162 miles

I had a pretty rough night. It feels like I spent half the night on the toilet and the other half walking back-and-forth between my bed and the bathroom. I am quite sick from whatever food poisoning I have. I didn’t sleep very much and I haven’t been able to keep down food in about 28 hours . I started throwing up after dinner last night and since then everything solid I’ve tried to eat has come right back up. Obviously, this has affected my riding. I am quite weak, my stomach shoots with pain, and my mind is a bit spacey due to the sleep deprivation. As of 9 PM at the end of the day I believe I am starting to get better after 36 hours of dealing with this food poisoning. I figured it would run its course in roughly 36 hours. I am firmly convinced at this point that I got sick from contaminated water or contaminated water made its way into something I ate. Today it felt like I spent more time throwing up and sitting on the toilet—or over a hole in the woods—than I did riding. Obviously, my progress is not what I wanted it to be. I was really hoping that I would be able to make it to Panama City by noon on day 39. I would’ve needed to clock 90 miles more than I did to make this possible. Oh well, I will now reach Panama City at noon on day 40 instead. I plan on flying to Cartagena, Columbia on the evening of the ninth and I will begin my assault on South America on the tenth of October.

I woke up before 5:00, but I wasn’t on the bike until after 6 AM. Every time I was ready to walk out the door I had to go to the bathroom again and was delayed. Amidst light rain I set out south east along the Costa Rican coast. The section of coast from Jacò to the Panamanian border is very touristy. For the first time in since the United States, there were signs in English. To be honest, I did not enjoy the riding as much as some other sections of Central America simply because it felt a little bit too touristy and whitewashed at times. They were none of the food vendors on the side of the road that I have become acustom too. The riding was beautiful from a natural perspective, but culturally it lacked some of the richness that I have been in for the past 2+ weeks. If I were visiting just Costa Rica and I hadn’t spent so much time in the rest of Central America before getting here, I don’t even think I would notice how much different this part of Costa Rica is from the surrounding countries. There are a lot of subtle differences from the way that locals interact with passers by, the cars on the road, the price of goods, the commodities available, and the general vibe of the area. Particularly around Quepos the change was a bit striking in subliminal ways. It’s very easy to tell that there is more money in Costa Rica than the surrounding countries. there is less agriculture and more service based economy. Which makes sense, but it is quite a change, particularly from the agrarian forward Nicaraguan economy.

My stomach was tied into knots with pain from the food poisoning. Since I hadn’t been able to eat anything substantial since lunch on day 37 my stomach also began hurting with pains of hunger. Soon I couldn’t tell one from another and everything started blending together into a miserable mess. Anytime I tried to eat something. I would vomit it back up about 10 minutes later. Even though I knew it would keep happening, I kept trying to eat. I knew that if I couldn’t get some calories down, I wouldn’t be able to ride in the afternoon and my body can only recover if I’m fueling it well. Liquids tend to go down much easier. Throughout the day I drank 3 gallons of a yogurt smoothies. They are very rich and caloric so I still probably had over 5000 cal today but all that dairy wasn’t making my stomach issues any better and I was lacking any diversity in my diet.

I was really hoping that it wouldn’t rain so my chaffing would maybe have a chance to recover a little bit. I’m in the rainforest though. Of course it rained all morning. It pretty immediately became clear that if I didn’t do something about my chaffing it was going to become a very serious problem that was going to derail my progress, or at least my speed significantly. I pulled out all the plugs and turned to my last resort: electrical tape. I wrapped the upper section of my quad at the intersection of my butt and quad in electrical tape. I wound it all the way around my quad and hip. I use three pieces on each side, creating a 2 inch wide layer of tape. Initially, the tape did not adhere well since I was oozing blood and pus but during one of my bathroom breaks things begin to scab over quite quickly and I was able to put on the tape. The tape probably will not be able to be removed for at least a week, if not several weeks. Fortunately, there’s not much of a reason to remove it other than hygiene issues. After a couple minutes of riding with it, I became used to the feeling and pain from my chaffing has significantly decreased. It’s not glamorous, but few things that I do out here are. It gets the job done. I’m on a business trip. We’ll take it.

I rode quite slowly all morning. Between feeling quite sick and battling a relatively strong 8 mile an hour headwind the miles were crawling by. Since central Mexico, I haven’t really had any wind with the exception of a six hour stretch in the Honduran high mountains, which I had a brutal 20mph headwind. I was quite surprised to find myself with a headwind in this section of Costa Rica. Sometimes the wind will pick up for a minute before a storm comes through, but this was a sustained headwind, which seems to be uncommon. Luckily, the morning showers gave away to thunderstorms which disrupted the headwind. Thunderstorms popping up disturb the wind, rendering it incredibly shifty and unpredictable. Generally in the afternoon, the wind oscillates enough from the thunderstorms that everything evens out in the end.

At noon, I stopped at a very large supermarket in a very nice touristy town. I was hoping I would be able to get my hands on some high-quality food that would appease my stomach. This was the nicest and supermarket I’ve been in since leaving the United States. I was able to get a lot of very nice food that I was excited to eat. I managed to spend about $30 which is a ton for central American supermarket. I probably had over 10,000 cal in my cart. I went outside and found some seats on the side of the supermarket. I sat down and began eating. I took it slow and enjoyed the quality food that I had. I was feeling better. I ate and I began to hope that maybe I would be able to keep some solid food down. Over the course of 30 minutes I ate everything I bought, so about 10,000 cal of food. I absolutely need the calories at the moment. After finishing, I sat around for about 10 minutes working on a blog post before getting ready to roll out again. Just as I was about to start biking again, I began to feel the throw up coming once again. For the next 30 minutes, I laid in the grass at the edge of the parking lot and threw up every five minutes. I laid on my back and every time I felt that I had to throw up I would roll over and add to the growing pile of vomit by my side. This went on with decreasing regularity for almost an hour. I think I threw up 9 or 10 times during that hour. I finally started to feel like I couldn’t throw up anymore. I took a phone call then laid in the grass for a little bit longer. Beside me lay a pile of 10,000 cal and $30 of food that I just wasted. Now I felt even worse than before both physically and mentally. By the time I rolled out of the grocery store parking lot it was 2 1/2 hours after I first rolled in. Worse, I’d only done 80 miles so far and it was already 2:30. Thunderstorms started rolling in so I just put my head down and biked. My stomach had nothing else to throw up but bile. I stopped again at 4:30 to try to eat some more and predictably threw up again as the sun was setting behind the clouds. In the night the intense thunderstorms turned into consistent showers. This seems to be the common weather trend here. Late afternoon thunderstorms give away to consistent showers through the night before clearing out just before sunrise. Every now and then I would catch a short break from the rain, but the short breaks were usually met with a burst of intense rain afterwards. At one point it was raining harder than perhaps I’ve ever seen before. For about five minutes I could barely keep my eyes open in the driving rain, and then all the sudden in about five seconds it stopped raining. It was the fastest weather turn I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. The road was instantly dry and I could even see some stars in the distance, but I could look behind me and see a curtain of rain.

I really wanted to make it to Panama for the night. Last night when I looked at the map, Panama had seemed very close and I had told myself it wouldn’t be a problem at all to get there. In fact, I picked out a town almost 100 miles past the border where I wanted to spend the night. Not getting to Panama would’ve felt like a huge letdown. I also knew that border crossings are the quickest late at night right before they close. When crossings first open there are commonly long lines of international tour buses waiting. If I waited to cross the Panamanian border until the next morning. I might be stuck in a line for two or three hours. These tour buses usually try to get to the border about 30 minutes before they open, but they would never ever get to the border 30 minutes before it closes. Here traffic is too unpredictable to reliably line up bus schedules anywhere near a border closing. So the border is almost universally empty within a couple hours of closing. The Panamanian border closed at 9 o’clock, so I wanted to get across and then immediately find a hotel. Getting out of Costa Rica was quite easy although I did have to pay an eight dollar fee. I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it’s funny when you have to pay a fee to get out of the country. It makes sense to have a tax when you enter a country, but a relatively steep fee to get out of the country seems a bit laughable, especially in places like Nicaragua, where they never wanted to be there in the first place. Getting into Panama was also quite easy. This is one of the more relaxed or crossings I’ve encountered in Central America. Costa Rica is safe and as far as I know, Panama is almost as safe as well. I was often on edge in parts of Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua—Honduras particularly felt very unsafe—but in Costa Rica getting robbed wasn’t really a concern of mine. That’s a really bad look for the tourism industry and this part of the country depends on tourism. Anyways, if there was a thief out there looking to rob a gringo, I am one of the last gringos a thief would want to aim for. There are plenty of gringos around. Gringos on holiday to Costa Rica from the States or Europe. Many of these have on flip-flops and khakis with pastel colored Columbia performance fishing gear and vineyard vines shirts on. The tourists often look like model families you see out of catalog books. The gringos here don’t try to hide that they’re tourists. Most of them look like they just got out of church and they’re headed to go play around of golf or catch some fish on the beach. On the other hand, you have me. I smell absolutely horrendous. I looked disheveled and poor. The most expensive thing on me is very clearly my bike which while valuable, is a difficult thing to re-sell for good money. I also don’t have a shirt on since it got stolen, and I am quite tan. I’m thinning out considerably and veins stand out on my arm and across my chest. My back is sunburned and torn to pieces. It looks like I’ve been through some stuff, which I have. My point is, if you were going to rob someone in Costa Rica, the gringo family from Texas would be a significantly easier target than myself. I look like I’m ready to fight and I certainly am. If someone tries to steal my bike or my phone, then I’ll go into a knife fight with my fists. If I do get robbed, I will happily give the thief all my money, but under no circumstances am I letting him take my phone or my bike. The phone is my lifeline and navigational tool and if someone were to take my entire bike with all my bags on it then my trip truly would be over. I got lucky that I was able to replace my frame, but if all my specialty gear got taken in Central America it would be impossible to replace. Everything would have to be shipped from the United States, which would take too long and would immediately exhaust my budget.

I found my way through the Panama border quite easily and was happy to be greeted into the country. I lost an hour of time, but I am happy about this. Even though I am further east than my home in Tennessee, when I was in Costa Rica I was still two hours behind the time zone that Tennessee is in. The sun was setting at 5 o’clock, so I am happy to get an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. I stopped at a supermarket and was also surprised to find that Panama uses American dollar as its primary currency. I knew that Panama has its own currency that it is tied to the dollar bill, but I didn’t realize that this currency isn’t really used and the dollar is the standard. I have not yet seen any Panamanian currency. I’ve only seen US dollar bills. The food was a similar price, but accommodations are more expensive than the rest of Central America, with the exception of Costa Rica. Last night in Jacò my hotel was only $20. That was the cheapest one in the city. I am used to paying about $15 for hotel rooms in the rest of Central America. In Panama I’m having difficulty finding anything in the 30s. Most things are $50 which seems absurd. If it would stop raining, I would be more inclined to camp. I miss camping a bit. I haven’t camped since Mexico. But at the end of a long day when it’s pouring rain and the only place to set up a tent is deep in the woods of the jungle, it’s a lot easier to shell out a couple bucks for a hotel room. It often feels lazy and wasteful. I know it’s not. Sleeping in a puddle in the jungle is not good for recovery obviously. I was going to camp last night, but then I remembered that I absolutely needed a bathroom with how sick I am. Getting a hotel room was the right choice there.

I was a little bit sad that I didn’t see any cool wildlife on Costa Rica. I know it’s all right there. I can hear the monkeys and parrots in the woods, but I never got off the main road, so I never saw anything cool. Or at least I never saw anything cool that was alive. I saw seven dead ant eaters and innumerable flattened snakes. There is a chance that I will return to Costa Rica soon though after the conclusion of this trip, so then there will be time stop and smell the roses and catch a few snakes (sorry Jadin).

With less than a kilometer to my hotel on the Panamanian side of the border, I stopped at a supermarket to get dinner. I still haven’t been able to keep any solid foods down, but for some reason, I decided to buy a cake. There was a cake for seven dollars that said “Felicidades!” or congratulations. I thought it was really funny for several reasons so I kind of decided to buy it as a joke but I also figured maybe it was light enough that I wouldn’t throw it up. I kind of figured that whatever I did end up eating, I would throw up so it didn’t really matter. Anyways, out of everything in the store I could’ve bought a sheet cake has less nutritional value than just about anything so I’m not really sure what I was thinking. I got plenty of fluids and chocolate milk. Cake in hand, I rode to my hotel. It was located on the second story of the building so I balanced my cake in one hand and looped my spare fingers around my handlebar and hiked my bike up the stairs. They were long and had lost of twists. As I neared the top with two steps to go, the plastic popped open and the cake slipped out of my grasp, sliding down the front of my bibs and falling on the floor. I wasn’t really that mad, I thought it was actually hilariously ironic that I dropped the cake. However, I made quite a mess of myself and the floor. It had fallen face down so it was quite easy to shove back onto the tray for easy consumption later. I just left a lot of icing on the floor. I apologized profusely to the lady behind the counter. She was quite bewildered by the whole scene. You can imagine how unusual of a sight I must’ve been walking into the hotel at 10 o’clock with my bike, no shirt, sunburned and blistered, dripping wet, then I proceeded to drop a cake on the floor. I was consuming on my own. I love the image. She tried to help me clean it up but I insisted on doing it. I felt really bad for her. I left her a nice tip before retiring to bed.