Take me to your Liter: Costa Rica (future) Dirt

Bike loaded, we headed west to check out Rincon de la Vieja NP, about 3 hours or so from the house. Had every intention to ride but was unsure of trail conditions, access etc. Now that I know the sweetness - next time I will bring the mountain bike and take the same route that we ended up hiking. Also, I have just found out - that the trail to the volcano rim is open to bikes.

To Rincon. Took the wrong way through Liberia and ended up going to the back entrance (with no services) by accident. No tent, no food, no beer...we needed "services". This back entrance road looks like a good ride - 20 miles or so of slickrock (tuff). Will have to check this out another time.

Found the right road and ended up staying at the Rincon de la Vieja Lodge, which is right on the edge of the park. Good location yes, but very expensive for what you get (which ain't much). I would not stay there again. There seemed to be an unusually high percentage of gringos hiking with carbon fiber walking "sticks" (or whatever the hell they call them.

Don't stay at the lodge - instead, I would go one turn off past the turn off to the lodge (couple hundred yards?) on the right. There is a sign there that says "termales" referring to the hot springs that you can hike to from this point. You can probably camp here (I'm guessing) - looks promising. Otherwise the are much cheaper (and cooler) places down the road back towards the Pan Am.

At the "termales" trailhead you can jump on some really rooty and rocky singletrack that will first take you to El Mirador (an abondoned building [hotel] of some sort on a high spot with views to the ocean) then (maybe 3km more) to a really sweet hot spring. You will smell it long before you reach it. It looked like a really great place to soak - but being 85 degrees and 90 percent humidity, we were warm enough and had no desire to get "warmer". Hike over the low ridge to the east and there is an even sweeter one. back on the main trail - another 8km or so you'll cross a creek and then hit the park boundary (a rickity wire fence) go through and in another 1km or so you'll hit the third hot spring with a hot creek. Then you start to climb. It gets slick and dense and there are tons of monkeys and other animals. We saw two types of monkeys, coatis, agoutis, a keel billed toucan, crown billed mot-mots and all kinds of crazy shit.......hiked most of the day and did not see anybody until the last km or so when we got close to the park entrance. Lots of geothermal action going on everywhere - it's like Yellowstone without the people...and Yogi.