The morning of the 23rd, two remarkable things happened. The first is that we met our first fellow bicycle tourists, Mark and Joel. Mark was from Oakland, Calif. They had started riding south form San Diego 104 days earlier, and were tentatively planning to end their trip in Panama. But they were also playing with the idea of going on through South America.

They were apparently lightly loaded, as their bikes had no front racks (we didn't see their bags, which were in their room). They seemed a little amazed at how loaded we were. Mark was especially happy to see Eric's French Horn. "I'll never feel silly again about how much stuff I brought," Mark said.

They've been traveling fairly cheap, paying just $1.50 a night a person in Nicaragua, for instance. I was a little surprised when they said they hadn't had much trouble riding so far, even in places with dangerous reputations, like Guatemala and Nicaragua. They said Guatemala was fine and Nicaragua was "very peaceful." They also said that Costa Rica is "so safe it's ridiculous."

The second remarkable thing that happened involved food. I love Costa Rican rice and beans, but I have to admit that I'm getting a little sick of it. Eggs are a little funny here too. When you get them scrambled, they're basically fine. But you can't get them over easy, over medium, etc. At least Eric and I don't know the words for those orders, and we've never seen them cooked that way here. You can order juevos "frito" which is fried. But I think they just throw the whole egg in a vat of oil. It comes out pretty oily and pretty well done.

Anyway, I woke up the morning thinking how much I miss the chance of having French toast at the Rain Tree Cafe at 8th Ave. and Irving St. in San Francisco. I told Eric how all I wanted was French toast. Then I forgot about it while we were talking to Mark and Joel.

We went out to breakfast in Arenal, and we saw the usual items on the menu. But miraculously, added in pen were the words "Tostadas Francescas." I almost thought it was a cruel joke, an error that had somehow made its way onto my menu. But it was on Eric's too. We were totally blown away. I asked the waitress, as best I could, if it was what I thought it was, bread fried in egg batter with syrup. She said yes. I was in heaven, We both ordered French toast and it was marvelous.

The rest of the day wasn't exactly marvelous. We still had to ride 30k from Arenal to the continental divide (around Tilaran), and the hills were supposed to be bad. They were. Plus, along the way, Eric's front tire blew out, putting a huge unrepairable hole in his otherwise invincible inner tube, which he had bought in San Francisco. He was counting on that tube to last him a long time and it only lasted about 10 miles. Eric's theory is that last night, when we were repairing his flat in the dark, we remounted the tire in such a way that the brakes hit the sidewall of the tire, causing it to burst.

Fixing that flat was not fun, because we also ended up fixing Eric's front brakes. We must have spent 90 minutes on the side of the road messing around with wrenches and grease. We finally got going again, and made Tilaran by about 2:30 or so.

Our expat friends back in Arenal had suggested that we spend the night in Tilaran, rather than push on to Canas, which they described as sort of problematic. But we are trying to get to the Pacific Ocean, and we don't have a lot of time left, so we decided to push on anyway.

It was mostly downhill to Canas, thankfully. The town isn't so bad. It has a big public square, and to our surprise, at least five bicycle stores, stocked with all kinds of goodies. We bought a few more tubes and patches for Eric, and another spare tire for him.

There was only one big drawback. There are hardly any hotels here. A nice lady who ran a bike store suggested a hotel with a pool, saying it cost 3000 colones a night. Eric was into it, but when we checked the price was 4100, and there was no pool.

So we rode round town, until we found a hotel on the public square, I should have known not to bother when I saw the prostitutes hanging around outside (prostitution is legal here). The proprietor looked shocked that we were considering staying there. The price was only 2,000 with a private bathroom, but when I went to see the room, it looked awful. I suppose most of the places we've been staying in are divey, but they are clean dives. This one seemed pretty gritty, plus the bathroom, with all the paint peeled off, looked like one large messy urinal. We decided against it. Eventually we found a friendly, clean place on the highway for 3,000 colones.

Next: the road to Nicoya.

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