Saturday February 9th, 2013, San Vito, Costa Rica.

Today was a “travel day” which means kickstands up and on the road before 9:00 am. The route took us in a general southeast direction towards the only border crossing with Panama. After a fantastic ride on road 702 we made our way through the major city of San Jose and back onto the Pan American Highway. After San Jose the road climbs to the highest point on the Pan American Highway, which was 10,919 feet according to my GPS. We entered another cloud forest and it was super refreshing to have the temperature drop into the 50’s for a change.

This has got to be one of the best stretches of the Pan American Highway. 

We came to this restaurant near the highest point in the road and had to stop. David and Keith remembered stopping here 50 years ago, wow. We snacked and took a few pictures. 

Back on the road for some more nice, twisty roads with light traffic. 

We came to a point on the Trans American Highway, which for some reason is now called CA-2, where there is a cutoff towards San Vito called road 237. We were warned by a biker on a 990 KTM not to take that road because it was too “dangerous”. I asked what that meant and he said it was too full of sharp turns, steep downhills and dangerous roads. Our kind of road! Of course we took that route and it turned out to be beautiful new asphalt with almost no traffic. It might have been one of the best roads yet on this trip. Unfortunately, my memory was full on my camera and I couldn’t take any more pictures.

Today we rode 255 miles with a moving time of just under 7 hours. Our moving average speed was 38mph. We’re finding out it’s hard to make time on some of these roads but they sure are fun.

If you want to see more Costa Rica pictures click HERE. Follow our progress HERE.

Tomorrow we cross into Panama, hopefully it will be easier than some of the other crossings. Stay tuned.

D&D 🙂 🙂

Friday, February 8, 2013. Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica

Wednesday was declared an official “off” day to explore the Palya Tamarindo so we extended our stay at the Purblo Dorado Hotel so we could spend the day hanging out on the beach, near the pool and an afternoon, take a boat ride into the jungle to see Howler Monkeys.

Into the jungle. 

Our skipper – George.

Are we a bunch of tourista’s or what? 

Today’s shot of Michael. 

We stopped on shore to see monkeys and stopped to admire the huge termite nest. I wonder what would happen if we poke it with a stick? 

Would we be crazy enough to try it??? YES! The termites came out.

We did see a few monkeys. 

After the boat ride Deby and I split off for a romantic walk along the beach. Checked out the surfers. 

Deby went in search of more shells. 

Oh, oh…. what could be here?

Something good!!

Happy girl. 

The rest of the night was spent with a drink in hand admiring a most spectacular sunset…. warning…. graphic sunset (boring?) photos to follow…..

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Thursday morning it was kickstands up at 8:30 to head to the highlands and the Arenal Volcano.

We rode East and then over the top of Lake Arenal towards the volcano on the East end of the lake. 

As we came around the lake we had some great views of the volcano.

Good roads the whole route, with a nice twisty section on the north end of the lake. 

We ended up at the Hotel Arenal Pariso Resort and Spa. A little high end for our usual tastes but there was not too much complaining. Deby and I had a “Superior” room which was an individual cabin.  Did I mention there were natural hot springs at this resort? Oh, yea, this ADV motorcycle stuff can get pretty rough sometimes.

Picture of one of the many hot spring pools……

Our cabin.

The rest of the gang was across the drive. 

The volcano erupts frequently, we were hoping to get some of these views at night. 

The mountain was steaming but we didn’t see lava flows…..

Deby and I woke up this morning and went for a hike in the national park where you can hike to some of the lava flows from the big 1968 eruption. 

Deby with Lake Arenal in the background. 

Tomorrow we pay penance for two days of soft living and will ride hard to the border with Panama. With any luck we will cross into Panama early Sunday morning with minimal delay and make another dash to Panama City where we will attempt to find a way to get our bikes and ourselves from Panama to Columbia!

Thanks for following! D&D 🙂 🙂