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Adam & Larry descending from Volcanos Irazu & Turrialba
All photos on this page by Carlos Cardona |
December 2004 - January 2005
Complete photo gallery (Lava Tours takes photos and posts them on the web for free!)
I was going to do some mountain biking on this, my second trip to Costa Rica - not just rain forests, beaches and volcanoes this time. But I didn't want to bring my own bike or waste my precious vacation time on bad or wimpy rides. So after some fairly extensive research on the web, I fortunately settled on Lava Tours (lava-tours.com) owned by Carlos Cardona. Even after all that research, it still felt like a crap shoot in terms of picking a guide. But once Carlos and I started planning my trip, I knew I had nothing to fear - we were in good hands.
First, we didn't make it easy on Carlos because there were riders and non-riders, and we didn't want a prepackaged trip because we already had our own itinerary for most of the time. Carlos painstakingly worked with us, even being flexible enough to modify things when we added 3 more people to the trip with one month to go. He provided great bikes for us - the Airbornes fit us all really well. He set us up in great hotels that we wouldn't have found ourselves, so that all the riders and non-riders could spend the evenings together. He also recommended a great hotel in Playa Hermosa near Jaco that was one of our favorites.
The riding was fantastic. Although it's different riding than the single tracks in Colorado, we saw some remote parts of Costa Rica that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. Here are the 4 rides:
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Ray & Larry descending Cerro del Muerte
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- The top of the Irazu Volcano to Turrialba. After Carlos picked us up in San Jose, we drove to the top of Volcan Irazu at over 11,000'. We road past Volcan Turrialba, then mostly downhill through remote farms, tiny towns and ranches to our hotel up the hill from the town of Turrialba where we stayed two days. Total climbing was about 2,300 vertical feet. It was just Carlos, me and my buddy Adam on the ride. One of the highlights of every ride was Carlos buying us lunch (Casado) at great little family restaurants.
- Turrialba death march. The next day we skipped the sag wagon and added 15 miles and 2,500 vertical to an already challenging ride. My buddy Ray said it was the best ride of his life, mainly because of the diversity of terrain we covered. The total ride was over 4,500 vertical feet of climbing, and we were toast by the time we finished this huge loop with a final grunt up the hill to the hotel near Turrialba.
- Pit Bull Pass starting near Orosi. This ride was just me and Carlos, so we planned for the biggest day yet. Waking up to relentless rain (in the dry season), I wondered how it would go. Carlos picked me up in the hotel near Turrialba, and we drove to Orosi where the ride started. We started at the church and road out of town, and after 30 minutes or so started climbing in earnest. Turns out Costa Rica got some of the super-cold weather that had plagued it's northern neighbors, and despite a quick climb of 2,000 vertical feet, we were freezing - on the uphill! Then it was going to be a long downhill before we started climbing some more, and that was going to just be too cold considering we were already drenched. So with hot springs (more like warm springs) beckoning at the bottom of the hill, we blew off the rest of the ride, visited the hot springs and ate casado.
- Cerro del Muerte ("Mountain of Death"). Then after staying in a cool lodge in the middle of nowhere (Copey) where we saw Quetzals and relaxed, we went off on our own for a few days to Domincal. Then we met Carlos again in Copey to begin the Cerro del Muerte ride. In addition to Carlos and me, Ray and Adam went on this famous ride too. We started riding in cool, drizzly weather at 8,300 feet on the Pan American highway, ending at the beach in the hot coastal town of Quepos. We rode through some very nice small towns, where everyone was in their Sunday finest and heading to church. Then down through the rainforest, with clouded-shrouded views of our final destination, the distant sea. We dropped a total of over 10,000 feet on this ride, with less than 2,000' of climbing. The riding was high speed at times and very rough at others, but it was truly amazing, considering the number of ecosystems we must have gone through. It was a great way to finish our CR Mountain Bike adventure with 4 finals days on the beach.
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Ray & Larry on the Turrialba death march at the Reventazon River
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On these rides, I've been as cold as I've ever been riding, and probably as hot too, especially towards the end of Cerro del Muerte when we hit sea level. But we came away with a better view of Costa Rica than the typical tourist gets, plus we worked off all those Casados with some serious riding. If you're a mountain biker and visiting Costa Rica, look no further than Lava Tours - Carlos will make sure you get in the rides you want!
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