We knew the ride from Aguas Zarcas to Los Chiles would be a long one (120 km), but we thought it would be flat. There wasn't a contour line on our map, but we should have known better since the intervals are 100 meters. 50 to 80 meter high hills can be brutal, especially when there are 50 or more in a row. It didn't help that the dips between the hills were so rough and eroded from standing water that we couldn't get any speed up for the climbs. The sun was brutal, and after 80 or 90 km, we felt like we had gained twice as much elevation as we had crossing the continental divide the day before. We limped into Pavone (18 km south of Los Chiles) wanting nothing more than to get off our bikes and into a shower.

The pickings looked pretty slim, more like none, when a big shiny new bus pulled up next to us and started discharging passengers. We are now likely infamous along the Nicaraguan border, because all of the passengers stared and commented while we loaded our bikes on, and then they had to sit in an enclosed space with us. The road was in such bad shape that the bus could only move about 10 km/hr, not fast enough to get a good breeze through, and we were ripe. If any of our fellow passengers happen to read this we apologize again.

Los Chiles was not our favorite place in Costa Rica. There were several choices in the lodging department, but we had to forego our usual simple cabina for the hotel with air-conditioning and a television because nothing else met our only real requirement - it has to be clean. Los Chiles was also the site of the attack of the killer beetles.