An R 18 Spin Through Costa Rica

[Hugh Janus]

Costa Rica’s Pacific coast offers clear skies, clean water, and beautiful backdrops for the elegant R 18. (Hermann Kopf/)

It wasn’t until the third day of BMW’s Costa Rican Great Getaway ride that everything snapped into place. Suddenly, the road was perfect, the climate was perfect, and the German manufacturer’s R 18 cruiser felt like the best bike in the world.

Up until then, all the elements had been present, but asynchronous. The roads were good, but they were also crowded as we worked to get out of the capital city of San José. The weather was hot, but the bad kind of hot, close and muggy, extremely so by the western-facing Pacific beaches. And the bike was a beautiful sight, but it was clumsy in slow-speed traffic and ill-suited to the daylong routes our guides had chosen for us. “Berlin Built,” which had felt right to me when I rode the R 18 around Malibu last year, felt all wrong. As one of our group said, “It’s like the upper half of your body is on one motorcycle and the lower half of your body is on another.”

Then, along the shore of Lake Arenal, in the shadow of the great Arenal volcano, leaning through the low-speed sweepers that were carrying us in and out of the jungle canopy, it was all pura vida perfect.

Bike, rider, and environment meshed perfectly on the twisty roads circling Lake Arenal in the Guanacaste province. (Hermann Kopf/)

A group of us had been invited south to this peaceful Central American country for a taste of The Great Getaway, BMW’s new touring program. The new travel scheme, which is already successful in Portugal, pairs Motorrad with the highly regarded ELePhanT Moto tour company to deliver an eight-day Costa Rica “Getaway” groove. We were getting a four-day version, riding R 18s roughly 100 to 150 miles a day—emphasis on roughly, as it happened—skirting south from the capital and westward toward the Pacific Ocean.

The able guide team, led by ELePhanT Colombia founder Mauricio “Micho” Escobar and his ELePhanT Costa Rica partner Chris White and assisted by a fantastically capable staff of locals, had organized a delectable selection of hotels, restaurants, cafés, and tourist stops. These were connected by a series of roads that would condense the highlights of the eight-day tour into our shorter schedule.

ELePhanT Moto co-founders Chris White, left, and Micho Escobar, expressing some of the local <i>pura vida</i> spirit. (Charles Fleming/)

Through the guides we were introduced to café frio, an iced sugar-and-caffeine beverage that sent me soaring; pipa, cool, fresh coconut juice, sipped right from the shell, that’s sold at roadside stands everywhere; table staples casado (a plate of rice, beans, protein, and vegetables) and gallo pinto (rice and beans), which along with fried plantains make up much of the local diet; and the Churchill, a combination shaved ice/halo-halo/fruit cup/ice cream sundae offered by seemingly thousands of beachfront shacks along the Pacific coast.

I started to think that the real secret to Costa Rica’s pura vida spirit was not some amorphous aloha vibe, but simply inevitable in a country whose two traditional agricultural products are sugar cane and the coffee bean.

Roadside fruit stands everywhere offer refreshing drinks of fresh coconut juice, known locally as <i>pipa</i>, giving the author an Anthony Bourdain moment. (Hermann Kopf/)

The accommodations were all top-drawer, as you might expect from a tour that starts at $7,600 per person. Standouts included the Marriott hotels in San José and Los Sueños, the beautiful lodgings and dining at Las Catalinas, the stunning lunch at Villa Caletas near Jacó, the overpowering coffees at Café & Macadamia and La Casita del Café, and the jungle hotel experience at Lost Iguana near Arenal. I am not going to discuss the zip lining experience where, flying hundreds of feet above the canopy, I lost a part of my mind that I still haven’t recovered.

Every night delivered a postcard-perfect sunset. Warm water lapping at black sand beaches. Hot riders lapping at the tropical cocktails and ice-cold beer that seemed to materialize, magically, at the end of every day’s ride. The jungle and rainforest sections teeming with perfumed flowers and colorful fauna: red and green parrots, tree-bark-toned iguanas, and the ever-present coatimundi, a creature that looks like a dog crossed with a raccoon.

Nighttime on the Pacific coast brought scenic sunsets to black sand beaches lapped by warm ocean water, making for refreshing swims at the end of the riding days. (Charles Fleming/)

The only problem was the bike.

BMW, eager to attract a certain kind of customer and increase sales of its “Big Boxer” cruiser, had designated the R 18 as the only available mount for this tropical tour.

The look and the vibe are exquisite. The R 18 First Edition, long and low, gleams in black and chrome, from the deep onyx of the pin-striped gas tank, fenders, and fork to the .999-grade silver look of the fishtail exhaust pipes, valve covers, handlebars, and headlamp bezel. It is a standing work of art, with classic lines evoking the 1936 R5; note the way the swingarm triangle resembles a hardtail. Yet the R 18 is contemporary in sleek design features like the absence of cables, wires, or other visually unnecessary detritus.

And it’s hard to imagine a more cruisy location than Costa Rica. Almost entirely absent of freeways, the terrain is laced with narrow two-lane roads slicing over and through the mountainous cordillera running north-south across the country. The sun is strong, the air heavy with the perfume of tropical fruits and flowers, and the pace of life is siesta-slow.

We threw our legs over the big 1,800cc boxers early on the first day and set out. From the initial throb of BMW’s biggest-ever motor, whose opposing-twin cylinders and massive flywheel produce a pleasant left-to-right rocking roll, it was clear that the promised 116 pound-feet of torque and 81 hp would be more than sufficient, even on a 761-pound motorcycle, to scoot us out of the city and into the countryside. (CW dyno tests put those numbers at 103.1 hp and 81.3 pound-feet.)

The throbbing heart and soul of the R 18, and perhaps its prettiest feature, is the massive 1,800cc powerplant. (Hermann Kopf/)

Everything connecting the flywheel to the rear wheel felt perfect. The firm but easy clutch pull, the well-oiled transmission thunk of gear engagement, the audible spin of the exposed and chromed drive shaft, the fat footprint of the 16-inch rear wheel.

The beach-cruiser sweep of the handlebars and the “harmonious ergonomics” of the mid-mounted footboards and the narrow rider triangle felt comfortable, at first. The optional hill-hold feature and reverse gear, balky though that was at times, were helpful in awkward situations. The 27.2-inch seat height made short work of getting feet down at stoplights. The absence of the optional windscreen seemed incidental, as the weather was mild and breezy. The 3 inches of almost-hardtail travel in the rear seemed adequate for well-maintained Costa Rican roads.

Some riders on the tour had trouble adapting to the heel-toe shifter—actually two pieces, to allow for more specific adjustment—that BMW pairs with the floorboards. Others got used to them immediately and came to like them.

Guanacaste province is laced with sinuous sweepers, perfect for the R 18’s engine and ergonomics. Less fun on the long straight hauls, the bike was perfect on sections such as these. (Hermann Kopf/)

But all of those details gradually seemed more suited to café crawling than cross-country cruising. For longer-distance rides, many R 18 buyers will opt for the R 18 B or Transcontinental models, which come with windshields, saddlebags, and more touring features. By the end of the first day, some of the riders were complaining. By the end of the second day, most were.

The seats were the primary target for the group’s bitterness. The bikes were equipped with a variety of thrones; in addition to stock, BMW offers a single-seat Hommage, Custom Brown, Custom Fastback Brown, Day Rider Brown, Weekender Black, and Cross Country Black. By general agreement they were all uncomfortable.

I thought it was just me, because I have experienced diminishing tush cushion and suffer from MABBS, or middle-aged bony-butt syndrome, so I kept my discomfort to myself. But soon even the junior members of our group were griping. No matter which seat they were on or what kit they were wearing (I had an extra layer of protection in the form of my Moto-Skiveez), everyone’s butt was sore.

The beautiful big boxer, too, prevents a traditional mounting of crash bars and freeway pegs, so some of the riders were complaining that they didn’t know where to put their feet when their legs needed a rest. As an accessory, BMW does offer a rider leg rest that mounts above the cylinder head; on a hot ride, that might get a bit toasty.

The bulging heads of the boxer engine don’t allow for traditional freeway peg positioning. But BMW offers accessory leg rests to solve that problem. (Hermann Kopf/)

It wasn’t just the hindquarter issue that gave me trouble. Before the ride ended I noticed I was sore around the midsection. For days afterward I felt like I’d gone 15 rounds with the Abdomenizer from hanging onto those wide bars and fighting a Costa Rican headwind.

Motorrad offers a panoply of other accessory Berlin Built options, many of them designed to personalize and improve the ergonomics. In addition to multiple seat choices, there are rider backrests, the aforementioned windscreens and footboards, plus handlebar risers and multiple beach bars and even apehanger selections. Also available are replacement wheels, exhaust pipes, and more.

But the bike’s basic geometry would not change much. The R 18 might be labeled a cruiser by its makers, but I suspect the people who’ll love this BMW the most are the café types who will ride an hour or less to their favorite hot spot and sit with a cold drink admiring their cool bike.

The Great Getaway tours are intended to be team-building exercises in camaraderie. By the last day, several fast friendships had developed in this riding group. (Hermann Kopf/)

The morning after the perfect Lake Arenal afternoon we were back on the bikes, making our final run of the trip. The road circled us around the lake, into the hills, through the pleasant agricultural town of La Fortuna, and onto a secondary road that wound through the hills. For the next several hours, the R 18 was perfect again; the right bike on the right road in the right weather, with the added satisfaction of the right people.

So was it a Great Getaway? Despite the R 18′s shortcomings, yes. Pura vida.

<i>¡Pura Vida!</i> (Hermann Kopf/)

Source

[Buckster]

Gay.