Costa Rica Trip: Day 4 Mountain Biking Nightmare

December 29, 2015
Day 4, Transfer to Monteverde and Mountain Biking

My Dad and I were picked up by a small van and driven about 20 minutes beyond the town to Lake Arenal.  There were about 6 or 7 covered boats of varying sizes waiting on the bank by the parking area.  I would estimate over a hundred people were being offloaded from many buses, and spread out among the boats with their luggage.

Then we set out for a 2+ hour ride across the short eastern side of the lake.  The lake was very quiet with only a few fishing boats and almost no wind or waves.  We were traversing the eastern part of the lake, so we had the volcano in our rear view most of the way which made for nice pictures.  We were met on the other side of the lake at a very informal "dock" with no structure to set foot on -- it was literally just mud beneath a tree.  There were about a dozen vans of various sizes and colors parked along side the road and it was a very chaotic scene.  We waited for someone with a clipboard to yell out a name and the van number, but the vans did not have any numbers displayed.  We eventually figured it out but had to wait for one of our fellow riders who had lost track of suitcase in the chaos.  We then proceeded on about an hour long ride with a pit stop at a restaurant in a town called "Florida".

We arrived at our hotel, Poco A Poco which is on the south side of Santa Elena.  Santa Elena is the central hub of the Monteverde region, and if you ever travel here, understand that there is no actual city called “Monteverde” – which confused us.  Note that is can also be very windy in this area, especially where our hotel was situated on the mountain, which resulted in wind gusts of well over 30 mph.  We grabbed a quick lunch at the restaurant in our hotel’s restaurant and it was pretty good.

We then got picked up at our hotel around 230 to go on our mountain biking tour and were driven about 2 minutes down the road to a very small bike shop with three bicycles sitting outside.  It took us a while to find the right sized helmet as apparently my large head size is abnormal in Costa Rica.

We met our guide who spoke English very well and asked us what sort of ride we wanted to go on since we were the only riders.  We reiterated that we wanted to ride on the trails in the forest as it had shown on the website, which is why we booked it in the first place.  We preferred to stay away from steep inclines, as my Dad and I are intermediate riders but are accustomed to flat street riding.  I had specified to Pacific Trade Winds, our booking agent, that we did not want to ride on a road, especially not a busy road, because that would not be enjoyable for either of us.  So the guide said there is no real trail that goes through the forest as that is all private or protected land, but would try to accommodate us.  He then said he would try to take us on a route that was not too challenging in terms of inclines.

We agreed on the plan and set out traversing a back gravel road through part of town and immediately hit a very steep hill with about a 40-degree grade incline, which is very steep.  My Dad and I got about ¾ of the way up and had to hop off to walk our bikes the rest of the way.  We stopped at the top of the hill to catch our breath and then jokingly asked if the rest of the 14km would be the same, and of course our guide said yes – yikes.

Minutes later, we reach the main road that runs through this region.  Now, this is technically a highway in Costa Rica, but it is a two lane gravel road with slow moving traffic, so it’s not the traditional US highway.  We proceeded down this road for a couple kilometers, going up and down hills while having many cars and buses pass us, leaving us in the dust and inhaling fumes.  At this point I am leading so I stop on the side because I am thinking I might have missed the guide’s signal to turn to actually go off road somewhere.  So I ask the guide when we are leaving the main road and he says he didn’t really plan for us to do that.  And my Dad and I both give him incredulous looks.

Why would anyone find this sort of mountain biking enjoyable?  We weren’t training for a race.  We explained that we weren’t enjoying any scenery, it was overly challenging and not at all what we signed up for.  So we proceeded hoping to making the most out of it but about two hills later when we were walking our bikes up the hill, we said enough.  Our guide was sympathetic and could see we were not having a good time.  So he suggested we stop the tour and ride to a coffee shop a few minutes down the road.  We agreed and made it there where our guide then called a van to come pick us and our bikes up.

He was nice enough to buy us coffee and we actually did get to sit on a nice porch overlooking flowered trees and a creek.  The van arrived about 20 minutes later and took us back to our hotel and the whole ordeal was finally over.  I will definitely be contacting our booking agent to let them know this was not as advertised.

About a 2-minute walk from our hotel, there is a commercial center with stores, restaurants and a grocery store.  Here we ate at a 5-star-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor called The Green Restaurant, which was pretty tasty but not that exciting. While we were walking around town, we noticed a video ad for a biking tour back where just came from in Arenal.  This tour is on a sort of elevated bobsled track through trees in a forest – note to self – try this one next time.

Fun observation - I would say most, over 80%, of the tourists in Arenal and Monteverde have been American, which is a huge shift from my other travel experiences.  A few have been from Latin America and a few from Europe.   Today on the boat tour was the first time I had seen tourists from Asia (two Japanese couples).  Compared to my other international travel adventures, usually less than 10% are American tourists, so this has had the least diverse set of travelers, and by far the least amount of Asian tourists.