain passes like La Giganta would be much easier on horseback, our bikes, Blackie and Pete, really give us no trouble. They're never hungry, they never run off in the middle of the night (by themselves), they don't need rest and they don't fart when you are riding close behind them. We decided it wouldn't be such a wise trade. After the horseback ride we realized that although our bike seats are called saddles, there really isn't much similarity between riding bikes and riding horses. When we got out of the saddle our butts hurt a little (not in the usual spots), our legs felt stretched (bowed) and our inner thighs felt more worked than they had been in a while, nonetheless it had felt good to ride a horse again as it had been several years since either Leah or I had done so.

We left Hacienda Miravalles early in the morning, we again were striking out on another "shortcut" suggested to us by one of the ranch hands. This time however it didn't turn out so bad we only had to push our bikes in a couple of spots. We also got to ride by a wind farm with giant windmills (can you see Leah in there?). By the time we reached pavement again Leah had decided she would be quite content if without taking another dirt road for a while. We descended quite a ways into the the Arenal valley where the Lago Arenal reservoir lies. We reached the lake and from there it was steep rolling hills all the way to the town of Nuevo Arenal (just called Arenal - Old Arenal now lies under Lake Arenal.) Along the rolling hills the tourist presence and foreign investment was very obvious. We saw a lot of housing developments with US priced houses as well as a lot of land for sale. We also couldn't go more the 500 yds without seeing some sort of sign with an advertisement for either a hotel, adventure tour or restaurant, the signs were a very ugly addition to an otherwise beautiful ride along the lake.

By the time we reached Arenal (at the top of a very big hill) we were absolutely starving. We stopped at the grocery store, bought some cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers then rolled down the hill to the "German Bakery" that we had seen no less than 7 signs for on the road (we weren't exactly stoked about encouraging the presence of signs but good bread is always tough to turn down). We enjoyed every last bit of our "sandwiches" on black bread and when the Spaniard tourists next to us left their bread sampler plate only half eaten, I couldn't just sit by and watch good food go to waste so I snatched it and ate it too. After our lunch we wandered around town a bit grocery shopping and found a Costa Rican bakery that was every bit as good as the German bakery and a fraction of the price, so we loaded up on bread for dinner and breakfast after complementing our previous meal with some irresistible cinnamon bread and pastry (screw the Atkins diet - give us CARBS!).

After our little rest and watching the rain go by we set out to find a place to camp. There was a public park but with our recent robbing experience Leah wasn't too stoked on that option so we rode on down the road until she found a house that looked inviting. She waltzed up to the house and told our story: All the cheap hotels were taken, we didn't want to camp at the park after being robbed and nowhere would let us camp. The owners were an old grandma and grandpa and soaked up every detail. They looked down the hill at where I was standing and the grandpa was pretty confused, "But he's a gringo," he says, as if gringos can always afford hotels. "Yeah, I am too," Leah says. "Oh. Why do you want to camp here?" grandpa says. Leah tells the story again and after thinking for a moment he points at the bottom of the hill, close to where I'm waiting, at a little stable and tells us to camp there. Leah thanks them and comes down. We walk our bikes up next to the stable and set them down and he yells down, "No, no, open the gate and go inside." Leah looks at me with a quizzical look, "Hey, if a stable is good enough for Jesus..." I say. This is how we came to camp in a stable for the first time.

After setting up our tent and getting ready for the night we walked up to thank our hosts. We ended up sitting and talking with them for a while and they told us of how they had lived in Old Arenal and the government had provided them with the land they currently lived on when the reservoir was built. They told us of all of the soaring land prices in the area and how there were almost no Ticos (Costa Ricans) living in town because of it. This is one of the major problems with foreign investment in developing countries, displacement of the locals (it also happens in Hawaii). After we had talked for a while at about 6 PM grandpa looked at us and said, "Now you're going to sleep?" We took that as a very strong hint, said goodnight and retired to our stable for a good night's rest.