The Last Country the Gods Made

After 10 days on the road with no access to email, phone, etc, I returned to an inbox full of meeting requests and rushed off to NYC for my first two days back. Finally getting control of the schedule and am able to start to record some of the details of the Costa Rica trip.

The land bridge that is Costa Rica now is less than 5 million years old - making it one of the last land masses created in the world. However, even as the youngest land area, with less than .1% of the total world land mass, it contains more than 5% of the flora and fauna! Really beautiful country.

The most notable aspect of the trip down there was the backup at customs on the way in - we couldn't figure out why the line was at a complete standstill. . .until we noted the soccer (football) game on the TV and all the customs guys sitting under it. The minute the game was over the line started moving again. We picked up the bikes the following morning in San Jose - not the new KLRs we had expected but two Yamaha 600s that both had some pretty substantial miles on them. They also were missing the promised side bags, and so we borrowed a stuff sack and multiple bungee cords to improvise.

We set off out by about 10, and decided to add a side trip up Volcan Irazu. It erupted almost constantly from 1963 to 1965, covering the entire top of the mountain with ash. The craters have now filled with bright green water and the landscape is almost lunar! Apparently there are also wild horses on the mountain, although we didn't see them.