Riding Costa Rica, Day 5: Beaches and a long ride..
Today was intended originally to be a long riding day, or at least part of it was.
Considering the excitement of the prior day, we spent the morning at a beach, and did the touristy non-biker thing for a bit, getting in some swimming and wandering around. For the first time, there were actually other people on this beach.. ;)
Moving on
We headed out after a while, and the plan was to head towards Manuel Antonio to see the park, monkeys and wildlife, with at least one stop en route. In general, we’d planned to do a sort of ‘big loop’ seeing as many places as was reasonable to while making it back to Atenas on the last day to head back out. For the most part, we wanted to limit riding to half the day, letting us have some time at each stop, or at least those we specifically wanted to see.
I’m just going to say it right now - the minute you’re off main roads, or even on them, any mapping estimates in CR - are very likely….extremely optimistic at best on time.
We got a later-than-originally expected departure away from the beach, topped up on fuel and liquids, this time with an extra extra gatorade or two, and headed east. We stopped off in Nicoya for lunch best I can recall, and then wound up on the PanAmerican Highway.
PanAmerican Highway and another long ride...
The ride for the day was supposed to be fairly moderate in time, but again - no GPS.
We’d gone from riding lesser-to-not-travelled roads to - all kinds of traffic and trucks. It was fine during the day, but we managed to get turned around once or twice, until we were doing what we swore we’d be avoiding - riding in the dark in Costa Rica, and on a main highway at that - while knowing we needed to turn off…somewhere.
Lack of working GPS…can be a real downer
The miles and passing trucks were grinding on us…it’s not like either of the DRs are prime touring bikes with knobbies on them in the first place, but the traffic and the darkness was adding stress, which adds to further wearing you out.
We got to the point we were ready to stop for the night, but for one problem - we couldn’t find anywhere to stop.
We passed some small roads, seemingly going to nowhere, off the highway, and finally I saw a sign that seemed like it went to some kind of resort..or something. We went for it.
Now, I’m not sure what exactly we were expecting, but the road became a trail, and it became pitch black…and went on for some time. It was starting to feel like we were back on the dirt trails, but at night in the dark.
We’d count off 15 minutes at a time, each count expecting ‘surely we’ll reach it soon!,’ but we didn’t. After what was probably 2 hours of stubborn-ness - we finally got…somewhere.
Thankfully, we were able to find someone, as there was literally almost no one there…and we got a room for the night. Apparently, the place was Hotel Vista Golfo - and we’d also taken the long way getting there.
Sleep, then figuring out where we are in he morning..