Today was an early start and an early finish. We mostly traveled past scrub forest without much in way of services or buildings, so not many photos to report.

Yesterday in La Cruz, I picked up a SIM card. I find it handy to have a local phone internet connection, particularly when coming into a town and investigating possible hotel locations. Also helpful in those cases where the hotel wifi isn’t 100%.

This morning the wind was already blowing strongly when we awoke. I thought, “uh oh” but we actually traveled through enough scrub forest that the wind was mostly blocked today. Left the town of La Cruz and back on the Pan American Highway. First two hours the road was quiet, not much in way of either trucks or buses. The road is somewhat narrow and started out bumpy but all is fine without traffic.

We went past several national parks. At 25km was a turnoff to Santa Rita park. Road was relatively flat, though still a few hills to climb over. It had been 20C (68F) starting but my bike odometer steadily climbed during the morning and topped out at 37C (99F) by time I made it to La Cruz. I stopped briefly at 54km, the first place to buy a coke today. After this, cycled the last 5km into Liberia.

A colorful bus stop painted today. I saw an iguana running by the road but no other wildlife.

I had started before David and waited at our pre-arranged point, a McDonalds where I waited in cool air conditioning. After this cycled past a few hotels and found reasonable one close to the park downtown.

Interesting church downtown.