Costa Rica

My rapid pace (for me) through Central America had been due, to a large extent, to the fact that my sister, Susie, was coming to join me for 10 days of cycling. So everday for the last 3 weeks I had been pushing out 100 km plus days with only 4 rest days (one of which was spent mountain biking in Guatemala). So, with my typical clarity of judgement, on the eve of our rendevous, and with still 55 km left to cycle by 1 O'clock, I decided to attend a birthday party and not hold back on the rum and beers. This, coupled with a headwind along the shores of lake Nicaragua, made for extremely painful progress. However I still made it to the border crossing (20 km from Susie and the poison finally sweated away), by 11. This should be fine, I said to myself, as I breezed through the Nicaraguan side of the formalities. After all between all the Central American countries I had had no problems (lets not talk about Mexico though), that is untill now. I cheerfully strolled up to the front of a busy looking immigation window and asked to be admitted into Costa Rica, I was told unless I wanted to pay a bribe to get to the back of the queue. "What queue? The one over there" indicating a line of about 20 people "No, that one over there" indicating a line stretching round two sides of the large building and then snaking off into the car park "Oh, shit". An hour later I was again at the front of the line and soon clipped into my pedals and rolling towards my rendevouz. I eventually arrived in the town of La Cruz only 5 minutes late, dripping with sweat and grime and comically I had applied sun screen to only 1 arm (I blame the booze) so while one was a glowing bronze the other resembled that of a patient in a burns ward. Meeting Susie was, surprisingly, a very normal moment. I had been expecting a huge outflow of emotion at seeing my first family member for 5 months but to be honest it felt like I'd been away for only a week. Susie had come equipped with a mountain bike and so of course she wanted to explore the dirt roads, of which there are many, around the Nicoya peninsular. Over the next week we camped on beaches, in national parks among semi-wild horses, and next to a fishing village. We spent days watching monkeys (Susie had studied them in Costa Rica for a year and so was amazing at explaining their behaviour), saw epicly-sized iguanas, fishing eagles and camen. We swam in jungle pools and at stunning bleached-white beaches. And of course we shook our bikes and bodies to pieces along the gravel tracks Costa Ricans pretend are roads, shooting through fords, across narrow suspension bridges and up and down countless jungle shrouded tracks. Eventually we arrived to the perfect half-moon bay of Carrillio. Here Susie would enjoy a couple of days of beach time to relax before heading back to the daily grind in the English winter. While this would be my one proper holiday from my travels: I took ten days to relax completely, get fat and attempt to surf with two of my friends from home, Kate and Andrew. The only low point was Susie leaving and all the emotion that had been missing from our meeting was here in spades. I hadn't realised how close we had been, cycling together for a week, teaching each other from our experiences: Susie teaching me about the monkey world she had been absorbed in for a year, and I teaching Susie my bike life and daily experience over the previous 5 months. And so the fairwell was a teary one and it took a few Imperials to restore my good humour that afternoon.