The ride into San Jose was only 15k, and it wasn't too bad. We rode through some small towns and over a few hills, and on the way bought some paper Costa Rican flags for 20 colones each. We stuck them in our bags to show solidarity with our host country. I was also hoping that drivers would see our flags and give us extra room on the highway.

At one point, we got onto a major freeway that said plainly, No Cyclistas. But we asked a local guy and he said just go ahead, No Problem. So we did.

San Jose is not a great place to ride but it's not horrible either. We came into town on a huge avenue with more than five lanes going one way. Again, since there are no street addresses in Costa Rica, it took us forever to find our B&B, a place called Pension de la Cuesta. We got all kinds of conflicting directions. Basically, it took us an hour--including 30 minutes that we sat in a marketplace to wait out a rainstorm--to navigate the last five blocks.

Pension de la Cuesta costs $29 a night and is very tourist friendly. We chose it because it offers free email. Actually, it turns out emailing is free if you borrow the Pension's email account--if you want to telnet to your own account, which we did, that costs 15 colones a minute. Which isn't bad.

We arrived, and under instructions from the guy working the front desk, used a towel to clean off our bikes before rolling them into the room. It was fairly early in the afternoon, so we had a full day to spend. We passed the first hour or so talking to the innkeeper, Albaro, who helped us work out our bicycle plans across the country.

Since we had only had a few day trips, we were very anxious to get on our bikes. Eric was keen on going to the Carribean coast, since we'd heard from another guest in our hotel in Alajuela that there were some pretty "laid back" beaches there. I was more keen to go to the Pacific. Since we had about 18 days at that point, there was no reason we couldn't do both.

But I wasn't too keen on riding over the mountains from San Jose to the Carribean, and then riding back over all that to the Pacific. We hashed out our options with Albarao, and came up with this plan: we'd put our bikes on a bus from San Jose to Limon (the place of which Paul Theroux wrote: was there a dingier backwater in all the world?"), and then ride our bikes 45k south along the coast to the beaches we had heard were fabulous, Playa Cahuita and Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. Then we'd ride our bikes back to Limon, and then across the country to the Pacific. We'd finish by about Sept. 30, the day before our flight back to California for Perrin's wedding.

That done, we walked into the middle of San Jose to run a bunch of errands. The city wasn't particularly amazing looking. It had a bunch of stores, and a long pedestrian mall, where we got some film developed and bought handkerchiefs for our ever-running noses. But we did see an a totally impressive building in the middle of it all: the Teatro Nacional. Inside, it had totally ornamented ceilings and velvet and all the trimmings. Just like the old movie theaters in San Francisco that my mother described to me. We checked to see what was playing: some kind of modern dance. The tickets were $12 each, which we figured was a steal. So we splurged.

That night, we took out our one set of dress clothes from our bike bags: a dress for me and khaki pants and a seersucker shirt for Eric. We've been wering them to all the weddings we've attended during the first part of our trip. They weren't too wrinkled. So when we showed up at the Teatro Nacional, we felt kind of normal, instead of stinky and sweaty.

The performance was wonderful. I kept thinking of Bob and the dances he's been in, even though I've never seen them. The first one was very bizarre, and involved lots of talking, and invoking of saints' names. But there was one later that was quite neat: The Black Conscious, starring a woman who is chased across stage again and again by 20 or more dancers representing her conscience. She keeps running and manages to beat them off until finally they get her--momentarily--in the end. All the dancing was set to the music of a totally honking marimba band. That and just the grandeur of the whole place, was totally worth the price of the ticket.

Next: On to the dingy backwater

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