Quepos to David, Panama (253 km / 157 miles)

Day 1: Quepos to Palmar Norte (105 km / 65 miles)

Another sweltering hot day on the Costanera with little shade again!  We got an early start, 4:30, and by 9 it was already boiling, we could see the heat radiating off the road!  The highway moved inland for the first 40 km and was pretty nice scenery, palm farms to Dominical, the first beach town we came to. On the way there were found some African Palm fruits that had fallen from a truck.  I was excited to see them, they are huge and heavy!  The road was flat to Dominical as well, then we started climbing some small hills, but the hills always seem to coincide with the heat arriving!  The hills however weren´t for nothing, we got some lovely views of the coast, some of the prettiest coast we´ve seen the whole way!  Turqouise water, lots of cool rock formations, kinda reminded me of La Jolla in San Diego.  I was of course dripping sweat and dying from the heat so we stopped for me to cool off in a river. I really should have started doing that sooner, I´ve been looking at rivers longingly but for some reason never thought to stop! About 10 km past Dominical the hills stopped and we arrived in another beach town called Uvita. There we stopped for water refills and snow cones, the best snow cones in the world! We sat outside the supermarket in town and took a rest. While we were there, we ran into a friendly American who actually knew something about our bikes! He ran a restaurant a little ways down the road, and invited us to stop by for a drink. We rested a little longer before starting out again, we weren't real motivated to go back into the sun and heat. The restaurant is call Roadhouse 169, it's at km 169 of the Costanera. It was 8km away, and we were glad for the break, because there were several hills to get there. The restaurant was not air conditioned but kind of open air style and surprisingly cool inside! The owner Bob is a cyclist himself. He made us a smoothie and talked to us for a bit. We ended up ordering hamburgers, the only real hamburgers we've had the whole trip! It was very hard to leave there, I had no motivation to go back in the heat!  Leaving there we had about another 10 km of hills then the road mostly flattened out to Palmar Norte.  We had mostly forested scenery the rest of the way, with frilly lime green ferns and orange tipped trees.  Costa Rica seems to be known as being really developed, but that is not necessarily the case.  Populations seemed to be centered in towns leaving the stretches in between along the highway unaltered.  In other other countries we´ve been through, there seems to be endless civilization and farm land, so this is quite nice for a change.

We got to Palmar Norte by 3:30, and it was still rather hot, but we had gotten a light breeze the last hour.  We very easily found a cheap place to stay right off the highway.  Today was a good day, although it was terribly hot, we never got too worn out, but that didn´t stop me from going to bed at 7:30!  It helps that we can drink the water in Costa Rica and can get refills anywhere, thus drinking more.

A palm fruit fell off the truck! These are the the fruits that are pressed for their oil.

a truck full of African palm fruits!

cooling off in the river

view from hills near Dominical

entering Dominical

Day 2: Palmar Norte to Ciudad Neily (76 km / 47 miles)

Another 4:30 start, but luckily there was room to bring our bikes into the room, so we could leave them fully loaded, meaning little getting ready time in the morning.  We got up at 4:15 and just threw on the dirty biking clothes from the day before! :)  It was actually cool out at this time, as well as foggy with some light wind!  It was very nice!  It is not light enough out to turn off our headlamps until about 5, and there are lots of potholes in the road, which are real hard to see.  I ran into a pretty deep pothole, it didn´t knock me off my bike, but it caused my steering to go a little crazy, causing Craig to run into me and both of us to fall off our bikes, luckily neither of us were badly injured, but scary nonetheless.  We had lots of flat road with very few hills, the road however was pretty crummy, with a rocky/gravely sort of pavement, lots of patching and potholes and no shoulder.  There was almost no cars on the road the whole way, so it wasn´t too bad.  Partway through the day we merged back in with the interamericana, and surprisingly, the road condition improved little, if at all!  We saw lots of pretty white rock rivers and more forest along the highway with lots of brightly colored flowers and banana trees.  The last half hour was so hot it felt like the sun was burning my skin through my shirt, and it probably was.  We went up one final hill and were surprised to discover all of a sudden we had arrived!  It was only 11 am!  The town we stopped in was only 20 km from the border, meaning we could get there nice and early and hopefully avoid lines.  We again found a cheap hotel right off the highway, it was way too easy!  We again were left with energy and still feeling good!  We had about $10 in Colones left after paying for our hotel, which was enough for a cheap meal, if were lucky.  Right away though we encountered an ice cream shop and couldn´t resist, so the cheap meal idea was out the window!  We ended up having more fun going to the grocery store and the bakery and getting beans, bread, avocado and cheese and making torta sandwiches for dinner, with a little bit left over!

this river somehow had a school bus in it!

Day 3: Cuidad Neily to David, Panama ( 72 km / 45 miles)

We started even earlier today, 4 am, had the bikes in the room again.  It was a little too early to leave I think. I prefer not to ride so long in the dark before the sunrises.  I got run off the road by a giant tour bus, less than 15 minutes into the day.  There was no reason for it, because I was under a street lamp and also have reflectors all over my bike and there was no traffic coming the other way.  I went off into a bumpy grassy patch, but somehow managed to stay on my bike.  It would be really nice if the road had a shoulder!  Tons of locals ride bikes to work!  We had expected a big hill to the border, cause a local guy we met in Miramar last week told us there was a hill, and we believed him cause he used to buy cars from the US often and drive them down, so he knew the road.  However there was no hill, just an ever so slight incline the whole way there.  We arrived by 5:30 and were greeted by a huge line.  We are guessing it had something to do with All Saints Week (Semana Santa) and people going home to visit family.  The Costa Rican side moved pretty quicky, about an hour spent in line there.  The Panamanian side was ridiculous, only one window was open!  We waited in line over an hour, only to be told we needed to go to an internet cafe and print out our proof of onward travel (airline ticket)!  The guy told us we could cut to the front of the line when we came back, which makes me uncomfortable, but I wasn´t about to wait again!  Three hours later, we were across the border, and we lost an hour going into Panama (time zone change), so it was 9:30, worst border crossing ever!  We noticed most people were having their bags searched as well, we were at least spared from that.

Once in Panama the roads were instantly nicer than Costa Rica, smooth and no more potholes or patches.  Our shoulder quickly disappeared and we had a steady slight incline for almost 30 km to the first major town, La Concepcion.  The highway was a 4 lane divided highway, so we didn´t have to fight too much with traffic.  It was unbearably hot, and our legs were getting fatigued from the constant uphill.  After La Concepcion we had 20 km of more downhill than uphill (but still some annoying hills) into David.  Once in David we rode in circles for awhile before finally founding the hostel around 2:30.  We are staying at The Purple House, which is run by a lady who volunteers here in the Peace Corp almost 15 years ago and stayed.

We got to eat at my favorite restaurant in David (Rosticeria Pollo A La Leña) and had snow cones in the park. :)  The restaurant is only a few blocks from our hostel, and I didn´t remember where it was, just that I used to see it from the bus on the way into town.  So we got on a bus headed towards the terminal, and within a block I saw the restaurant, and immediately got back off the bus!  Everyone one all the bus must´ve thought we were retards. :)

My rash in finally going away.  In Quepos, I figured out that the Lotrederm cream I got from the pharmacy is actually an antifungal cream!  I specifically asked for a cream for an allergic reaction on the skin!  So I went and got another called AllerGel, which seems to be doing the trick. :)

We surprisingly again weren´t overly exhausted, like we have been before on multiple day bike rides.  This leaves me hopeful about the 5 consecutive days we have left getting into Panama City.

Yay!

guayacan tree! my favorite!

Patacones, yucca, and rotisserie chicken!  Super yum!

Quepos / Manuel Antonio

Today we visited Manuel Antonio National Park. The main attraction here is the beach, there are several of them, each in it's own little protected cove. The water here is warm, the waves are calm, the sand is white and each cove is surrounded by lush green rain forest. Most people just head straight for the beach and skip the trails. We explored the beaches and hiked too. It was soooo hot though! I was drenched in sweat and got tired and dehydrated quickly. We did get to see tons of moneys, three different kinds, and lots of iguanas. There was an insane number of monkeys and some of them were tame, cause in the past people have fed them. I hate idiot people like that. Despite being too hot, it was a very good day.

View of public beach Quepos

Secluded beach in Manual Antonio

lots of idiots all sharing the same beach

Capuchin monkey

Racoons in the trash!

Tomorrow we bike again. Getting up at 4 am. :( We're gonna ride as far south as we can. We're running out of days this last week and a half we're gonna have a lot of consecutive biking days and it's gonna be hard.

Puntarenas to Quepos (140 km / 87 miles)

bike path South of Puntarenas

Day 1: Puntarenas to Jacó (72 km / 45 miles)

On Monday we left Puntarenas headed towards Quepos, which is home to Manuel Antonio National Park. We stopped about half way at the very popular Jacó beach. We got started at 5 am and got to watch the sunrise over the mountains as we headed back inland from Puntarenas. The sky was lit up pink and reflected in the water of the gulf of Nicoya. The bike path we were on continued about 15 km past where we got back on to the main highway (called the Costanera). Then we were on a fancy 4 lane divided highway! It's the fanciest road we've seen yet! We had some hills to deal with, and they looked harder than the ones from our last biking day, but they didn't feel harder! Then we even got a stretch of road with rainforest on one side, and shade! Shade seems to be very limited on the roads here in Costa Rica as all the vegetation is cut back quite a ways from the road. The day was going great, but by 10 it was already too hot! Shortly after 10, we were only 12 km from Jacó when we were met by an evil long hill. There wasn't even enough shoulder on this section for me to get off and push! I took lots of breaks and nearly died of heat and dehydration. I made it up, but it probably took an hour! The last few downhill kilometers were lovely and dried me of my dripping sweat. The beach in Jacó was pretty, but we didn't swim. It's a very famous beach for surfing and as a result has become overrun with tourists and retired old people from the US, lots of condos! So everything is expensive and we decided to camp. We ended up spending the evening taking turns playing guard for our gear, as we couldn't find the campground host. There were lockers available but we didn't have access to them. Finally at the end of the evening someone came by to collect our money. It was already bed time at this point and we had sandwiched our bikes between a tree and the tent to keep them safe, so we didn't get a locker. The place was called Camping Hicaco and cost us $7 per person!

Jaco Beach

Day 2: Jacó to Quepos (68 km / 42 miles)

Another 4:30 am wake up call and on the road by 5 am. Yesterday was an easy day. Almost no hills and we arrived by 10:30 before it was too unbearably hot. We had a fairly big shoulder the whole way and a pretty good smooth road with little traffic. There were almost no hills. At the end we rode through at least 20km of palm tree farm, the same kind we saw on the road to Telà. I have since discovered that these palms produce a large pod of fruits from which palm oil and palm kernel oil are extracted. It is palm kernel oil that is used in so many candies in the US, like Snickers and M&M's. We also saw lots of toucan filled trees and a river full of crocodiles! We got to Quepos so early that it was almost as if we had the day off. It was fantastic!

We are staying in the Wide Mouth Frog backpacker hostel, which has a pool that we have been enjoying very much in the horrendous heat! It just keeps getting hotter, we are in the middle of summer here.

I will post new pictures soon! I'm using free wifi on my iPhone to post this, Internet cafés here are expensive, as is everything else.

Strangler fig around a palm tree with an iguana

Crocodiles under the bridge!

African palm fruits above each frond

View from the top of the awful hill

lots of bromeliads in trees around here

Puntarenas / Miramar Ziplining

We took a day off today to do a zipline canopy tour.  This was my fourth zip line tour, but Craig´s first.  One of my coworkers in Mammoth recommended this one to me.  It´s claim to fame is that it is the only one over 11 waterfalls.  It follows a river down a canyon and over the several waterfalls it creates.  It was really pretty, but since it is the dry season, the waterfalls aren´t so full.  It was a lot of fun, there were well over 20 ziplines, 2 rappels, and we got to swim in one of pools in the river.  

To get there we took a 1 hour bus ride to a town in the mountains called Miramar.  It has lovely views of the Gulf of Nicoya and the Nicoya Peninsula.  From Miramar we had to take a taxi the extra 6 km to the hotel.  The tour included a delicious typical style lunch.  And we were able to hitchhike back to town.

We are back in Puntarenas.  This is our second night here.  Our hotel is costing us $24 a night and is a complete dump.  I am starting to get tired of staying in dumps!  Especially at this price!  It is a small room with dirty wooden walls and a foam mattress.  When we were moving our stuff in, we found a used condom on one of the shelfs hanging from the wall.  It was just about at eye level, how do you miss that when cleaning a room!  We also discovered our room has rats, as there was rat poo and an eaten through package of crakers in my stuff this morning!  I have tied my bag of snacks to a nail high up on the wall in hopes that the rat won´t come back tonight to ruin more of my food.  I have also been sleeping with my own blanket and travel pillow.

Puntarenas is also a dump.  Based on its location on the map, you´d think it would be pretty, but it´s rather run down.  It on an 8 km long peninsula that jutts out into the Gulf of Nicoya.

Tomorrow we have about 70km to ride to Jaco beach.  Where we will camp (at the outrageous price of $7 per person)!

Above you can see there´s a zipline over this waterfall

This was a bit on the creepy side to walk across!

view of zipline path

View of the Gulf of Nicoya from the hotel property

Cañas to Puntarenas (87 km / 54 miles)

Cool dinosaur on the side of the road!

Super cool watermelon helmet!

We slept in til 7 and I woke up even more sore from the hike than I was the day before.  So it was a hard day of biking.  Starting late is also bad, cause it means more time in the heat and sun.  We also had more hills than we expected.  There were several long, fairly steep hills.  We figured out that the route seemed flat on google maps cause they do their elevation changes in increments every 200m or something crazy like that!  It wasn´t too bad, but in my condition I tired out real quick.  We stopped about half way through at a roadside watermelon stand and split and watermelon and a coconut water.  To entertain myself I made a watermelon helmet, and Craig cut out ventilation holes.  I wore it for awhile, and it was rather refreshing!  Eventually too much watermelon juice leaked into my eyes and I had to take it off!  But temporarily it made me feel better.  We ended up taking quite a few breaks and didn´t get into Puntarenas until just after sunset.  There is a nice bike path the last 8 km into Puntarenas, it was flat and breezy and we saw lots of local families out getting exercise.  It was a pleasant end to the day.

We are going to try to start camping more to save money, cause the lodging here is just too much for what you get.  An average hotel is $24 and in Nicaragua was under $10!  It surprisingly more expensive here than Belize was!  I don´t remember it ever being this bad, prices have really sky rocketed in the last few years.

We have also started get more food from the grocery store, since food in Costa Rica is not cheap either, an average typical style meal is $6, where in Nicaragua it was $2!  So we´ve started eating bagged refried beans and chips, tuna and crackers, yogurt and fruit.  I also buy powdered milk, which I love, it is soo good down here!  It is made with whole milk, which I have never been able to find in the US (only non fat dry milk there).  Grain beverages are also really popular down here, like oatmeal and milk, or one called cebada, which is barely, vanilla and cinnamon.  One I really like is called pinolillo, which is cocoa powder, corn meal, vanilla and clove.  There all sound horrible, but I really like them.  They make a good breakfast mixed with water, powdered milk and sugar.

I have continued to deal with rash on my skin since Leon.  It keeps sort of going away and then coming back.  I have a cream from the pharmacy called Lotrederm, which is supposed to be antihistimine and help with itch. I´ve also decided to take benadryl the rest of the trip.  Currently neither medicine seems to be doing much of anything and I am miserable with itch.  It is currently mostly on my ankles and has thankfully gone away from my face.  I hope that the upcoming beaches don´t make it worse!

La Fortuna and Volcan Arenal

Arenal Lake

Volcan Arenal

We had three days off from biking for our side trip to La Fortuna.  We had originally planned on 2, but it took much longer to get there than we expected it to, so we had a travel day to get there, one full day then another travel day back.

From Cañas we had a 1 hour bus ride to Tilaran, this put us up in the mountains.  We had a two hour layover there, in which we found a bakery to hang around in.  From there it was a 2 hour ride around Lake Arenal to get to La Fortuna.  The ride around the lake was spectacular.  I wish we could have gotten out and enjoyed it more.  I couldn´t believe how gorgeous it was, don´t know if I´ve seen anything prettier the whole trip.  I spent the two hour bus ride trying to take pictures, but it was really difficult.  Didn´t get many good ones.  As for tourism around the lake there isn´t a whole lot to do on the lake, there aren´t public beaches, just private resorts.  There are a lot of wind surfing resorts, as Lake Arenal is considered to be in the top 3 for worldwide windsurfing destinations.  This is so because of the consistant winds through here (which we´ve been dealing with on our bikes!).  I would love to come back with a rental car some day and really enjoy the drive and perhaps learn to wind surf!

La Fortuna was about another 20 km beyond the lake.  It was a really cute small town, views of the volcano from anywhere in town.  We stayed at Gringo Petes.  A hostel run by an american.  And it was really cheap, only $5 per person for the dorms, this is by far the cheapest we have found in Costa Rica.  They had a kitchen there, so we were able to cook all of our own meals.  We also had the best hot water shower of the whole trip (good temp and water pressure)!  Hot water is a luxury and 99% of places don´t have it, so we´ve gotten used to freezing showers!  It will be strange to go home and have the option of hot or cold.  I try to tell myself I will do cold, but thats really hard to do when you have a choice!  Cold water improves your circulation and is better for the environment!

On our full day off we did an all day tour in order to be able to get a lot done on our limited time schedule.  It was a little annoying that the day we chose to do the tour is was foggy and raining.  It ended up being just me and Craig and two guides!  It was kinda weird.  We did a tour around the gardens of the Arenal Observatory where we looked at medicinal plants, which I really enjoyed.  We also saw a water fall and a family of Coati in the trees nearby.  One of our guides seemed drunkish and pocketed some psychedelic mushrooms we found growing in cow poo along the way!  He was quite entertaining.  We did a hike up to Cerro Chato, which was very steep and muddy.  It is a smaller volcano at the base of Arenal, and I would imagine on a nice day would have awesome views of the volcano.  The trail up was so steep, I could compare it to doing lunges upstairs, for over an hour, and going down was just as bad if not worse, cause we took a longer way down.  I occasionally has to use my arms to pull myself up some of the steps.  The hike was through cloud forest and it was incredibly beautiful, I wanted to take pictures every 2 steps.  At the top we were rewarded with a crater lake for swimming in.  The water was freezing but felt good.  When we first got there it was so foggy you couldn´t see more than a few feet ahead, so that made it fun for swimming.  By the time we left we could see across.

After the hike we had lunch with our guides, took a little break and went for another hike.  My legs were shaking from exhaustion at this point, so luckily the second hike was easy.  It was up a lava flow from a previous eruption of the volcano.  It was like a dry river bed,  and pretty neat to see, full of volcanic rock and ash like sand.  All of the tourism photos you see of the area are pictures of the volcano erupting at night, red lava spewing everywhere.  So we were really hoping to see that on the evening hike, but apparenly there has been no such activity since 2009!  Guess we should have done better research, haha!  I was here in 2003 when it was still having nightly eruptions, but I couldn´t be bothered to get out of bed in the night to see it. :(

Once all the hiking was done we went to some free hotsprings.  There are a couple of hot spring resorts here, the most expensive one costs about $85 to get in!  I went there in 2003 when it was about $15 to get in, it´s a really neat place, waterfalls, waterslides, swim up bar, buffet, but not worth $85!  So our guides took us to the free local spot, which is basically the run off from the very expensive Tabacon Hot Springs.  I don´t have any pictures since it was already dark when we got there.  It was so nice though.  We stopped at a bridge over the road and underneath ran the thermal water river, there was a small waterfall created from the concrete slab under the bridge. Water was the perfect temperature and our guides made us drinks from the local brand of sugar cane rum, and there were lots of fireflys in the air!  The water running under the bridge created a waterslide effect, and we were able to lay down and be pushed to the other side where the water fall was.  This part is hard to describe, but everything about the experience was awesome.  All in all it was a fantastic day.  By the end the weather cleared and we were able to see the volcano again and the rain stopped.

The next day getting back was an ordeal. We misread the bus schedule and missed the first bus back to Tilaran, it was at 8:30 and not 9:30 like we thought.   The next one was not til 5:30pm, which was when the last bus from Tilaran left for Cañas.  So we had to figure out another option.  We were about to board a 9:30 bus headed toward San Jose, when Craig realized he forgot something at the hostel and had to go back!  So we missed that bus and couldn´t get another one til 12:45!  I was sooo annoyed.  We ended up take the 12:45 bus all the way to San Jose, which took 6 hours because of traffic getting into the city!  And then another 4 hour bus ride from San Jose to Cañas.  We had about 10 minutes in between buses.  And I didn´t get to pee, so I had to stoop to the level of peeing in a water bottle on the second bus!  It was ridiculous!  We arrived to our hotel well after 10, tired, hungry and dehydrated!  I was not happy.  There probably was some better way to get there that we didn´t know about but oh well, we made it.  My whole body was pretty much disabled from the hike the previous day as well!

Me swinging from a vine like tarzan!

Coatis, there were at least 6 of them!

Eucalyptus forest just before the hike up Cerro Chato

Such a pretty cloud forest, the rain actually helped make it prettier. :)

Me with a froggy on my shirt!  One of the guides found it for me!

Foggy Laguna Cerro Chato

Clear view when we left

View of La Fortuna from Cerro Chato trail

Super cool flower witch nails our guide made for me!
(They flower that have not yet bloomed that have been
cut off at the base!)

Dry lava bed

Lovely sunset at the end of our hike

Liberia to Cañas (50 km / 31 miles)

Today was an uneventful day and I can even say it was almost a boring day of riding. I have yet to be bored on a bike day yet, although I don't really know how that's possible. I'm glad today was short because my butt and hands seem to be becoming more and more resistant to longer rides. They both get sore and numb very quickly now, and by the time we arrive I feel that neither could take another minute on the bike.

We had low rolling hills through farmland the whole way. We had some nice views of 3 volcanos, Rincon de la Vieja, Miravalles and Tenorio. I was a little bitter about it, why couldn't the volcanoes come out of the clouds when we were hiking the other day? It was hot but breezy. According to the owner at our last hotel we are past the windiest stretches of road. Today it was true, the wind didn't really hold us back and I hope the continues to be true.

We made it to Cañas in 3 1/2 hours with just one break, putting us here at 10:15. Hotels in Costa Rica are really expensive. We are paying $24 for the place we're in tonight, Cabinas Corobici. It's the most we have spent this trip for a place to stay (cheapest $5 in El Salvador). We've been pretty bored since we arrived. We wasted time looking around the Walmart grocery store, here it is called Palí, as it also was in Nicaragua. We also found the bus stop for tomorrow and of course ate lots of food.

Some things we've noticed so far about Costs Rica:
-It is much cleaner, we don't see trash dumps on the side of the road or in towns. Rivers are also free of trash and we don't see people washing or bathing in them.
-There are many more signs along the highway pointing you in the right direction and giving you distances in kilometers to the next destination. Although the distances aren't always accurate, they are still nice to see.
-I don't get cat called anywhere near as much and people don't honk and yell at us out of their cars on the highways. It's quite nice. :)

It's gonna take longer than we thought to get to La Fortuna and Volcan Arenal tomorrow. We won't be there until 4 pm because of limited buses. So we've decided we'll stay there 2 nights. We are starting to get a little behind our planned schedule but I think it will be ok, we had 6 days to spare.

Liberia and Parque Nacional Rincon de la VIeja (Costa Rica)

Yesterday we visited Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja.  We took a shuttle from our hotel, as there is no public transport. It´s about a 45 minute ride from Liberia, and cost us $20 each, plus we had to pay a $10 park entrance fee.  It was rather expensive day, but well worth it. The park is home to an active volcano, complete with boiling mud pools, steam vents.  We did a good amount of hiking (over 10km) around the mud pools and vents as well as through the rain forest to a 60 meter tall waterfall.  

The terrain here varies a great deal, from lush forest to dry forest, as well as desert and savannah.  We were high enough up on the volcano to have views of the ocean, but the top of the volcano was under clouds the whole day, so we never saw it. 

Our first hike was a 4km loop around the active part of the volcano and it was so cool!!  It has been compared by guide books to Yellowstone Park in the US.  It was worth it just for this short loop trail.  The second hike was 8 km round trip to a waterfall with swimming hole.  The forest was gorgeous, with lots of rivers we had to cross, tons of crazy looking trees, and we saw an iguana and we saw a family of capuchin monkeys.  It took 2 hours to get there which seemed to drag on.  The waterfall was so pretty and the water super refreshing to swim in.  We relaxed there awihile and had lunch.  I almost didn´t swim cause Craig wouldn´t go in, but I´m glad I did cause it was awesome.  The hike back was much faster.  We had about 45 minutes to wait for our transportation once we got back to the main entrance.

 

Boiling water pool

Boiling mud pool

Steam vent

Sun rays coming through the volcanic steam in the forest

Agaves bigger than me! How cool!

Cangreja Falls

Scared the crap out of me, I came up really quick on this iguana!

Capuchin monkey!

We stayed a second day in Liberia to relax.  I had considered going to the beach (Playa del Coco), but Craig didn´t want to go because of the string ray incident.  And I ultimately decided not to go cause I seem to get skin rashes from the beaches here and am still recovering from the last one.  We will be at the beach in Manuel Antonio in a few days anyway so I figured I could wait.  So we slept in and I took an additional naps.  We had snow cones in the park, the best snow cones in the world are in Costa Rica (they have powdered milk and condensed milk both on them!).  We also spent a good part of the day watching HBO (Mystic River).  Ooh and we went to an American Clothing Store, I of course found all of the good items!  I can´t buy any more, no room!

My super cool romper and delicious snow cone!

Awesome 1980s gitano jeans from american clothing strore
I told you I got the best stuff, ahaaha :)

Tomorrow we have 50 km to go to get to Cañas.  Since its´s not a very long day, we probably won´t leave til 6.  We´ll spend the night there and find a place to store our bikes.  From there we´ll spend 2 days (without bikes) in the mountains in the town of La Fortuna.  The town is home to Parque Nacional Volcan Arenal.