Nosara to San Francisco, Cost Rica

January 13, 2023

Komoot says that somewhere on my route I made from Nicaragua to Panama, I hit an incline of 34%, and it occurs somewhere on the Nicoya Peninsula. I think I hit that today. Today was the by far hardest day yet, as far as inclines go (but probably everything else combined too though). About 75-80% dirt or very rocky, and when that is combined with an incline, I found myself walking and pulling my bike up about a dozen hills today. It took about 8 hours to go only about 44 miles, although I did stop a couple times for breaks and to get more Gatorade and bananas. I had to pull out all my tricks from everything I've learned about riding a bike my whole life today, including tacking (including walking tacking), going downhill with one leg down in preparation for a dump (just learned that on this trip actually). I've never squeezed the brakes so hard in my life going downhill, and when its rocky, you end up just sliding anyway, so you have to do the manual anti-lock maneuver, try to tack a bit, ride in the thick side gravel (like the semi runaway pullouts), whatever you can do. Man, these hills are no joke around here. I just keep looking at Google's directions, as sometimes when it says to turn left or right in so many kms, it often leads to a paved road, so I look forward to those turns. At one point when I was so done with these rocky hills, I saw that it said to turn in 4km. Okay, no problem I thought, that's only about 3 miles. No, don't think of it that way, that feels too far. How about 40 football fields (with end zones). Yeah, that's better. And as I'm doing that math, there goes one football field - 39 to go. Hey anything to keep your hopes up! At the end of that 4 km, I turned - but to the same conditions for another 2 km. Crap. It was like that a lot today. Oh well. Such is the experience. I do believe in 10-20 years when Costa Rica paves more of these roads, this will be even more of an awesome place. But likely still impossibly difficult to cycle on.

But I did pass by a couple gorgeous little beach towns. Samara is very similar to Coco Beach, just a little newer, and maybe a bit smaller. And then there is Playa Carrillo. This has to be what is in everyone's mind when they think of a stereotypical Costa Rican beach. Just breathtaking (see pics below).

I knew I could not take another campsite by the beach for a third night in a row, as I just could not sleep well again last night - it was beautiful, but just too noisy. I woke up this morning to what sounded like a brass band playing, only more soothing, but a lot louder, if that makes sense. So I had committed to setting up my tent at this little hostel in San Francisco because it was so highly rated on Google, and the owners spoke good English, and everyone can gather around and chat. Still, no AC though. And that feature weighed on me more and more as the day went on, with hardly any clouds today, and sometimes that sun just beat right down on me as I was bearing down as hard as I could up these hills. I was so done after about 35 miles that I thought if I saw anything on the way that looked decent at all and had AC, I would splurge, even if it meant $200+ like most places around here. Well, I was getting close to my destination, and nothing still, so, the hostel was getting firmed up in my mind. At least a cold shower would be nice. But wait! There's a sign for Hotel San Francisco! It was not on Booking or Google (there's a lot of places like that still). It was pretty nice looking, so I figured it would be expensive, but the sign out front said AC, so I rode in to see if they had a room available (on a Friday night). The host didn't speak any English, but I am getting pretty good at the basics now though. She did have a room and it was only about $60, so I took it. I would have paid twice that actually. Its a really nice place! Super quiet. But no food here, but according to Google, there's a good store less than 1 km away, so I just dropped off my stuff, unloaded one pannier, and took off. Wow! It was like driving a sports car without those panniers! I felt like I could have gone another 50 miles at that point and had fun riding too! But I was hungry. Across the street from the store was a restaurant. So I ordered a pizza to go from there, and then went over to the store to get some more breakfast plus some flip flops that I have been desperately wanting but could not find my size anywhere recently. Then went back for my pizza, and got a cinnamon roll for breakfast as well (they had a bakery in the restaurant too). Now, how to carry a 16" square pizza box in my pannier? Scroll down to the pics to see how that came out!

One strange thing I saw today that I was not able to snap a picture off quick enough was a man and woman riding on a motorcycle, and as they passed me, I saw he had a pet green bird sitting on his hat! He looked like he was hanging on for dear life! But probably had done that many times before.

Then as I was getting near my destination, I ran into another cyclist (Alan) coming the other direction who was more loaded than I was. Apparently, he is from Costa Rica, just making a loop from San Jose, Liberia, and the Nicoya Peninsula. He was walking his bike down hill, and it was not too terrible of a hill either, but then he told me he had blown out one of his front brake pads. Geeze, I never thought of blowing out one of my brakes gong downhill, but I shudder to think about it now. I'll be taking downhills slower now that it occurs to me. He told me about the areas that I'm headed to, and that it gets a bit worse with hills. Uh boy...

I'm not sure exactly how much I drank today, but I'm well over a gallon and a half for sure as I am typing this.

Wow - 3,000 views! Thanks everyone - I'm glad you're enjoying the posts! In celebration, I have a new journal cover pic!