1. Map and route

(used map: Berndtson&Berndtson map)

Day 1: Los Chiles - La Fortuna 100km
Day 2: La Fortuna -lago Arenal 27km
Day 3: Lago Arenal - Canas 65km
Day 4: Canas -Caldera 90km
Day 5: Caldera - Puntarenas 20km
Day 9: Cartago - 20km before Quepos 85km
Day 10: 20km before Quepos - Manuel Antonio 34km
Day 12: Manuel Antonio - Playa Uvita 67km
Day 14: Playa Uvita - Ciudad Neily 120km
Day 15: Ciudad Neilly - Canoas (border with Panama) 23km
Total Costa Rica: +/- 626 km

2. Specific information

Costa Rica is more expensive (+-3 dollar for a night), than Nicaragua and Honduras. This is especially because of the tourism in Costa Rica. The country is much cleaner than the others, and infrastructures are more elaborated. It's a nice country, very green, a lot of waterfalls, but a little too touristic. We met some friends in Costa Rica, so that's why we took our time.

We planned to cycle from San Carlos, in Nicaragua, to Los Chiles, in Costa Rica, but as there was no possibility to enter the country legally doing this, we had to take a boat going trough the jungle. This was a very nice, but quite expensive trip. To enter the Country you have to pay 2 Dollars.

San Jose is a very developed city, where you can find all the materials you need to repair your bike and there is a place where they weld aluminium.

3. Description of the road

From Los Chiles to La Fortuna, it's an easy road to cycle, but not really nice. La Fortuna is very touristic, it's a real surprise after coming from places where no tourists had been seen before. The active volcano Arenal is looming above this village and if you are lucky you might see the red lave coming out of it at night. Instead of taking the normal road around the lake, passing Arenal, we took the other side of the lake. This is a very nice unpaved road, although sometimes quite tough. You have to cross a river, carrying the bike. There aren't many villages along this road.

From Canas to Caldera we had to follow the Pan American highway. This isn't a nice road to cycle on, too much traffic and there is no stroke for the bikes, so trucks pass really close to you. Caldera is a harbor, not much to see here and very expensive to sleep.

Puntarenas is the city where the inhabitants of Costa Rica come to spend their sunday. It's a nice and little city where you have the possibility to use internet. From Puntarenas to San Jose we took the bus, to meet our friends overthere. You pay the same amount for the bike as for yourself. We stayed some days in San Jose and cycled on the highway till Cartago.

From here we went back in the direction of the coast, passing San Pablo de Léon Cortes. To get here, you have to pass three big hills. After San Pablo de Léon Cortes, we drove again on nicely surrounded, unpaved roads to Quepos. This place is touristic and nice to go out. We took a little boat to the island near Quepos and played football with the locals there. The road from Quepos to Manuel Antonio is very steep.

The road to Dominical is unpaved, and the rainy weather we coped with at that moment made it a quite hard to cycle. To Playa Uvita the road is paved again. Here there are some nice beaches with a reef to snorkel.

To Palmar Norte the road is paved at most places. It's a nice way trough beautiful nature. From here to Ciudad Neily there's a bit more traffic.
The border city, Paso Canoas, is only about 23 kilometres from Ciudad Neily.