Today we all checked out of the beautiful Hotel Belmar and bid a fond farewell to the Monteverde cloud forest region of Costa Rica.  Our destination today is pretty much the exact opposite of our starting point: hot, humid, sandy beaches! We had a few hours in the bus to get out of the mountains which we all spent miraculously sleeping.

After finally reaching the coast, we stopped at a hip little beach village called Samara where we had smoothies and put on our riding gear for the last ride of the trip.

The ride itself was super hot.  The roads themselves were made of large chunky rocks and were very rough to ride on. I definitely wishing I had my full suspension bike instead of the hardtail that Trek provided.  My butt hurt so bad by the end of the day! At one point, however, the road (official road, mind you!) crosses a river.  We all took the bikes through the river and got very very wet.

Jason and I continued out onslaught of the brutal rocky roads and cruised to the end of the ride completely exhausted and very very hot and sweaty.  The guides had told us on the bus ride that pretty much everyone just jumps off their bike and runs to the ocean in their bike gear.  I thought that was kinda gross because saltwater and sand inside bike chamois? but literally everyone ended up doing just that and it was amazing!

Our actual ending point was at Pilo’s Beach Bar, which is actually kind of a dive but the guy makes epic ceviche which the guides had ordered for us while we were still decompressing in the ocean.  This was literally the only other thing we had to do that day, so we all spent a few hours just playing in the water, chilling in the hammocks, and eating amazing fish for lunch.