The Mountain Of Death.

( cont.)

I took my time getting ready in the morning, wanting to linger on the beach of Dominical. The bike didn’t have to be at the shop until closing time at 4:30pm and it was only 128 km of paved road, so as long as I left before noon there would still be occasion for some side trips and a late lunch at a steak house I’d heard about just outside of San Jose. As I had told Cristof last night, and as much so as to reassure myself, the Cerro de la MuerteI got its name long before there was a road because so many peasants froze to death while transporting trade goods to market. That said, the reality of riding a 250cc single cylinder dirt bike over an 11,500’ pass had begun to weigh on me and so I left earlier than intended, at 10:00 am, and as it turned out, I barely made it in time and was sick for a week.

The climb up began uneventfully; the usual two lane road with the danger being not so much the enormous potholes but the oncoming drivers swerving to avoid them. I crested the coast range and crossed the wide plateau of El General; the mountain to the east before me, its peak obscured in dark clouds like some kind of tropical Mordor. It was getting cooler, refreshingly so, and I was content to take my time and let the little single cylinder work easy in the thinning air. Then, an odd thing on the densely forested slope of oak trees and bamboo: a boy above the road waving his arm downwards. I slowed even more and soon came to the site of a horrific accident between a car and an 18 wheeler with the truck’s underbody mangled and the car flattened. Police, ambulances and rescue workers were on the scene and I stopped only long enough to put on all my clothes as I was beginning to shiver.

Just before the pass, riding along within and above the clouds, I took a side road that looked like it led to the summit. It was a muddy track through wind-sculpted shrubs and a bog of marsh grasses and then a steep and deeply rutted hill climb. Isolated and with a wild and spooky feel to it, something told me this was a detour I shouldn’t take and I stopped and turned around and got back on the pavement. It was not after all the summit but a ledge on a ridge, because soon the road continued rising and now it had begun to mist heavily. Then I was at the pass and there was a checkpoint and a café and it was raining, so I stopped to wait it out. I waited almost an hour; it never stopped. It was just as Thorsten said, the light drizzle of the cloud forest and a close fog. Resigned to getting a bit wet and continuing on, within 12 kilometers I was below the drizzle again and feeling frisky and looking for the road off to an alternate route I had planned. I got onto some dirt and went about 15 km through some villages and finally got decent directions only to discover that what had looked good on a map was in fact an extremely steep and treacherous downhill adventure into what appeared to be a box canyon. I stopped, looked at my watch, looked at the gathering clouds, looked at the red clay under my boots, and then started working to turn the bike around on the narrow inclined track. I was back on the pavement for no more than a half-hour when the sky cracked and let loose a torrential downpour. The asphalt with its high glass content became as slick as soap and flash floods of orange clay were angling across the road. I was getting pounded with buckets of rain and there was no place to stop and shelter so I kept on at a measured pace. It was that or give up entirely and just stand there and take it.

I made it to San Jose in time, hungry and soaked to the bone, as if I’d been dipped; my boots full of water that I poured out as if from a jug. I had some dry clothes in my other bag, but had caught a chill and felt exhausted. Maybe that’s what put me in such a funk on the flight home and brought me to the attention of US Customs. They singled me out for a baggage search and when I lifted my gear bag onto the stainless steel table and unzipped it, there was nothing inside but body armor and right on top a shoulder pad with a logo of a radioactive warning sign. “What’s this?” he demanded. “Motorcycle gear,” I said, “…that’s just some graphic.”