‘What’s all this about needing a visa?’ I ask aloud, suddenly perturbed by item number 2 on the suggested List of Essential Items, just one behind ‘passport’. I swallow hard as the words YOU FUCKING IDIOT ring in my ears at this potential glaring omission (it was only last week I received confirmation that I don’t have my tetanus vaccination, and it’s now too late to get one).
‘Don’t worry about it,’ my Other Half says, as I glance over and notice him Google searching WHERE IS COSTA RICA? on his iPhone. It’s three days before we set off on a challenge which will blast us so far outside our comfort zones that we won’t know our saddle-sore, padded arses from our grazed and bruised elbows. ‘It’ll be fine!’ he assures me, as he scans down a Wikipedia page on Costa Rica, thinking I haven’t noticed.
‘And we still need to take the seat and pedals off my bike,’ I remind him, as I sit staring at my once neatly piled selection of unworn padded cycling shorts, now unceremoniously strewn to one side by the arrival of the Sylvanian Families camper van.
My stress levels have been unusually high this past week. And it’s not entirely – as you might expect – relating to the Herculean task of cycling 480 kilometres across all kinds of arduous terrain, possibly dodging volcanoes and avoiding sloths in the road (yes, they have those, apparently). In truth, I’m equally terrified by almost every other aspect of this trip – the mountain biking is merely the cherry on the anxiety management cake. The other panic-inducing aspects relate to a travel itinerary rivalled only by European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake’s Principia space mission in December 2015. This includes, in theory:
1.A two-hour drive to Manchester airport, plus half an hour navigating our way to the correct parking location (I have fallen foul of this before and had to call for emergency assistance at the barrier’s intercom);
2.A forty-minute flight from Manchester to London Heathrow, which will likely take circa four hours, with an intravenous drip pumping Costa coffee into my bloodstream, before being stripped half-naked at check-in for a gentle frisking;
3.Once at Heathrow, finding the hotel which looks to be another forty-minute bus ride away (Heathrow is the size of our home town, Halifax, it would seem);
4.[the next morning] Boarding a shuttle bus from the hotel to London Heathrow Terminal 4 before 5:45 a.m., most probably whilst still asleep;
5.Another four-hour wait and a connecting flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam;
6.Hanging about for endless hours at Schiphol airport waiting for another connecting flight to San José, which I learn is the capital of Costa Rica (I had no idea);
7.An eleven-hour flight to San José;
8.Collapsing in a heap in a zero-starred hotel before a four-hour bus transfer to the start of our ‘adventure’ the following morning.
And then – she says without any hint of irony – the adventure begins. The above is what’s SUPPOSED to happen. I don’t know it yet, but it won’t happen like this. Not at all …
It’s a good job I don’t know.
* * *
I’m at point number 2) on the Principia itinerary, standing in the queue to board a plane from Manchester to London Heathrow. I’ve already consumed my requisite three litres of airport Costa coffee and arsed about in WH Smith’s. It’s meant that we’re now late in locating the correct gate, and so we rush to Gate A54, where a grim-looking snake of people has long since formed.
We are virtually last in the queue, and about to board the forty-minute flight to Heathrow. The only man and woman left standing behind us are smiling at me holding my pillow. But it’s not a compact travel pillow: it’s the big fluffy one from my king-size bed which I sleep on every night. The man observes, ‘At least you’ll be comfortable on the forty-minute flight!’ He emphasises the ‘forty minutes’ and I laugh in acknowledgement of his summation that I’m not a seasoned traveller, and this clear evidence that I’m also fussy about my sleeping arrangements. Pillows are a tricky one to get right: too hard and it’s like placing my head on a brick, too soft and I face sinking into a Scotch pancake. Mine is just right: fluffy and supportive. And it’s coming to Costa Rica with me. Little do I know that my big, fluffy pillow will be my saviour over the next ten days.
Friendly Couple are on their way to Toronto to visit their teenage son who is apparently some young ice-hockey prodigy. Aged just fifteen – they tell us – he reached the pinnacle of his potential over here in the UK and so it is that – still aged fifteen – he has flown the comfort and safety of his British nest to live in a new city, in a new country, knowing that he will see his parents just once every six months, if that. He doesn’t know it, but he’s my new hero. Aged sixteen, I was too busy melting Mars bars against my bedroom radiator whilst examining my latest hormonal outbreak in one of Mum’s pressed powder compacts to concern myself with independent living or dream-chasing.
And I wonder about my own anxiety about this cycling trip. I’m thirty-nine years old, and I’m travelling in a group. I’m fretting about having a too-soft/too-hard pillow, a lack of mirrors, and the effect of mild sleep deprivation following a two-day journey to reach our destination. I’m worried about missing my little girl for the next ten days and my mum being home alone (although that’s not exactly true – she’s got a better social life than me!). But the story of Friendly Man’s son has made me momentarily get a grip. I’m not sixteen. I’m not on my own. I’m not going away from my family and friends for two years to have the shit kicked out of me by young Canadian ice-hockey players. For all the above reasons, I’m sitting here, cuddling my oversized pillow the night before a long day of travel, and I’m thinking to myself – I can fucking do this!
I haven’t even stopped to consider the cycling aspect of the trip, yet.
32
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
We arrive at the airport early and meet the team. Julie is in her fifties. She separated from her husband five years ago, and has thrown herself into action-packed adventure holidays in the years since. ‘I completed the Vietnam to Cambodia cycle trip with Women v Cancer last year,’ she tells me whilst sipping on a large Pret latte. ‘It was good, but there were too many princesses on the trip for my liking.’
I confidently reassure her that she has no cause for concern on this score, safe in the knowledge that I’m stripped bare of any luxuries such as hair straighteners or – more terrifyingly – disposable razors. I feel the onset of mild palpitations as I briefly wonder how long it will take for my legs to turn into strips of Velcro, and my hair to become matted and unkempt, and smell of chip shops.
I think back to my ‘exposure therapy’ challenges from earlier in the year, and the painful memories of wrenching myself away from the large living-room mirror. How far have I come since then? What would Dr G make of all this? A trip which will eliminate almost every safety behaviour I came to rely on to give me the short-term fix I thought I needed. We will be ‘roughing it’ for the next ten days, sleeping on floors under the cover of a thin canvas tent; waking between 4:30–5:30 a.m. to ride on average fifty mountainous miles per day; most times having no access to shower facilities or hot running water, and almost certainly NO MIRRORS. I hadn’t realised it at the time, but booking this epic adventure is going to be the biggest, baddest exposure challenge I could possibly imagine – and that’s before I even stop to consider the cycling.
A group of fit-looking Scottish guys are amongst us. One is called Duncan. I only remember his name by thinking of Ant & Dec’s pop aliases, PJ & Duncan. His is the only name I can retain in my head, which now spins with fatigue, social anxiety, and mono-syllabic name exchanges.
Sally is twenty-six with a perfect English rose complexion. She is a commercial property lawyer from Norwich, she tells us in her legally trained, articulate drawl. ‘I used to row down the Henley Regatta, but it all got too much,’ she says wistfully. ‘So, I took a break from competing, and began to take on other challenges instead. I climbed Killy last year, and then cycled across Cambodia.’ I pause br
iefly to consider what ‘Killy’ is before realising that she is referring to Mount Kilimanjaro. Of course she is! Suddenly, I feel utterly stupid. These people are on colloquial terms with Mount Kilimanjaro, and I don’t even know it to speak to. This is like a game of Posh Traveller Top Trumps and Sally wins, hands down.
A pair of confident cockney boys swagger up to the tables we’ve now bunched together in Terminal 4’s Pret A Manger. ‘Are you up for the Costa Rica trip, then?’ the bigger one asks. He is approximately the same shape and size as our recently purchased garden shed. All I can see are enormous white teeth as he grins whilst working his way around the tables, shaking hands and introducing himself. He’s welcomed into the fold and takes his place amongst the discarded pastries and branded paper cups.
There are more of us, now – nineteen in total. My head still spins with names and confusion: Who is Mark? Is there more than one? And Greg, which one is he? PJ & Duncan’s pop hit, ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rumble’ begins to play on the jukebox inside my head. Oh no, I’ve forgotten which one Duncan is! Panic builds as I also wonder, is one of the Scots actually called Scott? Or have I misheard him? It suddenly seems absurd to have a Scot called Scott on the trip. Surely that can’t be right?
An older couple in their early to mid-fifties approaches our tables, meaning that the female-to-male ratio has now increased to almost 1:4. He is small and serious-looking; she is wearing effortlessly glamorous, expensive sporting attire and looks fit for her age. I notice a small Ironman tattoo on his lower leg, and my heart sinks. It surely confirms that he has completed an Ironman event, this being a brutal long-distance triathlon consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride followed by a 26.2 mile run (that is a full marathon distance).
Oh, my God, he’ll be doing this for fun!
Ironman’s sporty-yet-glamorous partner is called Veronica and she is soon quizzed by matter-of-fact Julie on her reasons for wanting to take part in this cycling trip.
‘I’d like to look around a sloth orphanage, if possible,’ she responds in a high-pitched southern-counties voice with distinct echoes of the nineties Philadelphia adverts. I’m confused. Julie looks understandably perplexed and slightly troubled. She has misheard, and thinks that the blonde Bristolian has come along hoping to find a children’s orphanage.
‘The mummy sloths often get electrocuted on the overhead wires, leaving their babies to fend for themselves,’ Veronica explains. ‘It’s so sad!’
Phew! She’s talking about sloths – little furry animals which are native to the tropical rainforests of Central and South America. Julie has finally caught on and looks mildly relieved, yet at the same time entirely bemused by the conversation. And to be honest, so am I. What kind of a reason is that for undertaking a cycling challenge of this enormity?
And then it happens. PING! One of the monosyllabically-named Scots (not ‘Scott’) has just received a text message.
‘Hey, have any of you seen this?’ he asks the rest of the group. It’s a very concise message informing him that our flight to Amsterdam has just been cancelled. Not delayed, or ‘awaiting further information’, but cancelled. Just that. There is a sudden flurry to check mobile phones, and yes, PJ (or Duncan) confirms that they’ve received it, too. In that moment, our flight schedule and Principia travel itinerary is shot to pieces and the following twelve hours will be spent trying to establish how the hell the group of us will get to Costa Rica. My head spins with anxiety, and it isn’t yet 8 a.m.
It feels like the strangest icebreaker group bonding exercise.
Our bewildered adventure guide, Sam, is queueing up, trying to make sense of the madness, whilst attempting to put emergency plans together for the group of us.
Within the next two hours we are furnished with a handful of tickets, each worth £4.50. It doesn’t quite cover the cost of a pint of Stella, but we’ve all stopped caring. Burgers, chicken wraps, a full English, a pot of mussels, and French onion soup are brought over to our collection of scattered tables and randomly strewn chairs, but I don’t feel hungry. I’m still carrying the brown paper bag filled with a semi-squashed croissant and bruised fruit from this morning’s take-out breakfast, which we collected at 5:35 a.m. My hair hasn’t been washed, I feel greasy, and my mind is struggling to cope with the reality I now face. Where is a mirror? My anxiety levels are causing me to default into worrying BDD territory. You look tired … Your hair is greasy … You need a shower … Your face is shiny … You look ugly, Rachel. Where is my SWAT team, now? I desperately need them to identify the million interpretation traps I’m now being bombarded with.
‘Right, I’ve got an update for you,’ Sam, our poor solo adventure guide tells us. It’s now 4 p.m., and we’ve been wedged in our Terminal 4 cheap seats for a total of nine hours. ‘We’ve arranged an alternative flight for all but three of you,’ he informs the group. ‘You’ll be flying to Columbia, leaving at 10 p.m. tonight, changing at Bogota.’ I imagine the scene – Pablo Escobar greeting us at the Columbian arrival lounge, surrounded by his guerrilla mafia drug-pusher henchmen. I may struggle with that: I can’t even stomach Ibuprofen Plus (it has codeine in it). I look around the group, wondering which of us will be travelling to Bogota.
Where is a mirror??!
I’m so tired, and it’s all such a mess.
The group of Scots are the unfortunate three: they will fly to Mexico, and on to Panama, before heading across to Costa Rica. We will all miss out on an entire night’s sleep – and the ONE night of relative luxury in a zero-starred hotel before the real ‘adventure’ begins. And to think I was anxious about even that. My head is in an entirely different place now. This will be exposure therapy and sleep deprivation beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. And I wonder what on earth will happen – and how will I cope?
We sit and chat with the other people in the group. Time ticks by slowly … so fucking slowly. That’s until we discover that Pasha, an unassuming and surprisingly adventurous member of our group, has just returned from weeks of survival training in the Amazon from ex-SAS. He tells of his expedition, which consisted of him trekking through a virtually uninhabitable jungle for two weeks armed with a traditional bow and arrow, and just a handful of peanut M&Ms as food to last him for the entire duration of his less-than-enviable stay. I simply can’t for the life of me imagine anything worse.
‘There was a hurricane the week before we arrived,’ he tells us, ‘and it meant that all the fish had swum around to the other side of the island, so there was nothing at all to catch in the water.’ He smiles as he regales his experience. ‘I was grateful for the M&Ms.’
WHO ARE THESE FUCKING PEOPLE? I begin to wonder. Who has climbed to Everest base camp and cycled across Cambodia? Who on earth has undergone advanced SAS survival training in the deepest Amazonian rainforests? And why – WHY – am I sitting here amongst them, in Pret A Manger at Heathrow airport’s Terminal 4, thinking I can somehow pretend that I’m one of them?
How can I do this? What am I doing here? I can hardly even fucking ride a bike …
Panic has set in.
33
RIDING FOR MY LIFE
We finally arrive at Playas del Coco on the Pacific Coast for the start of our cycling adventure, after over forty-eight hours of travelling, with probably less than forty-eight minutes of sleep, via Manchester, Heathrow, San José and – of course – Bogota. Pablo Escobar wasn’t waiting to greet us in the Columbian airport arrival lounge with his henchmen, and to be honest, I was so deliriously tired that I wouldn’t have cared less even if he was.
I haven’t had a shower, washed my hair or even changed my clothes for what feels like an eternity. The memory of my first real ‘exposure therapy challenge’ – plucking up the courage to walk into my daughter’s school playground without having washed and conditioned my hair – makes me laugh out loud. It’s been days since I felt clean. My hair now has the feel of a post-Sunday lunch roasting tin: there’s a visible layer of grease which I would challenge even the bra
nd leader Fairy Liquid to successfully tackle. The only mirrors I have at my disposal are those in the toilets of the various airport lounges we have languished in over the past two days. All have fluorescent lights which would make even Meghan Markle look like Corrie’s Vera Duckworth. I’ve stopped assessing the increasingly dark circles under my eyes: it’s simply too hard to focus. My baseball cap has become my new BFF, and gives me some small comfort that I can hide myself in just a tiny way until this is all over.
Dr G, you would be soooo proud of me.
The whole travel itinerary has been shot to pieces. We missed out on our one night in a hotel. And, however basic that might have been, it was our only opportunity for relative comfort until we reach the Caribbean coast in ten days’ time – which is 480 kilometres away from here. The group has had more than ample opportunity to bond, and we’ve established that these guys (and most of the group are guys), have trained hard for this cycling adventure.
A Midlife Cyclist Page 17