There must be a gravel shortage in Costa Rica. To make gravel, large rocks are normally crushed into fairly uniform pieces somewhere between the size of a grape and a golf ball then filtered through a screen to eliminate any softball, bowling ball or bathtub size pieces remaining.

Sue and I are both biochemists, so we felt right at home talking with the scientists, and getting a perspective on some of their studies while visiting the biological research station in Santa Rosa National Park.

I also got an explanation for the blister that had persisted on my upper lip for over a week. We were talking with Eric Olsen, who studies insect populations by collecting their poop, when the subject of rainforest fruits came up. I mentioned that I had had a run in with a wild cashew, and showed him the blister.

I lost one of the little screws that holds the trap of my bicycle pedal onto the body and stopped at a hardware store for a replacement.

It was a Japanese part with unusual threads so we had to search through a box of odds and ends to find one that matched. It was about twice as long as necessary so the shop guy offered to fix it and headed to the back with my pedal and the screw in hand while I started the paperwork.

The washboard frequency was perfectly inharmonious at any but a breakneck pace and we knew we had a full day of riding across Palo Verde National Park ahead of us so we jolted down the dusty road relaxing as best we could on our way from Cañas to Bebedero.

While cycling through France I discovered that the best salads are simple ones. Salade de tomate means just that, a sliced tomato, with a miraculous mix of oil, vinegar, and herbs. While France may be the culinary capitol of the world, Costa Rica has perfected the simple salad.

We discovered this delight on the first day of our first trip. We were invited by the brother of a guy we met in line at customs the night before to "go into a beautiful area of Costa Rica" to visit some friends of his friend Panama. Wandering off into the jungle at 5:00 in the morning to meet the friends of a friend of the brother of a guy we'd just met sounded like a good idea to us, so we agreed.

We had a couple of things in mind for this trip. The road between Poás volcano and Platanar peak, north of Sarchí, looked like a perfect challenge to test our belief that we had gotten in shape over the summer and we wanted to visit Caño Negro National Wildlife Refuge.