Summer season is here in Costa Rica and I wanted to retake the search for good roads for walking and biking. I visited the small town of Rosales, located at the foot of the Barva Volcano.

Localization of Rosales

Located 5km east of Alajuela downtown, Rosales is a small town that recently is thriving with middle-class families building their homes there.
It is not as cold as other mountain towns, nor as hot as Alajuela. It can be reached from Alajuela and from Santa Barbara de Heredia too. You can access it too from San Pedro de Santa Barbara which, at the same time, has access to the most important highway in Costa Rica, the General Cañas.

Road to Rosales

The road to the village from Alajuela is in superb condition for cars.
There is a lack of sidewalks so you should be careful if jogging or walking. Bicycle riders should be careful too. Some portions of the road do have no street lights at all.
From Alajuela, there is a high gain of 200 meters, so expect a lot of slopes. Some flat parts here and there but you should wear your best sports shoes with the best grip. Also, bicycle riders should tune the brakes of their bicycles.
Few cars during work hours or weekends, and the bus service is one unit every 3 hours. So be sure to have installed an app to call a taxi just in case you need it.
There are just a few supermarkets and “pulperias” (small groceries stores) in the 6-kilometer gap between the road starting from Alajuela and San Pedro. It is better to be prepared with water and some healthy snack.

Is this route to Rosales safe?

In the last years there has not been any single incident reported to authorities in Rosales or nearby. Obviously, avoid it at night as I told you before there are no street lights in some parts.
In some parts, there are no houses nearby. I highly recommend going with a friend or family member.

Any point in going there?

My blog does not emphasize promoting tourist sites or points of interest. I’m just a lonely wanderer who likes to jog, walk, or bike. I found the road to Rosales lovely, with a superb view of the Barva Volcano, some nice views of the central valley, and a lot of peace since there are almost no vehicles. One feels safe to see houses and people outside sometimes all around.
For the casual jogger and cyclist is a good point to gain physical condition. At the road start, there is a taxi stop and a bus stop. You can take a bus too in San Pedro too, with a bus passing every 20 minutes. You won’t find yourself either stranded or lost since it is a single road. There are plenty of people to ask for directions and a full 4G signal for your smartphone map app.
If you start to feel the burden of the route slopes, just slow down the rhythm or rest a bit.

Road to Rosales photos

Next, enjoy some photos of Rosales and its surroundins. Disclaimer: This article was written by an human being. No IA used.

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Such an adventure was going to El Salto Waterfalls. Not Paved roads, coffee farms, and the rainforest need to be going through to get to the Itiquis river where the waterfalls are located.

Getting There

My brother organized alongside some of his coworkers a trip to El Salto Waterfalls. He invited me and I didn’t hesitate to say yes.
These waterfalls are famous among the people of Heredia and Alajuela because they are very close to these cities.
One bus trip from these cities to Carrizal is enough to get to the entrance to the river.
But this is not a developed tourist destination, there’s no safe way to get in there. No paved trails or stairs.
The river flows through a very low depression, do not expect flat terrain once you get into the trail that takes you to the waterfalls. You must cross a coffee farm and then a small portion of the rainforest.

Once in the river, you’ll need to walk over some slippery stones to get between the two waterfalls. Wearing the right shoes and going slow is the key to staying safe.
I emphasize you must feel in excellent physical condition before going there, any accident could be fatal, and really hard for the rescue team to get to you.

The waterfalls

But enough with the warnings, this experience will make you feel like the first inhabitants, exploring the terrain and looking for habitable places. Both waterfalls count with ponds deep enough to swim and cliff diving.
About cliff diving, the upper waterfall is way safer to do than the lower one. We found this guy cliff diving there and he told us two friends of his had lost their lives in the lower waterfall.
But the pond in the second one is bigger, swimmers will find this attractive. By the way, the water is cold, very cold. You’ll see locals swimming often, then taking sunbaths in the rocks.

Going back

After swimming for a while and diving into the upper pond, we set up an improvised barbecue and cooked chicken and beef. The river bed gives plenty of space for sitting comfortably. We drank, ate, and chatted.
Around 2:00 PM it was getting cloudy, hence the high possibility of rain in the mountain. Mud avalanches are common in the zone so the only option was to leave asap.
Going uphill required twice times the effort needed to get down. We just went slowly. Getting back to the road took us 15 minutes.
Thanks to my brother for allowing me to join his group for this trip. It was surely a unique experience I would like to repeat.

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The Santa Barbara canton does not stop surprising me. I was heading to explore the Barva Canton. But because of some contingencies., I arrived in Santa Barbara late. Then I decided to leave Barva, in the Heredia province, for another day.

I was between going back home or taking the only road left I haven’t explored yet which starts in Santa Barbara. This road is called “Calle Potrerillos” and my idea was to use it to get to San Bosco, a small town I had not visited yet.

Let’s walk!

First, I have to take the “Calle Central” from downtown heading north. This street is quite used because it leads to the “Carlos Alvarado” Stadium and the “Liceo de Santa Barbara” high school. I reached the bridge over the Potrerillos river. If you keep heading north you’ll be in Calle Potrerillos.

Photos of Calle Central and the Carlos Alvarado Stadium in Santa Barbara

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Calle Central near the college

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Calle Central near the bridge over Potrerillos river

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Calle Central

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Carlos Alvarado Stadium

There I found a colony of Montezuma Oropendolas, a bird with vibrant black and yellow feathers and a red beak. They do singular sounds, check the video!

Potrerillos is a lonely road, with some houses here or there but most of the path will be empty lots with some trees on the side. Once I reached a bifurcation I took the left way, just because there was a nice property with bamboo bushes on one of the sides.
I kept walking until I reach my first point of interest, San Bosco. It is a small community with an incredible view of the Barva volcano. Families were practicing sports on the soccer field then the church has a colony of parakeets living on the steeple.

I continued until I reached the town downtown where route 126 takes place. This is an important route that communicates the city of Heredia with Barva, Birri, and Carrizal.
I planned to visit El Roble, which was just 1km north of the San Bosco crossroad but it was already 4:30 P.M. and in Costa Rica, sunset is around 6 o’clock. Because I know that the route between Birri and San Bosco has a section without street lighting, I prefered to walk that part while there is sunlight available.

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Santa Barbara Route 126

The road between San Bosco and Birri is a view of the old times in Costa Rica. In the days coffee farms were everywhere. There is a dangerous bridge with no fences on one of the sides. It is better to get used to it as this is common in Costa Rica. I found a small community along the way called La Guaracha with a lovely church.
No sidewalks except in the area of La Guaracha so I had to be careful.

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Finishing the trip

After taking some photos in Birri I took route 114. This road is not in the best shape, to be honest. Worst of all, it has the most obnoxious slope I ever walked on, a 45-degree slope. It looks so dumb, you can only think “who approved this?” Even, going downhill is a pain. I needed to ground myself harder because there is no sidewalk and falling is not an option there.
If you want to avoid this road, is the one between Barrio Jesus and Birri.
15 minutos más andando para coger el autobús a casa. Si quieres más información sobre Santa Bárbara, visita este vinculo.
No regrets, it was a good Sunday afternoon!

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Some days ago, I went to a meeting by bike to Alajuela City downtown and it ended early. I was about to go back home when I remembered I saw on the map there is a road between Pavas de Carrizal and Calle Cahuites in Santa Barbara.

This road sparked my curiosity I was looking for a shortcut to get to the Santa Barbara canton from route 125 without going up all the way to Carrizal. Carrizal is a nice town in the central mountain range.

So I decided to bike up there. That’s what I thought at first, but to be honest, the road started to be uphill quite soon. I took 29 street to get route 125 in Canoas. Route 125 takes you to Carrizal, a nice town in the central mountain range.

By the way, 29 street is a nice and quiet road if you want to look for a place to jog, run or just walk.

Once on route 125 tried to bike a little, but the slopes there are long and I’m a not bike guy. I was only planning to know the route and revisit it on foot and take some pictures. However, it was a nice afternoon so I decided to take those pictures anyways.

Reaching the town of Guadalupe you can get the most stunning views of both Alajuela and San Jose City.
Yet, you have to be careful, from Canoas there is an evident lack of sidewalks. The golden rule, in this case, is always to walk on your left side of the road.

Once you get near Pavas, the road gets flat with a few slopes here and there. Sounds like a good time to take a breath before keeping going.

The Mysterious Road

This is from things starting to get “downhill” for me. I took this “road”, connecting Pavas with Santa Barbara. Well, it is marked as a road on Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Open Street Maps, right?
What I found is just quite a dangerous road, just dirt, and rocks, barely doable with a mountain bike. That wasn’t the worst part: Dogs. Since farms there don’t have any fences, dogs can go get out of the owner’s property and attack anyone.
They feel the road is part of their territory.
By the time I realized I made a huge mistake It was too late to get back, it was ten minutes to 6:00 P.M. . Hence there was dim light daylight left and I had to go back through the site where dogs chased me. So, I decided to go on. I arrived at a coffee farm and at the end of the road, it was closed with a gate, a house, and more dogs. Tired of being chased, I chose to cut through the coffee farm, cross a small river and get to the Calle Chahuites. It was already at night and still, I have to get back home. I was tired, dirty and I had some wounds on my feet.
But I learned a lesson: Ask locals about the state of any road that looks suspicious. Most of the roads in Costa Rica are paved, It was so naive on my part not to doubt the state of this road.
An unpaved road mostly means it leads to private property or a dead end.

Conclusion

Despite this bad experience, I can recommend going to Carrizal from Alajuela using route 125. Cyclists, runners, walkers, and ramblers could find a nice warming challenge preparing for tougher routes.

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