¿Paradise?

It is hard to not like Costa Rica. But somehow I´m doing it. You hear it over and over, how great it is, how beautiful, how sustainable, blah blah. It is flat-out not good for bike touring. Unless you like pushing your bike up wickedly steep hills, with trucks and motor bikes regularly dusting you out. If the road isn´t like that, it is crazy busy and scary with buses and trucks. Have only had a couple days where the riding was actually enjoyable, which is sad. It is also expensive. I guess travelling in SE Asia has spoiled me forever. I see the $90 a night bungalows here and think, ¨wow, those would´ve been maybe $15 in Thailand¨. The food is not great, not terrible, but moderately expensive, too. I haven´t had one memorable meal yet, really, and that is a sad thing, since enjoyment of food is a big motivator for bike touring for me. Massive steaks in Argentina, wonderful seafood stew in Chile, everything in Thailand, those are burned in my memory, and all I can say here is that I´m not going to eat any peanut butter or rice & beans for quite a while after we get home.
That complaining aside, we are having as good of a time as we can. Hard to be too disappointed with spending the holidays on beautiful beaches, even if the rides to said beaches are wiping us out. Our interactions with everyone have been friendly, never any hassles or harassment. I´m not really sure what I´m looking for with travel these days, but I feel like we are not really finding it on this trip. Am I jaded, grumpy, or just getting too old to fully embrace serious physical suffering? I´ll think about it, and let you know. And pics to follow, too.