MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Costa Rica

Riding Cerro de la Muerte by motorcycle is, for any rider tackling the Pan-American Highway between Alaska and Ushuaia, an unavoidable rite of passage: it's the highest point on the entire Inter-American Highway's run through Costa Rica, with Route 2 cresting 3,335 meters above sea level near Villa Mills, close to Cerro Buena Vista peak, which reaches 3,451 meters.

The name isn't tourist hyperbole. Until the early 20th century, crossing this range on foot or horseback took three to four days, and many ill-prepared travelers died of cold along the way — which is why three shelter houses were built between 1910 and 1912, spaced ten to twelve walking hours apart. One of them, Casa Refugio Ojo de Agua, was restored in 2016 and now operates as a museum right beside the road.

Today the threat has changed shape but hasn't disappeared: at that altitude nighttime temperatures can drop below freezing (a record low of -6°C/21°F has been recorded), while the thin air leaves skin exposed to severe sunburn even in bitter cold, a combination that catches unprepared riders off guard.

Riding Route 32 by motorcycle means crossing Braulio Carrillo National Park in a couple of hours, a stretch of primary rainforest protected since 1978 that separates Costa Rica's Central Valley from the Caribbean Sea, with an altitude swing of up to 3,000 meters between its highest and lowest points.

The highway, known locally as the Carretera a Limón, is named after former president Braulio Carrillo, whose mid-19th-century government built the first road linking San José to the Caribbean. The national park that now surrounds it was created as an agreement with environmentalists to curb the development the highway itself could trigger.

The result is one of the few highways on the continent where you ride in a straight line through closed-canopy rainforest for kilometer after kilometer without seeing a single building, a stark contrast to the traffic and smog left behind in San José barely half an hour earlier.

Circling Lake Arenal by motorcycle is Costa Rica's most repeated postcard shot: a near-perfect volcanic cone rising 1,633 meters on one side, the mirror-still reservoir of the country's largest hydroelectric dam on the other.

The volcano dominating the view erupted suddenly and violently on July 29, 1968, and stayed continuously active until 2010, more than four decades of unbroken activity that rank it among the ten longest volcanic eruptions recorded on Earth since 1750. It has been dormant since October of that year, but its near-perfect silhouette is still the reason riders from all over the world do this loop.

The road itself alternates rolling lakeside pavement with gravel stretches near Nuevo Arenal, a small town that was submerged when the dam was built in the 1970s and rebuilt on the hillside across the way.

Climbing the Road to Monteverde by motorcycle means accepting that, for decades, the community itself resisted paving it fully: the loose gravel and rock were, for years, the very barrier that kept mass tourism away from one of the most admired cloud forests on the planet.

The town was founded by Quaker settlers who arrived in the 1950s from Fairhope, Alabama, fleeing the draft imposed by the Korean War. They chose Costa Rica partly because its constitution, since 1949, has no standing army. They took up dairy farming in the cool heights of the Tilarán mountains and ended up founding, almost by accident, one of the world's most important ecotourism destinations.

Today the cloud forest holds 500 orchid species, 134 mammal species, and humidity that hovers around 90% nearly year-round, conditions National Geographic called the jewel in the crown of the planet's cloud forest reserves, and the reason the dirt road, loose rocks and all, remains part of the experience.

Reaching Santa Teresa and Malpaís by motorcycle almost always starts by loading the bike onto a ferry in Puntarenas: the Nicoya Peninsula is cut off from the rest of the country by the Gulf of Nicoya, and crossing by boat is still faster for most travelers than riding around by land.

The peninsula runs about 120 km long and 30 to 60 km wide, and for years was listed as one of the world's five Blue Zones, regions where people unusually often live past age 100. More recent 2023 research cast doubt on that status for generations born after 1930, but the region's global reputation was already set, and today it draws surfers and rental-bike riders alike.

The final stretch toward Santa Teresa and Malpaís leaves pavement behind in Cóbano: what follows is loose gravel and washboard between farms and white-sand beaches, the kind of road that separates a two-day rental rider from someone actually chasing adventure.

Riding from Puerto Jiménez to Carate by motorcycle means entering a region that holds, by Corcovado National Park's own figures, 2.5% of the entire planet's biodiversity within just 41,800 hectares of primary rainforest.

Puerto Jiménez, the town with its own small airport that serves as the gateway, is literally the last point with formal services: beyond it, the Osa Peninsula becomes the most isolated stretch in the whole country, with river fords that can only be crossed when the tide allows it.

It's the route of choice for riders chasing Costa Rica's rawest edge: no pavement, little to no phone signal, and primary rainforest as far as the eye can see on both sides of the dirt track.

Riding up to the crater of Irazú Volcano by motorcycle means reaching, entirely on pavement, 3,432 meters above sea level, likely the highest-climbing paved road in the entire country, just above the 3,335 meters where Route 2 crests Cerro de la Muerte.

Costa Ricans nickname it El Coloso (the Colossus) for its eruption history, at least 23 documented eruptions since 1723. The most remembered one began in mid-March 1963, coinciding with President John F. Kennedy's state visit, and for the following two years blanketed San José and much of the Central Valley in volcanic ash.

On clear days during the dry season, and only then, you can see both the Atlantic and the Pacific from the crater at the same time, the only spot in Costa Rica where that's possible without hiking in on foot.

Riding the dirt road from Liberia to Rincón de la Vieja by motorcycle means crossing dry Guanacaste cattle country up toward a 1,916-meter volcano that's still bubbling: its slopes hold hot springs, mud pools, and an estimated geothermal potential of 140 megawatts.

The crater itself became inaccessible in September 2011, when a phreatic eruption sent an ash-and-mud column over 36 meters into the air. Access has been restricted ever since, and what draws riders here today isn't the summit but the maze of ranch roads in the lower zone, threading through dry tropical forest and natural hot springs.

It's Guanacaste's least-photographed side: while the Pacific beaches fill up with tourists, this dirt-road circuit stays nearly empty, except for cattle crossing the road at their own pace.

Riding down the Costanera Sur by motorcycle is the most-traveled coastal route on the central Pacific: 120 km of pavement with the ocean in view almost the whole way, from Jacó down to the beaches of Dominical and Uvita.

Halfway along sits Quepos, gateway to Manuel Antonio National Park. At just 1,983 hectares of land it's one of the smallest parks in the country, yet it drew nearly 4.4 million visits between 2012 and 2022, making it the most-visited of Costa Rica's 30 national parks. In 2011, Forbes named it one of the world's 12 most beautiful national parks.

This is a cruising route, not a technical adventure ride: fast sweepers, straight coastal stretches, and the option to pull off at any beach along the way without ever leaving Route 34.

The climb from San Isidro de El General to San Gerardo de Rivas by motorcycle is just 20 km, but it ends at the foot of Cerro Chirripó, Costa Rica's highest point at 3,821 meters above sea level.

The village of San Gerardo de Rivas, sitting at 1,500 meters in the heart of the Talamanca range, serves as the base for Chirripó National Park, created in 1975 across roughly 500 km² of rainforest and páramo. From there, a 19.5 km trail leads to the summit: the motorcycle goes no further, but it drops the traveler right at the trailhead.

On clear days, those who complete the hike to the top can see the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea at the same time from the summit, the same two-oceans phenomenon Irazú offers, except here only those who park the bike and walk the rest of the way get to see it.