Near Jaco - Costa Rica 11/05
Jose, who bought Gordo's Honda NX4, invited me to a ranch south of Jaco that his grandfather had owned. Jose spent a lot of time growing up there and even managed the place in his late teens. It was just going to be a recreational overnighter, but we ended up at the last minute making a site call on the way down - so we can count this as work and save the time-off for later! Work or fun, I was happy to trek out and get some more photos to share with my "winterized" motorcycle brothers and sisters in the far north. As usual, the "it's too wet to do much dirt" trip ended up in the mud. You can comment about
this report at ADVrider...
Arriving at the main ranch house at Rancho Nuevo; a 6000 acre
property (currently in escrow; and hardly the "typical"
tourist
accommodation).
Obligatory "what we went out and ate photo."
Why you don't wander about at night; Boa Python spotted in
the headlights. Bull Frog hanging out by the pool.
The ranch house at night. The dining room.
Views from the ranch house in the early morning.
Can you spot at least three animals (fish under the water don't count)?
A bit of the local
canopy. A movie set artifact from "1492" (filmed at the ranch years
ago).
Jose on dryer ground. This working ranch employs
50 people and even has it's own cafe/store.
Cobble bottomed water crossings turned out to be the
easiest obstacles all day. The "Parrot Tree."
Hard rains from the night before made for some
dynamic road surfaces throughout the ranch.
The local transportation probably makes more sense.
Heading south towards the beach; we'll never make it without knobbies.
You might remember the report about Gordo.
He spent a month
and a half in the hospital
after trying to run this very same bike
and set of tires through
red clay. Jose hits this soup at a bit
less speed, but can't
maintain enough momentum or get
solid footing to stay upright.
On this section, this was considered hard enough ground for me to stop,
get off,
and walk over to pull the bike off Jose's buried foot. You can
see on
the right Jose's tread
just wouldn't fling enough mud off to get any traction.
I buried my bike to the swing arms and managed to keep it upright, but
I
capitulated on this hole and let Jose help push me out before I dug it in
any further.
Most every muddy puddle we went through to this point had a fairly hard bottom.
This set had about a foot of sludge below a foot of water (probably part of
a larger
drainage problem). After getting through this section to some shade, we
decided to
turn back (to the pool perhaps?). Time from decision to successful
completion -
probably close to an hour in this life-sucking heat and humidity. You can
see
even I shed my gear for this section as we bypassed a few meters through the
grass.
On the way back, Jose crossing one of the more typical hard bottom puddles.
Jose's final water crossing, sans motorcycle.
One more beautiful tree.
