Me gusta Costa Rica. How can my initial impression have been so wrong???
After three days near Fortuna, in the shadow of Volcan Arenal, I found that the only way I could bribe myself to leave the hotel I was at was to promise myself I would return one day. Amazing room, amazing view, incredible cloudforest, I was downcast and it took me until past 11am to get on the road.
But the sun was shining for the first time in several days - it had rained continuously since I arrived at Arenal - and that made for much better riding through the wonderful scenery. Heading south across the cloudforest toward San Jose, the capital, there were hidden waterfalls, fast running rivers and lots and lots of signs in English, designed solely for the tourist industry. Forest canopy ziplines seemed to be big business, and rafting trips.
Approaching San Ramon, where I would pick up the main Pan American highway to San Jose, I was stopped by a couple of tooled up cops, the first guns I'd seen in Costa Rica. One, about 6 feet 6 tall at the very least, was playing with a big assault rifle in quite an alarming manner. His companion asked me the usual - where am I from, where did I leave this morning, where am I going. Then he tapped his side arm and asked me if I had any weapons. I burst out laughing and told him "Soy Ingles". We don't do guns. He waved me on with a laugh.
After a couple of wrong turns in San Ramon, I realised I was heading west instead of south, so pulled over. A car pulled over too and I suddenly felt a bit vulnerable. But I needn't have worried. A young lady got out and introduced herself as Cindy, a Costa Rican English teacher. She and her boyfriend had seen me milling about like an idiot and followed to assist. She gave me helpful directions to the main road and after thanking her, I found the road to San Jose at the first attempt.
A few miles from downtown San Jose I found an hotel and called a halt for the day. The heat and twisting roads had tired me pretty quickly. A good meal and a session in the gym seemed to sort things out, then I checked my e-mail account and found I had a reply from Ricardo.
I'd been given Ricardo's details in Guatemala, by a concerned hotelier who thought I could do with some company. He told me Ricardo was an old friend of his and a keen biker, so when I got into Costa Rica I'd e-mailed to ask if he knew where I might find some brake pads. Ricardo had e-mailed me his cellphone number, so I thought what the heck and gave him a call.
We arranged to meet Saturday afternoon. Ricardo showed up at the hotel so I didn't get lost ;) and took me in his van for a tour of downtown San Jose. He'd worked in the tourist industry so his English was first class and the tour more informative than one I might have paid a lot of money for. We drove right past the President's house - in Costa Rica the President lives in a house and works in an office like other people. Aside from a posh car, a couple of cops and a bodyguard outside it could have been anyone's house.
Ricardo showed me an old public service building which still had bullet holes in from the 1948 civil war. He explained that after that event, the President abolished the army and to this day Costa Rica has no standing army. It is a beacon of democracy in a very turbulent region - I don't know how they do it. I asked Ricardo how they defend themselves. He answered that they are friends with the US, and others. When threatened by the Nicaraguan Sandanistas in 1978 Venezuela gave them help. I think Costa Rica could teach many other countries a thing or two.
Costa Rica is, however, still Central America and that meant that any chance of getting brake pads was toast until Monday morning. The only shops open on Saturday afternoon were for senoritas to buy shoes :) We had dinner in a decent seafood restaurant, including a cocktail of Palmito (palm heart) and raw seabass which was lightly "cooked" in the acid of lemon juice, and delicious. Ricardo invited me to join his motorcycle club for their Sunday ride out the next day. I agreed to meet him at 8am and went back to the hotel wondering what I had let myself in for.
I wasn't used to early mornings and no breakfast, so Sunday appearing over the horizon was a shock. I had a quick coffee and got on the bike, happy not to be encumbered by all the baggage that I'd left at the hotel. Ten minutes down the Pan American highway took me to the meeting point at the Gymnacio Nacional, a big gym. There were a few cruisers parked up and no sign of Ricardo, so I got off the bike and started introducing myself (badly).
The group called itself M14 (which has a better ring to it in Spanish - in English it sounds like a motorway) and was formed by 14 guys back in 1997. I'd been warned that there could be 200 bikes, and pretty soon more and more showed up. Over a hundred was my best guess. Most of the bikes were cruisers, either Harleys or Harley type Japanese cruisers, like the Yamaha V Star. When Ricardo showed up he was on a V Star. He let me try and it was very low, and very comfy. Hmm, I thought, I could probably do 20,000 plus miles on one of these ok! I met a German Harley rider and he let me sit on his RoadKing. I can only describe it as like riding your favourite armchair, it was just missing the TV (it had a radio).
Ricardo introduced me to Miguel, another local on a V Star, who also spoke good English. When Ricardo announced that we would be going to visit Volcan Irazu instead of riding the whole way with M14, Miguel asked to come along. I picked up some stickers and then the leader of the group introduced me to the crowd at large (thanks, Ricardo ;) ) After my embarrassment and a group prayer, the call of "vamonos" (let's go) went up and we all headed out along the Pan American highway.
The three of us split off a few miles down the road to many tooting horns and waving bikers. Lacking the skill to hoik a decent wheelie I stood on the pegs and waved goodbye. What a great day. But it was only beginning. I'd not ridden with anyone since following Jim's effortless lines, 10,000 miles ago, but the guys were accomplished riders and the going was easy. The road climbed, gradually at first, until soon it was very obvious from my madly popping ears and the dropping temperature that we were rapidly gaining a LOT of altitude. Finally we came to a toll booth and pulled in to pay entry to the national park area at Irazu. My teeth were hurting slightly, and my hands were a little numb with pins and needles. When we parked at the highest point I checked the altimeter on my watch, calibrated at sea level in Wrangell, Alaska, and it read 3420 metres, more than 11,000 feet. I'd never been that high in my life outside of an aeroplane!
We spent some time wandering around the caldera and I marvelled at seeing the clouds below me, a great white carpet with the blue sky above. Miguel picked up a small igneous rock and gave it to me as a memento, he asked that I take it to Argentina and then send him a picture. Clouds came in around the peak and we moved down to see the lake inside the volcano, which has apparently been dormant since 1964. From there we descended in the rain to a restaurant for brunch. Some kids outside parked their bike next to Red 5 and the two V Stars and posed for pictures whilst we ate.
Moving on we arrived in San Rafael and got held up by ox carts in the road. We soon realised there was a huge carnival of some sort, oxen pulling what Ricardo described as carts for loading coffee, hand painted and beautiful. Miguel explained that 30 or more years ago this was the main mode of transport in Costa Rica.
Wooden wheels clattering, the carts moved off and so did we, a block down the road to buy Helado, a hard ice cream which to me was more like an ice lolly, a fat square block on a stick costing a few hundred colones (maybe 50 cents). I had Cas flavour, a local fruit like a guava, some of the other flavours were made with milk instead of water. Cas is delightful, very refreshing. There was a long queue and some people were buying Helado by the bag load. During a chat I told the two guys about the armed cops on the road at San Ramon and they were genuinely surprised, Miguel said that more than likely the weapons had no bullets :)
Ricardo suggested we visit a hydro electric dam in the afternoon. The dam overlooked a pretty valley which was apparently the route that the Spanish conquistadors used to march their armies into Central America. Now it is used to generate electricity, there is a large man-made lake in the centre. By this point black clouds were looming and my legs, suffering from running on Friday and swimming on Saturday, were starting to stiffen. I was glad to start back for San Jose. I stopped next to a BMW GS at some lights and the couple on it said hi, the rider looked up and said "water is coming". He wasn't wrong and pretty soon the roads were awash. Ricardo had explained we'd head into town to get my brake pads Monday morning, and with that he headed for home whilst Miguel lead me back to the Pan Am so that I didn't get completely lost.
When we split and I was left alone again, I reflected on the day my new friends had given me and was very grateful to them. It's on days like today that I'm happy I didn't choose life sitting at home waiting for something to happen.
Sorry for the long post, it's been an eventful couple of days :)
Frase.
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