Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
Alone in Costa Rica: Bikepacking La Gira de Costa (Video)
Leigh Foster traveled solo through Costa Rica with a bike and a small camera, aiming to capture the feeling of the journey along La Gira de Costa. There’s no narration—just light, sound, and solitude. Watch Leigh’s first film with some stunning visuals from the route here…
Words, video, and stills by Leigh Foster
Every bikepacking trip I’ve ever done has been alone. Not by principle but by default. I don’t know many people who do this kind of thing, or at least not many I’d want beside me every mile, every night. So solitude has always been part of the deal. I’ve grown used to it—even found comfort in it. But there’s a difference between choosing to be alone and having no other option. I didn’t fully understand that until this trip.
Usually, being alone on a bike doesn’t really mean being cut off. Out there, people notice you. They’re curious. I am too. The interactions are unfiltered and often surprisingly open. Some of the deepest conversations I’ve ever had were with people I met once in some unfamiliar town I’ll never return to. But Costa Rica was different.
I rode Loop Four, the longest and most remote version of La Gira de Costa. Unlike the routes that stay closer to the Nicoya Peninsula, Loop Four pushes deep into the countryside. Most of what I passed through felt more like scattered outposts than towns. A handful of homes. A lone pulpería. A single dirt road stretching out in both directions. English wasn’t spoken. And though I studied Spanish each night, I wasn’t able to hold a conversation. Not even close. So I found myself among people but isolated from them. It wasn’t quite loneliness. But it was something close to total disconnection. And over time, it started to wear on me.
I spent the first two weeks of the trip without a single real conversation. By the time I reached a lakeside restaurant near Nuevo Arenal and met a man who spoke English, the simple act of talking felt profound—like eating after days without food. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to talk to someone until I finally could. After that, as I moved into more touristed areas, understandable language returned. But by then, something had already changed. The silence had done something.
At first, this level of solitude is uncomfortable. Your thoughts bounce around, searching for something to hold onto—for distraction, for relief. But there’s nothing. Just the road, your body, your mind. And in time, the dust starts to settle.
The discomfort doesn’t disappear, but it changes. It softens. The fog lifts. Questions you’ve been carrying for months begin to answer themselves, not through effort but because there’s finally space for the solutions to emerge. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. There were moments when I would’ve given anything for a second pair of hands—just someone to share the load. Physically. Mentally. But more than that, I just wanted someone to be with. Someone to eat with. Someone to talk to.
But when you don’t have that and you realize no one’s coming—not tonight, not tomorrow—you meet a different version of yourself. Not the one shaped by conversation or connection. The one you can’t usually hear, drowned out by distraction, buried beneath the noise. The one that surfaces only when everything else falls away.
This level of solitude doesn’t feel poetic. It feels bare. Raw. And if you can sit with it—if you can ride all the way through—it hands you back a quiet kind of strength. A steadier sense of who you are, and what you can carry, not some new version of yourself, but the one that’s been there all along, underneath the noise, waiting to be heard. It’s not easy. But in my experience, it’s worth it.
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