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the ride, we faced our next obstacleas Licia began vomiting and shakinguncontrollably from consuming anenergy drink. We stopped at a gasstation and ended up staying thereuntil dawn. Although weak andtired, she was able to begin ridingagain and we continued on, ridingmostly in the cool rain on graveland paved roads, through bananaplantations and small towns. Wewere grateful that one of the buzonstops was at a small store where wewere able to buy water and snacks.We also rode into Limon in order tofind a checkpoint that was locatedin the only 24-hour restaurant inthe central market. We enjoyed abrief rest and an incredible hot mealbefore continuing on our way.The next long and challengingportion of the race was on theinfamous La Ruta mountain bikecourse riding on railroad tracks.We bumped our way over thetracks, with each of us crashingat some point and having to walkvarious areas that we were unableto ride. We also had to crossseveral long railroad bridges, whichwas a frightening feat in that eachrailroad tie was unequally placedand the bridges were over ragingrivers. It was amazing to see thelocals walking these same tracksand bridges, carrying large bundlesand not using any lights! At onepoint, we stopped to talk with aman and his two small boys, askingfor directions to make sure we wereheaded on the correct route. Lateron, we heard a quiet noise comingup behind us on the tracks andturned to see this same man and histwo boys quickly coming our way.The man had made a “train trackbike” which consisted of a bikemounted on a wooden platformwith small track wheels. The frontfork of the bike was mounted tothe platform, while the rear wheelpropelled the contraption on one ofthe tracks. We were quite enviousof his mode of transportation. Wefinally arrived at TA 2 late at nighton the second day of the race,which was located at a restaurantalong the river. After partaking ofyet another hot meal and breakingdown our bikes to be transportedto the next biking section, we hunghammocks and had a few hours ofmuch needed sleep.Stage 3 of the race was a longtrekking section through thickjungle. We left TA 2 before dawnon the third day in order to reach thejungle by daylight. We felt goodafter the rest and food and tackledthe jungle with a vengeance. Beforeentering the jungle, we visiteda man named Rito for one of thecheckpoints and jokingly namedthe path to the jungle “Rito’s road,although nothing about the routehad any resemblance of a road.”We had been warned before leavingTA 2 by Mike to not sleep in thejungle, so we pushed as hard aswe could through the challengingterrain. It took us twenty-eighthours to complete Stage 3 of therace, with twenty-four of thosehours spent in the dense jungle.It was hot and humid and our feetstayed wet and caked with mudthe entire time. We took as manyopportunities as we could to cooloff in the rivers by dunking ourheads and even our entire bodies.The path, if you could call it that,was tricky to follow and extremelysteep in many places.One of the most enjoyable parts ofthe race included visiting two smallschools in remote villages in thejungle to drop off school supplies.The first school we came to wasstill in session so we were ableto talk with the children and takepictures with them. The schoolitself had no electricity or runningwater, but the children were veryhappy to be there and eager toAdventure World Magazine is a July GreenZine 2008 20