Feeling revived and newly excited, we decided to head up into the Monteverde Cloud Forest from Liberia. Coming off the highway with apparently 2 hours to go to our destination, the road immediately turned to dirt. We pulled over and thought about it for a minute, but figured one of our favourite and most memorable days so far was our 9-hour day across the top of the Guatemalan mountains, so, being more than ready for another adventure, we head off up until the hills.
At first the road was pretty good - the wet weather had washed away most lose stones so the dirt was fairly smooth and compacted. Off course as we got higher the rocks got bigger, the ruts got deeper and the gradients got steeper. But it was fun! Tom handled it like a total pro and we were soon riding over the tops of the hills with views right down to the ocean. Butterflies fluttered about and cows peered over hedges - we'd yet again managed to find a path not well-trodden. But we'd got our sense of adventure back, and after 3 hours we arrived at Santa Elena in the Monteverde Cloudforest. It was a very cute little town nestled high up in the rolling verdant hills, and yet was bustling with tourists and numerous travel operators. Thankfully to me this didn't take away the charm of the place and we spent a wonderful couple of days in these cool highlands, hiking up peaks and taking nature walks. On our night tour we saw two sloths, a toucan, a sleeping hummingbird, a Motmot (type of iridescent bird), a green pit viper snake, a scorpion that glowed in UV light and a raccoon! [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]
It was up in Santa Elena that we met our first fellow adventure riders. They were 3 guys from New York travelling from there down as far as they could go in Panama, and then turning around and going back up! They each had a KLR 650 laden with gear including camping stuff and spare tyres, and suddenly little Betty the BSA seemed very small! But it was great meeting some other riders, if only briefly, and we really hope to start meeting more as our journey ticks on. From here it was finally time to tackle our ignition coil problem head on, so we headed down to Costa Rica's second largest city, Alajuela, to try and find what we needed (still trying to avoid San Jose if we could get away with it).
The road back down from Santa Elena was also a lot of fun. We had to be pretty careful as there were a lot of loose pebbles on the way down, but bending round corner after corner with the green Costa Rican hills undulating as far as you could see was pretty spectacular. If we were ever feeling a little bit low, Costa Rica had already well and truly blown off the cobwebs and reinvigorated us! Arriving in Alajuela at midday the first three hotels that we tried were fully booked, which was not such a great start. We'd located a big bike shop just outside town, so we decided to head there and tackle the accommodation problem later. But a few moments later we spotted a local bike shop that seemed pretty clean, popular and well-stocked, so we stopped in the dim hope that they might have something or be able to point us in the right direction. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]Let me start by saying the gents at Papillo Racing have got to be the kindest, most genuine and most helpful people we have met so far. Not only did they have the ignition coil we needed as well as most of the other parts, but they let us use their workshop and all their tools for two days totally free. The offered us advice where they could, and Tom taught them some bits and bobs about old British bikes. We ordered in pizza while Tom replaced the ignition coil so the bike would stop spluttering, tightened the clutch so it would stop sliding, replaced the kick start spring so I didn't have to manually lift and strap it back in place after every start, and did an oil change. We left the next day with a real sense of achievement; the bike running like a dream and us on a high from finding what we needed and meeting such amazing people.
Next it was up over the mountains and down to the coast, where Tom’s friend from university was living in Domincal and had kindly said we could come and stay!