I’ve had a great year mountain biking, 2 great trips to France bouncing down the best that they have to offer and then there was the tour of the north with my mate. Lots of fun, a bit too much of the old Gremlins for my liking, but it’s been a great summer.
However, there is something very special about the Forest of Dean trails. The trails are excellent, with a huge blue run called the Verderers Trail and an equally huge red call the Freeminers trail. Both of them stretch to about 10km each, and to spice things up there is a specialist downhill area with huge jumps and drops, the kind of thing you won’t find a man of my age doing much of anytime soon.
The trails are good, but there is something else that makes it special. During the winter I’m normally pedalling around the local woods or around North Somerset wrapped up warm and enduring the weather, but when spring breaks through and there is a bit of warmth in the sun, I head to the Forest of Dean to celebrate. It’s the same around now, as we get to the end of September and the sun is still warm, I can’t help myself from heading over there to enjoy the last of the summer.
I was pondering why it was so special, and then I realised it was one of the few places I get to use all my boy toys. The drive over in the camper van is fun, it takes about an hour, so I pump up the volume on the stereo and set off, the route makes me along good, quiet roads through the Welsh border countryside pondering life and thinking how lucky I am.
I think it’s the whole package that makes it a special trip; I don’t go too often in case I spoil the magic.
There is something about the light in the trees in spring and autumn that just seems to make it better and when it’s all over and I’m feeling suitably knackered, I sit on the step of the van, pop the top on a beer and sit there chilling, listening to my favourite music, and sitting in my favourite place, the side step of the van. Watching the other riders coming and going, knowing they are envious of my van and rather perfect moment, it invariably ends up in a chat with someone about how their day went on the mountain trails.
To be honest, it hasn’t always ended well, 5 years ago I was enjoying my September experience at the Forest of Dean and was happily cruising back when disaster struck, I was in the traffic jam that is normally referred to as Chepstow. The engine started to judder, and by the time I realised the engine was overheating the damage was done and the engine seized up, a common fault water hose bursting problem on this model and you literally have about a minute to cut the engine if it happens and I was too late. Sadly, that started an 18 month torment with 2 replacement engines and no trips to the Forest of Dean.
Back to the mountain biking, the runs involve a long tour of the forest with plenty of climbing that is well managed by the design, and when you get to the top the runs down are brilliant. The sweeping run down the Verderers trail takes between 10 and 15 minutes and fully justifies the 40 odd minutes climbing and swooping to get you there. The red Freeminers isn’t quite so straight forward but it’s fine if you are on an e-bike, unless you are young and good and do rooty climbs!
These are the highlights of today’s visit.
Dizzys Decent red run
This video is showing a new red run that I found, seemed to be called Dizzys Drop or Dizzys Decent. It was challenging at the start, and I suspect it would be a bit hairy on a wet day over those roots on the steep section, but today it was lots of fun and tricky bits to deal with.
Countdown trail from top to bottom
This video is of a run that called Countdown, it’s the only blue run in the downhill section. The top section is nice and fast but isn’t particularly challenging, but the lower section is very fast and swoops up and down the sides of the valley, just as much fun as some of the French runs.
Twisted Sister down hill trail
Last video is from the downhill section, and is appropriately called Twisted Sister, just like my own sister, if you take your mind off it for a second you will end up in trouble. The last section is very steep and coming down over lots of roots and rocks, I did it in the wet last year and it was more about survival than fun, but today it was nice and dry.
The story of a runaway dog, an imitation Porsche and stunning views
There aren’t many downsides of owning a Porsche, but the cost of servicing is one of them, so at the 2 year anniversary if owning the car and the next service came around, it was the time I was dreading,
The car reminded me about the service every time I sat in it, so a few calls to different types of specialists produced a range of quotes, all of them unpalatable, but the specialist garage that I bought it from offered the best deal.
It was a weird coincidence, that when I was hunting for a very specific model, the best option came up in my home stomping ground of Plymouth rather than around the bit cities which I’d expected. The specialist garage I had bought it from had been very good to deal with, so when their quote was the best, it gave me an excuse to turn the trauma of the car service into an opportunity for and adventure.
I’d had been a previous issue with the car, and the dealer had provided another Porsche as my loan car. So, when I booked the service, I requested the loan car and booked myself into a little pub in the village of Cawsands just outside Plymouth. I was looking forward to a blast through the Cornish lanes in a different model for a change.
Cawsand Bay had a special place in my life. It is a little village in one of the bays off Plymouth Sound, every Janner knows where it is but very few people go there once they grow up. As a kid, the treat with my gran was the 30-minute ferry ride across Plymouth Sound and then a day on the beach swimming and pleading for ice cream.
Then there was Maker Camp, an old military camp on top of the cliff, that had been converted into a school adventure camp. All the schools in Plymouth were allocated their week each summer, so from the last year of primary school and for the first 2 years of secondary school, we would be packed off to camp, where we played football, walked for miles doing orienteering, climbed rocks and cliffs and generally burned off all our energy before it was restocked at the tuck shop,. The food was shocking, even worse than school meals. For most kids it was their first experience of being away from home as well, so there always some grizzlers at night.
As we grew up, the 4 pubs in the village provided a great place for a day out and drinking on the sea front. As we got a bit wealthier and could afford a boat, it became the place to go on a Sunday, normally with a bit of water skiing in Cawsand Bay or maybe fishing before visiting the pubs and catching up with mates.
Nowadays on a Sunday, the bay is full gin palace type launches that have blasted their way over from the Barbican and bob around drinking cocktails or going ashore for a beer and then heading back, so not much has changed over the last 50 years, the village hasn’t grown much and even the ferry still runs to Plymouth as the best link with civilisation, 30 minutes by ferry or 90 minutes by road to a city you can see from the beach.
I was really looking forward to the trip back to the village for the night as there are stunning views and walks, old pubs and a little walk down memory way. After a good trip down from Bristol I dropped the car on time and was looking forward to the loan car, they gave me the keys and told me it was down the road. It took me a while to work it out, then I discovered why the loan car was “down the road”, it was not a Porsche, it was a Skoda. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Imitation Porsche
Now there is nothing wrong with a Skoda, smashing little cars, very reliable etc, but not what you expect from a Porsche specialist, especially while they are charging a fortune for an oil change. So a disappointing start to my treat, but Tess the Dog seemed happier in the little two door runabout, she took up residence in the back seat and off we went for 50 minute drive to Whitsand Bay, the beach haunt of all Plymouth teenagers once we had access to transport, and the first destination of my trip down memory lane. With the stunning views out to Rame Head. I stopped a few times to take in the views along the cliff road and eventually I arrived in Cawsand Bay and was unexpectedly greeting by a drop of rain, the first in 8 weeks, this was a development I hadn’t expected when I packed for the night.
I parked the car where I wouldn’t be noticed, walked to the pub, checked in, put the walking boots on and headed along the coast path to Penlee Point and on to Rame Head. Initially it was dry and very windy as we reached the first headland at Penlee Point, with stunning views back toward the Plymouth Hoe and the enormous breakwater built by French prisoners of 200 years ago.
I sat and ate my pasty enjoying the views back towards Plymouth and my spiritual home. Tess the Dog was more interested in the contents of my pasty to be honest and was cringing in the gale. we walked towards Rame Head along a stunning bit of coastline on the most easterly point of Cornwall, with the steep cliffs covered in gorse bushes. As a kid I dreamed of fishing on the rocks below, with their deep water and array of species, but now I realised there was no way down to those rocks, and pushing through the gorse might have incurred an unwanted meeting with adders which are abundant.
As we arrived at the Rame the clouds turned grey and as we got to the little church on the headland, why ancients civilisations would want to build a chapel out there I have no idea, but as we got there the clouds opened. Worse than that, it was accompanied by thunder and lightning, the thing in the world that Tess the Dog hates most.
The walk back to Cawsand wasn’t easy, dodging between cover from the showers along the cliff path and finally we made it back to Penlee Point. 1 mile path back to the village and Tess was in a rush, at this point, there was a loud clap of thunder, and Tess the Dog unexpectedly bolted along the path.
She is normally very good off the lead so I wasn’t expecting this reaction, as she got to a bend in the path, she looked over her shoulder and gave me a look, one that I now realise meant “I’m out of here”.
I trotted along the path, whistling, expecting to see her waiting somewhere, but as I closed in on the village, I realised this could be more serious than I thought, she hadn’t run off in her previous 11 years. However, one thing to remember about Tess the Dog is she is a very resourceful girl and attracts attention.
The pub where Tess took refuge
As I arrived back into the village I noticed a group of people outside a pub, crowding around something fury. They were crowding around Tess the Dog. Apparently, she had bolted along the coast path, into the village and straight into the nearest pub where she knew she would find safety. The locals had adopted her and were feeding her bits of their tea, little did they know she was interested in their beer too.
Having solved the mystery of the runaway dog, she was put on the lead, and we went for a stroll around the pubs and the back streets. I had forgotten what an absolute gem of a place it is. As a kid you don’t really think about narrow streets much, and when you arrive by boat I didn’t really ever get past the pubs on the waterfront.
I have been to Cornwall so many times, but it had never occurred to me to spend time here in the village, by road it is a totally remote backwater. All the cottages are beautifully maintained, and probably available on Airbnb, one pub had burned down and has re-opened as a community centre. I would imagine the inhabitants must total less than 200 but somehow the other pubs seemed to be doing fine.
The most amazing thing, was that the shops were exactly the same shops that had been there when I was at Maker Camp as a kid, the little dairy now sold coffee instead, the gift shop still sold the same sort of stuff we used to buy our parents as our gift from Maker Camp, it was as if time had stood still, it was quite amazing how little had changed in 50 years.
I spent an evening in the Halfway House pub, eating fish and chips and drinking beer which is quite a treat to be honest. I would normally have had company, but Tess the Dog was still traumatised and had taken up residence under my bed, and I couldn’t be bothered with Tess being a Moody Mary being needy in the bar.
Next morning, it was back to the hidden Skoda, a drive back to the garage hoping that their car didn’t run out of fuel and to pick up my car. It was a then time to head into the Barbican to see my oldest mate, we went to school together when we were 6, and it was a chance chew over our memories of Maker Camp as kids.
It’s not easy to turn a car service into an adventure, but I reckon I did a pretty decent job.
A story of Chalet hosting, Gremlins and climate change.
In my first winter of “not working” I’d hoped to have lots of trips to the Alps, but it didn’t work out that way. Unpredictable weather forecasts and unusually poor snow led to leaving decisions late and often not going and missed opportunities for fun.
However, talking to the other Brits in our resort, they had been down there for the winter and it seemed to have had plenty of good snow and generally a good time all round. So, this year I took a different approach, I decided to base myself down there and take it as it comes, I mean, why hang around in Portishead in January.
For those snow lovers, young and old, the idea of spending a winter in the mountains, on the piste everyday on fresh snow, is the stuff of dreams. As we were lucky enough to own a place, then why not live the dream, what’s the worst thing that could happen?
The decision to go for the winter
In October, when I explained to my wife (Wooksie) that we would be spending the winter in the Alps, she corrected me and said, “That’s nice, you can, I’m not, a long weekend is enough for me and I’m not being dragged around the slopes all winter by you”.
A bit disappointing, but undeterred I made plans to head down in January. A pre visit to sort out the apartment in December, for the opening of the slopes, with my mate The Mechanic didn’t go off without incident, so it wasn’t a good omen (insert link). On the bright side I did invest in a new mattress (what works for 3 nights won’t work for 3 months) along with some cunning ideas to create more storage space, like beds on stilts!
We were there for the opening weekend of the season and it was awesome, huge snowfall in the days and The Mechanic and I were in the first lift up and after putting lines down the fresh snow on the open pistes, we then ripped up the steep unpisted runs that were covered in deep, soft and untouched snow.
Any doubts I had about committing to the winter in the Alps were gone, but then we headed home for Xmas and New Year with friends and Mother Outlaw.
We drove down on snowy night at the start of January; with an agreement Wookie could go home after a week. We expected our little resort to be quiet after New Year, but none of it, it was packed. It appeared that an entire generation of people “of a certain age”, that had had a similar idea to me. Many were still employed or running their own businesses and were just stretching the “working from home” definition.
The British winter invasion
The snow was good enough to be having a good run around of the area each day followed by an alarming amount of “bonne Ami” apres-ski with our British brethren. After 5 nights of beers, vodka redbulls and the local free local aperitifs in the bars we started to wane, I have to confess that we started to sneak past the bars or take the long way around to avoid rapturous welcomes from the crew. Wooksie insisted it was time for her to go home, enough was enough.
Snowboarding alone on the pistes
So, I ended up on my own for the second week of January. Various friends and family were scheduled to visit and keep me company, but for the first time in my life I was alone on the piste. It’s a strange experience when you are normally with pals. No one to chat to at coffee time; no point in stopping for a lunch time beer on my own; no one to show around; similar route most days; no one to wait for at the bottom or top of the lift and no rush to get up there in the morning or get back at night. What would normally take 4 hours was only take 90 minutes.
I set myself some targets to keep me focused, I wanted to do a 50km ride. I avoided speed records because there was this continual worry about what would happen if I had a bad fall and I was on my own and breaking speed records was fraught with danger.
The first day on my own the weather was perfect sun and blue sky, the snow was great and after 5 hours of riding without a break, the 50km target was achieved. I decided I would leave the black runs until I had some company so ended up cruising around the mountains on my own, enjoying the scenery, trying not to hurt myself and it wasn’t long before I started to get bored.
The thing that you miss if you only go for a week is the chance to just enjoy the scenery, so apart from belting around the mountain on a snowboard, I also did a lot of walking and just enjoying being there, living in the snow (when it was around).
The Chalet Hosting treadmill begins
Anyway, this solitude only lasted a week because the visitors started to arrive and in fact I started a new career as a chalet host. I’d clean the apartment, make the beds, drive to Geneva Airport to pick them up, cook them meals, go snowboarding, show them around mountain, drive them back to the airport, clean the apartment, make the beds before the next lot arrived. If I was lucky, they would organise their own transport.
Don’t get me wrong, it was great having company, it was just rather exhausting, as a person to which cleanliness, order and routine doesn’t come naturally. My friends didn’t expect a chalet service, but in the absence of much else to do, why not do it. There is no fun going up on the mountain on a miserable day, let alone doing it on your lonesome.
In late January, we had a “full house” of family, we also had the kind of day snowboarders dream of. It snowed all Saturday afternoon and night, and we woke up to fresh snow all over the mountain and bright blue sky. The snow had fallen on the bashed pistes, so it was a bit treacherous but off piste it was perfect, these are days that other people talk about, but I never got.
The second half of the season lasted until the snow started to really deteriorate in mid-March, so I had the long, lonely drive home to Bristol. but it wasn’t without surprises, Calais beach sea front is really nice (not the town you understand).
We have a monster black run down under one of the chair lifts that I see most days, I hadn’t t done before because we had never had good enough snow, but in the company of my eldest lad, who I taught to snowboard 22 years ago, we had the most amazing run through miles of fresh snow, it will never be that good again and those of the memories I was looking for.
Back in time for historical Argyle games
I lasted the whole of January but headed back for February when the French school holidays begin and to see Argyle beat Liverpool in the FA Cup.
Our resort in Morillon is massively popular in February with families, no place for a man of my age for sure and most of the expats bailed out as well. 3 weeks back in the UK rekindled my enthusiasm for the mountain life and I headed back just as soon as Argyle lost to Man City in the FA Cup.
I arrived back in early March with a new schedule of pals to look forward to hosting. I still had one more thing on my to do list, a rather intimidating black run. Even though we have been coming here for 8 years, the family mostly ski on piste, so I don’t get to do this kind of run, and it was inviting me to have a go every time I saw it across the valley, not to mention intimidating me.
Gremlin brain attack
I had planned to do it when some of my snowboarding pals were with me but for some reason the “gremlin” got inside my head when I was on my own. A day when the visibility on the mountain was varying from poor to complete white out (invisible), depending where you were on the mountain, conditions when you should really just go home and get a book out.
I was in the lift that runs over this part of the mountain, the visibility seemed OK and there was fresh snow to help with the inevitable moguls and “Gremlin” was in my head saying “you’ll be fine”, “what’s the worst thing that can happen”, “if your mates were here you would do it, so what is stopping you”. I gave in and decided to do it and get it the “monkey off my back”, or maybe the “Gremlin out of my head”.
Initially (the bit I could see from the lift) the ride it was fine, but then it went super narrow with massive moguls and the visibility reduced to just a few yards as it dropped into a gorge. It wasn’t long before I was on my backside with a jarred elbow, bruised buttock and with no clear way down through the moguls with what seemed an almost vertical drop.
It was then that reality hit me, there is no one around because only a mad person would be doing this black run in these conditions, I don’t know the route down, I can’t even see the end of the piste, and the run is probably the toughest I’ve come across with moguls and ice. “What the hell am I doing here?”.
Survival mode kicked in, if in doubt sit on your ass, leaf the board, forget style, fall when you need to (no one is watching) and obviously I got down in the end, and even more oddly I did another 50km that day in awful visibility, almost to get over the trauma.
This was a bit of an epiphany in some ways, there are lots of dangerous things that I would never consider doing that are way beyond my level of competence. However, I have got myself into all dangers, scrapes, and injuries over the years which I’ve struggled to explain how or why it happened. Now I know, when “Gremlin” gets inside my head I just don’t see danger, so in future the alarms bells will be ringing, a sign of my increasing maturity, I hope.
Something you don’t realise until you live in the mountains, is how totally unreliable the weather forecasts are. When you go for a week, you normally get a bit of a mix anyway, but it is really volatile. The previous year I was basing my visits on the forecasts, but they are hopeless. This winter I was probably lucky because it was cold, and the pistes were maintained with manmade snow.
Global warming
It is difficult to know whether it is global warming and what is just cyclical. Last (23/24) winter was described as the worst since so and so. Therefore, it has been this bad in previous winters, but there does seem to be a trend now. We used to look forward to spring and light evenings at Easter in April, now it is running out in mid-March. On the other hand, the opening weekend in December had the best snowfalls of the year.
So, I have now “done a winter season”, that is off the to do list. I guess I’ve learned that being there alone isn’t much fun after a couple of days and there are only so many times you can do the runs in a ski area.
Living in France and only having very limited language is OK until you try to communicate beyond a bar or a restaurant. I read a lot when I was on my own but never got around the French language lessons (sorry Dave Padfield), and it was good to have the company of my friends and all the expats, but not every night!
Looking forward to January already. Next winter I will spend more time commuting to the numerous other resorts within an hour of our place for a bit more variety and challenge.
We have finished our romp around Costa Rica, covered nearly a 1000km in total, and dropping in on the main attraction centres, so here is a quick run through the main towns we stayed and what we thought of them.
Costa Rica is a really young country, unlike other countries it didn’t have a notable civilisation like Aztecs, Mayans or Incas, without a civilisation with an abundance of riches to plunder, the Spanish conquistadors didn’t show it much interest and neither did the Catholic church.
Consequently, there isn’t much history to look at anywhere, but its attraction is the biodiversity and coastline. There is hardly anything over 150 years old, so in some ways it is like being in the United States or Australia, but their indigenous people still have a deep relationship with nature, hence their strong commitment to conservation, a little bit similar to New Zealand and the Māori tribes.
The Costa Rican people are very friendly, helpful and they are proud to tell you they are one of the happiest nations on earth. With this in mind I was a bit perplexed as to why their homes all seem to have quite extreme levels of security. Nearly all of their homes have bars on their windows or bars around their walls. It isn’t uncommon to see broken glass on the tops of walls to stop people climbing over them or even razor wire along the tops. The only place where I have seen security like that was in South Africa and it transpires that the petty crime rates are high and tourists are the main targets, or anyone who is perceived to have wealth. With this in mind, we shouldn’t have been surprised to have all our money stolen on the beach at Uvita.
First stop was San Jose, the capital, most people land and move on, but we decided to give it a day to see what it was like. To be honest, everyone else was right as there is nothing much to see here at all, other than wandering around two dull markets to get over your jet lag. We chose a hotel halfway between the airport and the city centre called the Country Inn Radisson. I thought being halfway between the city centre and the airport would give us the best of both worlds, but it just gave us heavy traffic in both directions. Having spent our last night at the airport Hilton I’m glad to report it wasn’t such a bad decision, Hampton by Hilton San Jose Airport was very poor for our last night, rubbish breakfast and very basic.
Verdict – don’t bother and avoid
Second stop on the itinerary was Porto Viejo. This is in the far southeast on the Caribbean coast on the border with Panama. You will not end up here unless you are heading to Panama or make a conscious decision to go out of your way to see it. About an hour away the highway hits the Caribbean and runs alongside it for the rest of the journey.
At this point you start to relax and feel the vibe, there are the odd small settlements along the way that sets the scene but when you arrive in Porto Viejo you feel like you have arrived on a little Caribbean Island, there is just a rough road through the town, a few beach shops, cafes and bars on one side with palm trees and a surf beach on the other side, it was like my idea of heaven.
We stayed here for 4 nights at the Cariblue Beach and Jungle Resort which was the real deal in terms of environment impact. Everything was built from wood, it processed its own water, and the lodges were surrounded by jungle, Wooksie was alarmed being that close to nature as it bites, but decent insect repellent kept things under control. Within the resort we had Howler Monkeys screaming over our heads and all sorts of other creatures around us, not to mention the amazing moment when we found the sloth on the ground outside our lodge.
Our view from the bedroom window – real jungle
We did the jungle kayak ride and walk, and to be honest, we saw more animals on this cheap half day trip than pretty much all the other trips put together. We also did the Cahuita National Park which was disappointing as we only saw a couple of Cappuccino monkeys but the thing that kept me most entertained was walking along the deserted beach, admiring the jungle on one side and surf on the other side, then finishing the day in the bar on the beach drinking cocktails and waiting for the torrential rain that arrived every night.
Verdict – A wonderful place, an idyllic Caribbean beach vibe but off the beaten track
Next stop was La Fortuna. This was a long trek and from the Northwest from the Southeast of the country. La Fortuna itself is a bit of a one horse town that has been growing, apparently the tarmac on the roads was only laid recently. There is a main street with bars and restaurants for travellers but that is about it, so people are here to do fun stuff not to see the town.
The main attraction is the Arenal Volcano, but also the Rain Forest and a range of activities that have built up around them. Trekking on the volcano is limited because it is active, so you have just got to hope you get lucky and have a decent view, which we did. We also did the hanging bridges, which are a really impressive piece of engineering, the extreme zip wire tour, the La Fortuna Waterfall and volcano hike.
The only thing we didn’t do was the hot springs, but as our second hotel had a swimming pool heated by the hot spring we don’t feel we missed out on much and we happen to own a Hot Tub at home!
We had a dilemma regarding Monteverde, which is the other main town which we wanted to visit in the region. It is a very difficult route from La Fortuna, and we didn’t have a 4×4, it offers almost the same types of activities but at a higher altitude in Cloud Forests, based on chatting with local guides, we decided to give it a miss, and I think we made the right decision on that one. To be honest the jungle walks were disappointing to be honest but that is nature. We did all the activities we planned at La Fortuna in 1 ½ days, so 2 days is enough here, and I spent the third day catching up on blogs ½ creating videos.
Lots of traveller’s head for Manuel Antonnio, which is at the southern tip of the popular tourist route. We drove through it on the way to Uvita. It seemed busy and congested but it was difficult to tell, there was lots of tourist activity going on as it is a major centre for travellers. We, however, were heading to Uvita to spend a week with our daughter who was volunteering in a hostel.
We stayed at two different hotels. The first was the Secreto La Fortuna, which was tucked away in one of the side streets and offered really good access to the town and tour pickups. It had a nice pool and even had its own resident sloth in the tree above reception.
The second hotel was Hotel Lomas del Volcán which was recommended by a friend. It was a totally different resort experience outside of the town, it even had Its own nature walk in the surrounding jungle. The problem with a resort is that you need your own car to get to town, or you have to stick with the resort facilities. I wasn’t too impressed with the building noise but that’s life. What was impressive was the hotel swimming pool that was heated by the volcanic streams, it is the hottest pool I have ever been in.
Verdict – Essential as part of any Costa Rican holiday
Next stop was Jaco Beach. After Porto Viejo this was our favourite resort. It is the closest resort to San Jose, so it is very popular with locals rather than tourists, though it is also popular for US short breakers. It is little more than a busy high street; it was the only place we saw the big US food chains like KFC in Costa Rica.
There is a fabulous sandy beach that is around 5km long and has surf breaks and board rental stalls on the beach, various beach bars for watching the beautiful sunsets and kids playing football on the beach. It was at Jaco we realised that nearly all the resorts seem to have the same offerings in terms of trips, zip wires, nature, quad bikes, white water rafting and waterfalls.
We stayed in the resort twice on our trip. The first time going south, we stayed at a lovely place called Hotel Ibiza which had a mock Greek feel to it, was located 100m from the northern end of the beach and was very friendly. On the second visit we stayed at the south end of the beach because the surf breaks are better, and I didn’t want to have to walk the length of the beach to go surfing.
The second time we stayed at the Laguna Resort and Beach Club. Talk about a fantastic location, I walked out from the hotel, picked up the board and walked straight into one of the best long board waves I’ve ever surfed. If anyone wants to learn to surf this is the place to do it, the conditions are nearly perfect. The hotel wasn’t as nice as Hotel Ibiza but for location, wow.
Verdict – make it a priority – a wonderful beach and plenty of things to do
Uvita is nothing more than a pit stop on the way to Panama and not a normal traveller location. It is about an hour south of Manual Antonio and is a mecca for whale watching scuba diving and surfing in the Uvita National Park. It has a huge beach, and a unique headland called the Whale Tail due to its shape, so people tend to come here from other resorts for the activity and then leave again. Hence it is quiet in the evenings but at least there is space in the little selection of restaurants.
The major blot on our Uvita visit was having all our money stolen from our bag on the beach, in hindsight, we had to take a lot of responsibility for our own stupidity, and we were very lucky not to lose a lot more than cash. Our robber was clearly benign because he left everything other than the cash, if he (or she) had taken the cards and phone we would have been in serious crisis.
We were here for 6 nights at that Yuli Hotel, which was very nice and happily very reasonable as well, with a nice pool and friendly staff. Some nights they also had a lively restaurant with great chilled house music playing. There is a lot of development work going on and I suspect 3 years from now it will have expanded a lot and will grow like La Fortuna.
Verdict – it’s a one night place if mixed with an activity like whale watching
Our last stop was Porto Jimenez on the OSO peninsula. This was another 2 hour drive south and around 25% of the Costa Rican biodiversity is on display here, if you can find it. We planned to take the road around the peninsula, but when we got arrived it became obvious that we needed a 4×4 to get anywhere, and we had a Nissan saloon, so it didn’t end well.
The peninsula is big, and the roads are rough and full of big potholes, so we gave up, we had hoped to walk to the national park along the coast from Port Jiminez but there was no route through the jungle, so again we were stumped.
The thing about this area is that hotels on the peninsula are hugely expensive, most of them are around £1000 per night but that wasn’t an excuse for our hotel, which wasn’t cheap, but hotel was a shocker, Cabinas Agua Luna Frente al Mar as well.
The roads were impassable, there were no nature walks from the town and the hotel was at the end of their little airport runway, so the whole thing was looking like a disaster. However, it was saved by a little beachside restaurant where we were treated to the best meal of the holiday and when the dogs woke us up at 530am we had a great experience watching parrots and toucans on our beach sidewalk.
Verdict – research and plan your trip.
I hope this summary of our itinerary proves a useful reference point if you chose to do a similar trip, if we can provide any more help, please contact me on email fun@rarefutures.com
I’ve now completed the travelling, so it is a good opportunity to talk about the main issues of getting around. The options are limited. Fly, bus or car, so I decided to rent a car, all the advice seemed to suggest the roads were safe and it would give us the independence with our travel schedule – and that proved to be correct.
It’s not for the nervous to be honest, driver or passenger, and you need a sense of humour to survive the jams. Generally, this has all worked out well, but a couple of the days we’ve spent driving have been pretty tough.
Don’t be put off, driving is generally safe and you be fine.
Some of the roads are great and others are disaster zones, the problem is you don’t know which or when a good road will completely lose it’s covering and become gravel or convert from a motorway into a single lane back road.
Some of the things that we didn’t expect include:
Satnav – Apple Maps doesn’t work at all, luckily Google Maps does but it gets lost easily. We’ve been sent all over the place unnecessarily, especially in remote locations. Sending us down dead end roads and then halfway down telling us to do a u turn. It often thought the best route through a remote village was to turn off the highway, go down the back lanes and rejoin the highway again half a mile ahead.
Lorries – There are giant lorries everywhere, it is their only form of logistics, and they take up a full 50% of the road, when they pass another lorry in the other direction, there is probably a max of 1m of space between the vehicles, so it is tight.
Unmarked speed humpsand by potholes – they were probably marked at some stage but the yellow colour has gone so they are sleeping saboteurs. Unexpected bangs and bounces are never more than a few seconds away.
Lane widths, apart from being narrow, and having to watch out for lorries in particular, the edge of the carriageway is often the edge of the embankment and if a wheel goes over the edge the drop can be anything from 0.5m to 3 or 4 m, basically if you go off the edge you are stuffed.
Road markings – these are range from brand new to nonexistent, but mostly the latter. On older roads they have normally been worn out, and on new surface they seem to have given up, so there aren’t any. I didn’t try it, but driving at night must be an absolute horror show.
Drains and Culverts – they run their drains and culverts down the sides of roads, so even if you are not on an embankment, it is not safe to pull of the road as there could be a deep drain or just an inspection hole, either way you are going to have a bad bump.
Petrol stations – there are plenty of them, probably about 25 miles apart on the main roads and they all have the same prices. They are also quite nice places, with toilets and a shop. They have an attendant that fills up the car with fuel.
Motorways -there is only one and that is currently being constructed between Limon and San Jose. This is a horror show as they are building it on the existing road so. At anytime you could be travelling along a brand new dual carriageway and then come around a bend to find a huge queue as you hit the next construction sight, which will also involve you hitting lots of potholes and craters.
Junctions – as the roads seem to have no lines, junctions seem to have no rules. No one is going to give way, but then they also seem to be waiting for something to happen, so I just took the initiative did the turn and waved apologetically to everyone !
One-way bridges – these are a hoot as you can see from the image. As you travel along a main road at 100kph you will suddenly come across a bridge which is one way at a time. So you suddenly have to stop and wait for a gap in the oncoming traffic. These are everywhere in the country and seem to be the source of most of the major traffic jams, as there is no way around them.
So, in summary, driving is OK as long as you have strong nerves, have a sense of humour, don’t have a nervous passenger, and you are not on a tight schedule. A lot of the Costa Rican cars that you see appear to date back to the 90s, newer cars seem to be rentals, and the rest are 4x4s of various vintages.
A quick summary of our trips.
San Jose to Port Viejo (Green route)– we were grateful that we had a day off as this was a tough trip, not helped by it being a national holiday. It was around 218km, should have taken 4 but it took 6.5 hours. Getting out of San Jose with Google Maps was bad enough, then there is the road through the mountains which seems to be a graveyard for broken down lorries. After that you hit the road to Limon which is being turned into a motorway while you are on it and as Limon is a major port, it is also full of container lorries. Finally, you hit the road that runs along the Caribbean coast down to Porto Viejo. That road is a lot easier, but it is still slow because every 10 minutes you are confronted by a narrow bridge and a contraflow system for traffic.
Porto Viejo to La Fortuna (Blue route) – unfortunately this involved the bad bits from the San Jose trip until you reach Squirres, where the San Jose traffic turns off and you head north. The bad news is that it is along the first of the narrow carriageways we had come across, and these are often raised. Overtaking is very difficult, so you end up sitting behind a lorry and letting that driver take the strain. When the road swung west towards La fortuna at Guipiles, things got easier and we had wider as we ran through the foothills of the Arenal Volcano, this journey should have been 4.5 hours, and not surprisingly, it took us over 6 hours to cover the 277km
La Fortuna to Jaco Beach (Black route) – well this one really did take the prize, 142km but the warning sign from Google Maps was it would take 3.5 hours weaving across the mountains. What we didn’t expect was to pass through a cloud forest at the highest point and have roads that were only partially surfaced. I don’t know if this was Google Maps being weird, but we went over some remote mountains and at times felt very lonely and lost. When we did finally rejoin civilisation, we discovered that people had been killing each other in cars and we joined a 2 hour queue because of a major accident, so we finally made it to Jaco after nearly 7 hours to cover 142k, so an average speed of 20kph, or 12mph. By this time, Wooksie, my long suffering wife, was on the edge of a nervous breakdown trying to follow Google Maps.
Jaco Beach to Porto Jiminez via Uvita (Orange route). Finally, a normal stretch of road, with no major roadworks or traffic jams and we actually arrived on schedule. 309km in 5.5 hours and that is roughly what it took. Along the way we had plenty of the narrow carriageways with lethal 10m drops on each side, we had the crazy culverts down the side of the streets in Udita, and as we approached Puerto Jimenez the roads were winding and slow, but that was what we expected. What we didn’t expect, when we arrived at Puerto Jimenez to explore the OSO peninsular, was that we had wasted our time. The roads to any of the beaches are only suitable for 4x4s, and we only had a saloon, so a very long way with not a happy outcome.
Jaco Beach to San Jose (Purple route) We then returned to Jaco Beach for a the beautiful sunsets and a chance to surf the perfect longboard break at the south end of the beach, then our final road back in San Jose which we had been dreading, but turned out to be quite straight forward in the end, other than the confused satnav and some missed junctions, but we got there in the end.
So, there are the facts about our experiences of the roads, I am still happy that driving was the right approach for us, and we did leave plenty of time on each trip, but it was always a huge relief to get to the hotel, have a recovery beer and swim.
