Cycling in Costa Rica: Uphill and On the Rise

By Michael Werner
Special to The Tico Times

All about bikes: Above, cyclists pedal past the Pacific near Playa Sámara, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste . At bottom left, Coloradoans Traci Hollister and Kris Pogoloff coast toward Tilarán at sunset – a sweet reward after an intense, full-day ride. Tico Times/Katie Campbell

Cycling is on the climb, literally and figuratively, in the country. Just ask Cory Sterling, 29. His legs burned with fatigue on a recent Sunday, after climbing through the endless hills of Monteverde, in the north-central region of the country. Tracy Hollister's back ached and her husband Joe was dying – of hunger. It was lunchtime, and this group of mountain bikers had spent more than three hours climbing through the countryside.

After lunch, the ride would be much easier, promised Carlos Cardona, the group's guide and owner of Lava Tours, a San Pedro-based mountain-biking tour company.

“Just some undulating hills, that's all,” Cardona said.

With veggie pizza and an Imperial beer or two in their stomachs, Cardona, Sterling – a Lava Tours guide-in-training – the Hollisters and fellow Colorado mountain bikers Robert Woerne and Kris Pogoloff set off from the town of Santa Elena into a pelting rain. Within moments, the group and their titanium-framed bikes were hurtling down a roller-coaster-steep drop strewn with small rocks, and then laboring up the hill on the other side of the valley, their sinewy legs taught with exertion.

The riders passed through mist-shrouded valleys, verdant meadows and coffee plantations with their neatly ordered rows of plants. From the hilltops, the cyclists were rewarded with sweeping views of green tapering off into the blue of the Pacific.

At day's end – a grueling six hours from the ride's beginning near Sardinal, about 50 miles to the south – the cyclists relaxed tired muscles in the Rock River Lodge's log cabin-style foyer. Conversation turned to the day's ride.

“The rocks just beat you up,” said Pogoloff, 52, a broad-chested man from Crested Butte, Colorado, as he sipped on a Pilsen beer. “It really wears on you.”

“And the hills – if you call these little undulations, what do you call a mountain?” Tracy Hollister asked Cardona.

“There are no easy rides in Costa Rica ,” Cardona replied with a smile.

Whether pedaling through the coffee-terraced hills of the Orosi Valley , east of San José , under a canopy of palms in the northwestern province of Guanacaste , or through the cloud forests of Monteverde stealing glimpses of the far-off Pacific, the vistas are stunning, perhaps accounting for the sport's popularity among tourists.

The sport's popularity has grown among Ticos as well. Mountain biking was discovered by Costa Ricans in the 1970s, and gained in popularity during the 1980s. However, it wasn't until the early 1990s that the sport surged in popularity, Cardona said.

Today, mountain biking is second in popularity only to soccer, said Luis Rueda, spokesman for the Costa Rican Cycling Federation, noting the country's 150-plus mountain-bike races each year. The media is another barometer of the sport's popularity, with many of the country's publications and television broadcasts devoting ample time and space to its coverage.

According to Cardona, the initiated know Costa Rican cycling is all about the climb.

“It's very hard to have a one-day, much less an eight-day, tour that's rated easy, because anywhere you go there are going to be hills,” he said. “It's not like going to Napa Valley (California) where it's all flat.”

The inescapable heat and humidity make hill-riding a grueling proposition.

“The conditions in Costa Rica are really tough for beginners,” Cardona added. “If they're looking for an easy ride, it's going to be difficult to meet their expectations.”

The Hollisters and their companions, who spend several hours each week in the summer pedaling through the mountains around Boulder , Colorado , knew what to expect and were not disappointed.

Last year Cardona led Joe Hollister and Woerne, who rode professionally in the early 1990s, up the masochistically steep hills around Irazú Volcano.

“He punished us,” Hollister said. “He took us on three of the hardest days of riding in our lives.”

Cardona, an experienced rider who has competed in races such as Costa Rica's Ruta de Los Conquistadores (Route of the Conquistadors), a grueling, three-day, coast-to-coast ride, initially underestimated the difficulty of the tours his company was offering. But when riders struggled through what he considered easy rides, he said, the company adapted. Some of the same rides the company billed as beginner-level or intermediate-level offered in November 2003, when it started, are now given intermediate and advanced ratings.

“It was a learning process,” he said. “We found out that most people are not looking for epic rides. They are looking for less challenge and more experiential-type trips.”

And while Utah , Colorado , California and British Columbia are still the destinations of choice for most North American mountain bikers, Cardona sees opportunity in his country's hills and vistas.

“ Costa Rica could be right up there with the others. We have the right geography – we just don't have the infrastructure,” he said, lamenting the country's dearth of published biking routes and well-maintained trails.

“We need to start solving these problems, and, little by little, Costa Rica will become a biking destination – until one day it is the hottest thing,” he said.