Biking days: Granada, Nicaragua to Liberia, Costa Rica (184 km /114 miles)

Pretty field of young sugar cane just outside Granada

Biking day 1: Granada to Rivas, 68 km (42 miles)
We left at 5 am for Rivas this morning. It was 68km in total. We had been riding for half an hour when Craig realized that he forgot his backpack at the hostel, which is full of his money, passport, etc.  So he had to go back.  I really didn´t want to go back cause it had been a slight incline the whole way and I was sweating and the sweat was irritating my rash on my face (rash is of unknow origen and showed up while I was in Leon).  So I stayed on the side of the highway near a busy intersection and read my book while he went back.  There were lots of people riding by on their bikes on the way to work, and I felt safe enough.  Craig was able to get back quickly since it was downhill into the city.  We continued on as did the slight incline for another hour or so.  The rest of the way was flat farmland!  But we had to battle with the deadly combination of wind and semi trucks again. :(  I´m starting to wonder if the wind is going to be going against us the rest of the way.  I have a mini heart attack every time I hear a semi coming. Despite the wind we made pretty good time.  We rolled into Rivas at 11 and got a cheap hotel along the highway.

Our next destination is Liberia, Costa Rica, but that was close to 200 km from Granada, so we decided to break it up into 3 days, so we could be done pretty early and be out of the heat.  So since we arrived to Rivas we decided to take a day trip to the beach town of San Juan del Sur.  It is only a 45 minute bus ride, and at under $1 it was well worth it.  The beach was deserted and we quickly found out why, the wind was creating a sand storm.  We stayed for a few hours thinking we might even out our lovely tan lines.  The beach was pretty, a horseshoe shaped cove with green hills on either side and clear water of varying shades of blue and turquiose.  It reminded me of a lot of beaches I have been to in Costa Rica.  The water was freezing though!  I have yet to experience this in Central America, maybe it has to do with the time of year.  We layed on the beach, got coated by the sand storm (which was actually a painful pelting), then would jump in the water.  This happened 3 times, then we were ready to go.  Even with the rinsing off in the water we were still coated in sand!  We are now back in Rivas preparing for the next days riding.  The trip to the beach was a nice way to pass the afternoon out of the heat of the highway.

San Juan del Sur

San Juan del Sur

I have sandle, ankle, calf and thigh tan lines!

Sand everywhere!

Updated 03/17/2012
Biking Day 2:  Rivas to La Cruz, Costa Rica, 57 km (35 miles)

We had wind again leaving Rivas, but it wasn´t too horrible.  The ride to the border was fairly easy over low rolling hills, but we were tired from the day before.  It is hard doing multiple days in a row.  We were along Lake Nicaragua most of the way, and rode through lovely farm land with golden hills of hay, we went over tons of rivers running in and out of the lake and also rode through a neat wind mill farm.  I was very excited to see the windmills, there were at least 30 of them and I have never been that close to them, they are huge!  So it took us quite a long time to get through it, each windmill blade is as big as a semi truck!

An annoying thing about the day was we didn´t have a whole lot of shade, but the wind kept us from getting too hot.  And there were tons of little white bugs in the air, they kept getting in my face, behind my sunglasses, and I had tons of dead ones stuck to my sticky sunscreened skin!  It was gross!

That is not moss on the tree, it is tons of cactus that grow on trees! We saw lots of these. :)

Windmills with citrus trees

Crossing the border was pretty easy.  We had to pay $2 each to leave Nicaragua, but nothing to enter Costa Rica.  We got harrassed a bit by the immigration worker on the Costa Rican side, cause technically you´re supposed to show proof of onward transportation out of the country.  The bicycles were not a good enough form of transportation.  I booked my flight home a few days ago, but I didn´t have printed copy.  I took a photo of the computer screen when I booked the ticket, so I would know my flight info.  The guy didn´t seem too happy with the photo, but he let it slide.  We had heard that some people are forced to buy a bus ticket if they can´t prove they have onward transport.  That would have been annoying!

Entering Costa Rica, the scenery changed instantly.  It was undeforested tropical forest!  I don´t know that we have ridden though any land like this that hasn´t been altered.  It was quite refreshing!  Also the forest helped keep the winds from impeding us to much.  We we quickly met by unwanted hills. :(  I had to take a lot of breaks, but we still made it to La Cruz before 11.  We immediately had lunch, cause I was about to drop dead!  Then we found a hotel in town.  We were surprised to find that La Cruz is on a cliff overlooking several beautiful coves of beaches.  Because it is above the ocean, it was incredibly windy!

View from La Cruz

We decided to head down to the beach.  We had the bus driver pick a beach for us.  It was an hour ride, and it was over dirt road and somewhat inland, so we couldn´t see the beaches as we passed the turn offs for them. We passed by a lot of beaches but the driver had us go all the way to the end, probably because he wanted us to pay the full fare!  It ended up being a 4km walk from where we got off the bus.  We probably would have chosen one of the other beaches if we had known it would be such a walk.  We ended up getting a ride part way by a German couple in a rental car.  Once there we found that we were just about the only ones on the beach.  It was a pretty little cove with white sand, turquoise water and it was lined with cactus and frilly green trees!

Our fun at the beach was short lived.  Within minutes of entering the water Craig was stung by a sting ray!  He said it was some of the worst pain he has felt!  It was bleeding quite a lot. :(  We had no bandaids or anything to clean it up with and we had to walk the 4km back, cause the Germans had already left.  I felt really bad, but I am glad it was not me, since I don´t tolerate pain well, and probably would not have been able to do the walk back.  Once back to the bus stop we had an hour to wait for it to come back and then the hour ride back into La Cruz.  It really sucked. :(

Playa El Jobo (pronounced Hobo!!)

Cactus on the beach!? How cool!!

Biking Day 3: La Cruz to Liberia, 59 km (37 miles)

It was sooo hard to wake up.  The alarm went off and 4:30 and we decided to turn it off and get up at 5:30 instead.  At 5:30 it was still hard to get up and we contemplated staying in La Cruz another night, but we managed to get out of bed.  The wind was whipping so loudly outside that is sounded like the roof was going to blow away, so we weren´t real motivated to get going.  It took us awhile, but we were finally on the road by 6:30.  To our surprise the wind wasn´t as awful as we thought it would be.  It was mostly a cross wind that sometimes changed direction to help us and sometimes went against us.  We quickly found out that the semi truck drivers here are much nicer and pass us slowly and give us lots of room, so no scary wind vortex!  That was quite a relief.  No heartattacks for me today. :)  We had slight incline and rolling hills for the first two hours as the road curved through tropical dry forest (which looks like rain forest that hasn´t been watered).  As we came out of the forest we had a nice long gradual downhill and went into an open plain filled with fields of cows and horses.  It was very pretty, the grasses in the fields were different shades of red, yellow and green.  The open area made lots of room for wind though. :(  It was mostly a cross wind but sooo strong we were blow off the road on quite a few occasions. We were leaning so far left just to stay on the road, if the wind had decided to just stop we´d certainly have fallen over!  Most of the rest of the way into Liberia was flatish, but for 30 km or more we dealt with that wind and it wasn´t enjoyable!  About a kilometer outside of Liberia we spotted the golden arches of McDonalds!  It is scary how excited I was too see them,  I pedaled my butt off that last kilometer and upon arriving enjoyed a McFlurry and fries in the air conditioning!  It was like heaven.

We are staying at a really neat hotel called Casa Real.  The decorations are super neat antique things.  The tv stand in our room is an old sewing table!  I put a few pictures below.  We will be here 2 days.  Tomorrow we will hike around Parque Nacional Rincon de La Vieja.  And the next day we will probably visit Playa del Coco.

Sitting area, Casa Real

The toilet paper holder is a meat grinder!

Craig was in pain all day, but he survived :-/