Day 34 Descending from the mountains to the ocean

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Distance driven today: 239 miles / 385 km

Cumulative distance driven: 7,825 miles / 12,593 km

Today’s trip: San Jose, Costa Rica to David, Panama

Border crossings: 1

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We left San Jose in the morning and took the southbound highway running north-south through the mountainous mid of Costa Rica. The road quickly climbed through a myriad of switchbacks, and took us to 3,600m/ 11,800ft altitude where we rode for several hours. The traffic was relatively light, and the mighty rain forest, with all it nuances of green, started surrounding us. At that high of an altitude the temperature dropped significantly, and relatively quickly we found ourselves riding in some sort of magical fog. All the moisty winds coming in from the Caribbean and Pacific coasts turn into dense fog/clouds as soon as they hit the mountain ridge we were riding on.

In fact, we could literally see the moisty wind in front of our eyes, climbing over the ridge and turning into white moisture/fog. At times, it felt like we were riding in a magical forest, and every time we rode through a sharp turn on the road, we would suddenly find ourselves in a cloud that was so dense; that we almost had to come to a standstill. Minutes later, coming out of another switchback turn, everything would clear up and we could see thousands of meters down the valley. During the next turn the moisty winds would turn into fog in front of us again, so on and so forth. Watching nature perform this transformation from moisty winds into fog and clouds while we were riding, was a pretty awesome experience indeed.

And then just like that, we had descended all the 3,600m/ 11,800ft and found ourselves at the Pacific Coast, in a small and very laid-back tiny beach town called Docimical. Full of surfers and backpackers it was obvious that this was place to hang out at if you want to chill, should we have had more time. At least Zoe and I stopped by one of the beach restaurants and took a long lunch, sharing our experiences from riding high up in the misty mountains, just an hour ago. After lunch, we continued south, along the Pacific coast, and towards the Panamanian border.



Arriving around 5pm at the border, we were a couple of hours behind our schedule for the day. Zoe and I debated whether we should find a hotel at the last town in Costa Rica before the border and cross the border early in the morning, of whether we should attempt to cross the border late in the afternoon and then ride into the first city in Panama. We decided to do the latter, knowing perfectly well that the border crossing could take quite a few hours, and that we were likely to arrive at our hotel late in the evening. I will not bore you with the details of this particular border crossing, but suffice to say that the Panamanian authorities managed to beat all previous records of border bureaucracy. If you read the blog post from day 30 “How to cross a Central American border in 35 easy steps”, you should add 6 more steps, to get all the way through from Costa Rica and into Panama! In total, the crossing took over 3 hours, under some very chaotic conditions at the border. However, our Panamanian handler did an excellent job at helping us navigate through the maze of paperwork, stamps, check points, payments etc. As predicted, by the time we got to our hotel in David in northern Panama, it was 9:30pm. Today we put in a very long riding day, especially if you consider the fact that we left San Jose at 9am in the morning. We had been on the road for over 12 hours! I guess that’s what adventure riding is all about. Tomorrow we will head for Panama City, which also marks the halfway point of our grand trip.

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