Merry Christmas from Costa Rica

Looking at the calendar, Christmas is closing in on us fast. Yet, I honestly can't say that things feel too festive down here in Costa Rica, even if the odd house displays an incongruous Santa Claus or blow-up snowman and there is a huge artificial Christmas tree in Puntarenas that you can walk through! But when it is 85 degrees and the sun is out all day, thoughts of Happy Holidays are rather distant. Thank goodness. After all, that's what I was looking for when I decided to spend this time of year in Ticolandia—get away from that most commercial of all holidays.

I'm sitting on my Airbnb's beautiful deck, right on the water, and dozens of pelicans are gliding from left to right and right to left while the occasional fisherman rows by. It's an off-day for me; that is "off" from the bike. For the past week I have been enjoying almost daily excursions on my Ritchey Outback, and yesterday's ride may have been the hardest yet, so it's OK to relax.

Thank goodness for an alert guard dog!

I have been incredibly lucky to find this Airbnb as it provides me with a safe place that lacks absolutely nothing. The birdlife is incredible. Just when I wrote these last words I was interrupted by four pelicans fighting over the fish that one of them had scooped up. I regularly see cormorants perform the same spectacle. Less than a hundred meters away close to one hundred pelicans are congregated around a docked boat. Were I to have a real camera with a long lens I'd be able to take pictures worthy of National Geographic publication. With just the smartphone at hand, I'm rather limited in that regard.

My house comes with a big ol' fridge that even has an icemaker. What a luxury, especially in such a hot place! But even better is the clean, sparkling pool that is in the immaculately groomed yard. Victor, the brother-in-law of my German Airbnb host, lives in a separate house and serves as the caretaker of the property. In the mornings he vacuums the pool, in the afternoons he trims the vegetation or picks up leaves, and when I return from a car-based excursion he will open the secure gate. Victor is unobtrusive yet present when I need something. Gracias por todo, Victor!

If there's anything to complain about it is the fact that the days are so short. By 5 p.m., the spectacular sunsets are in full glory, yet it also means that riding is somewhat affected. Yes, it does get light right around 6 a.m., but it is hard to deny myself an extended coffee, cookie, and papaya session on my deck, all in the name of going for an early ride. I mean, this is vacation (even if I seem to be on perpetual vacation)!

San Martin de Porres, patron "of mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, public health workers,
and all those seeking racial harmony." Judy would have liked him.

When I was looking for a place in Costa Rica I wanted to be on the coast since I know how mountainous the country is. And even so, my rides have seen some significant climbing. Yesterday's 32 miles had an elevation gain of more than 3,600 feet. If the grades were all gentle and steady, that'd be OK. But when you're faced with 15% and even 20% inclines, well, things become tough, especially in these humid conditions and you're almost 65. Actually, yesterday was the first time that I had to walk some sections because even with my lowest gears I couldn't ride them. As a disclaimer, I do listen carefully to my body since heat and humidity take an extra toll and I don't want to run into medical problems.

Some of my rides have originated right here from my house in Chacarita, and twice I have taken my rental car to drive about 45 minutes to an hour to extend my range. On Sunday I took an easy recovery ride to Puntarenas, which is located at the very end of a six-mile long, ultra-narrow sandspit; the day before I had completed a 52-mile ride starting an hour south of here. I use my trusted map program, Locus, to find routes that look promising, and it's only been a few washed-out bridges and one or two non-existent roads that have necessitated detours or turn-backs.

My rides have been on both asphalted as well as unpaved roads. Unfortunately I've had to ride twice on the very busy, very narrow Pan-American Highway since there was simply no other road to take. It is unnerving to have huge 18-wheelers come by with less than a foot to spare on the left and no room to take evasive action toward the right. But most of the time I am on quiet roads, away from traffic, surrounded by nothing but incredible scenery.

Every day I am posting pictures on both my Strava and Facebook accounts, and I continue to be amazed by how every ride seems to differ from the one before. One minute I ride through densely forested areas while a short time later I will be close to the shore or amid cane fields. The central mountains always loom in a deep green toward the east, providing a dramatic backdrop, especially with the contrasting deep blue sky and towering white clouds. There's always something to see, always something to photograph.

Costa Rica is not cheap; in fact, it is said to be the most expensive of all Central and South American countries, except maybe Argentina. This of course comes thanks to the large number of US expats who have been throwing money around down here for many decades. When I rode through Central America on the way to the Panama Canal in the late 1970s I was already disappointed by how gringo-ized Costa Rica was back then. So, I am definitely spending much more money here for food and drink than I did in Oaxaca, which in comparison was a steal. Plus, Mexico has a food culture far superior to that of the Ticos.

All that is of course OK. I cook my own meals, and the supermarkets have everything that I need. There are no restaurants close to me; I think the closest is a fried chicken franchise about two miles away. But really, could it really be nicer to eat out rather than to sit on my deck, overlooking the night-time estuary and listening to the sounds that sometimes are rather mysterious?

Beer and wine are pretty shitty and sinfully expensive, so I try to augment my Happy Hours and beyond with rum punches and cubas libres, with even more expensive Ron Rico. A great find in the supermarket was the crazily named queso tipo ahoga pollo ("strangled chicken"?), a creamy artisanal cheese that is easily crumbled on top of corn chips; add to that a few spritzes of Lizano sauce (the Tico national salsa) and a few spoonfuls of chopped cilantro, and you have an appetizer muj autentico.

Talking about authentic: On my easy ride into Puntarenas on Sunday I tried the local specialty, the so-called Churchill. After I had read the Lonely Planet description of this concoction of "shaved ice, fruit, syrup and condensed and powdered milk" that was "invented" back in the 1940s and has become standard fare of pretty much every restaurant lining the Puntarenas beach promenade, I simply couldn't resist and had to spend $5 on this caloric atom bomb. Mine also featured a dollop of vanilla ice cream and definitely loads of additional granulated sugar, and it was sold by a Churchill vendor that wasn't shy to label it the best Churchill in not just all of Puntarenas, no, ALL of Costa Rica!, promising that if you don't like it, you don't pay. Not wanting to be the first person ever to take them up on their money-back guarantee I forced the entire thing down, and I have to say it was not as revolting as LP had made it sound.

The other authentic meal (and believe me, the Churchill indeed is a meal!) was a mixed ceviche that I ate toward the end of one of my rides. The restaurant, on the water, was sparkling clean, the food was tasty, yet I started feeling crappy already in the final few miles going home. Dang. Of course, in the age of COVID one asks oneself "Am I showing the first symptoms?" but the coincidental evidence was just too overpowering. Food poisoning sounds so terribly dramatic, like something from a KGB spy novel, but I guess that's what it was. Nothing like a good cleansing...

So, pre-Christmas life down here is slow and good. Tomorrow I hope to take the ferry from Puntarenas to Naranjo on the Nicoya peninsula. It's a 70-minute trip, and then I can ride almost 20 miles down the coast and return with the afternoon ferry from Paquera. It'll be nice to see the world from the water. And then Christmas Eve will be here, and maybe I'll order a pizza as there's supposedly a pizza delivery service. Now, wouldn't that be a treat? Merry Christmas!

Jürgen