Full Throttle Happiness!

On Thursday, February, 11, my friends Robert, Jose and I headed off for a full day of happiness! We met at Ciudad Colon and took Routes 209 and 226 to head over to San Lorenzo de Tarrazu and down to Naranjito.

It seemed to take forever to finally get to our breakfast stop, La Casa del Cafe on Route 226. It seems there are no places open for breakfast along this route once past Tabarcia. But I knew this was open, and it’s a cute place with good food and a nice view. Worth the wait.

We wound our way through the Los Santos coffee fields over to San Lorenzo and headed down. Great views and solid packed gravel/dirt road for the first part of the journey.

About 70% of the road is now clay, however, and a lot of it was wet/muddy. With a bit of rain this road would be impossible to ride. But, we made it through without incident, down the interesting curves and hills.

Half way down there is a little soda on the right where most bikers stop for a rest. It was closed, but the bathroom was accessible.

We then stopped at the next little place on the left, before going further down. The family noticed I had not fallen this time. Hahaha! (The last time I went on this road, the left side of my body was full of clay from a fall.)

And we continued down to the Cotos river to cross it and head over to Naranjito. So much fun!!

We decided to take route 239 from Parrita to Puriscal. This road is now being paved.

The light on the mountains towards the left was incredible and the views awesome. But at this point, we were in no mood to stop. Hahaha! I would like to take this road again in the afternoon on a clear day to take photos.
We had lunch at Soda Pura Vida.

We stopped on the way to Puriscal to say our goodbyes to Robert.

Jose Alonso was kind enough to accompany me most of the way home on route 136, from Puriscal to Turrucares. I was made even happier when he looped around San Miguel. I had been wanting to do this route these days, since I hadn’t done it in a couple of years, and I find it so relaxing. To my pleasant surprise, he took me on a new route that ended up on route 3, not too far from Atenas. Cool!! I will have to find this on my own on Waze. Yay! As I joked, the way to make a biker chick happy is to take her on a route she’s never done before! Hahaha! (Not easy to do with me! :-))

All I can say is WOW!! The rides this year have been superb! And long! I love spending 11.5 hours on the road. By the end of the day, Sahara feels like an extension of my body and light as a feather. Hahaha!! I am so grateful to my new friends!

RIDING IN COSTA RICA: FEEL THE BEAUTY. KNOW THE LOVE. LIVE THE POWER.