Run the spine
of a country.

It begins above the tree line. The Cordillera de Talamanca is the country's continental spine — an ancient, uplifted ridge of black and green that separates the Pacific watershed from the Caribbean. The route opens on the spine itself, in the páramo above three thousand metres, then drops to the Pacific flank for the rest of the expedition — down through the Dota Valley, out to the central Pacific coast, and south into the Osa Peninsula. Nine summits on the first running day. A self-supported descent into a valley where families you have never met will hand you agua dulce and empanadas through their kitchen doors. Esteban has been refining this sequence for more than a decade.It begins above the tree line. The Cordillera de Talamanca is the country's continental spine — an ancient, uplifted ridge of black and green that separates the Pacific watershed from the Caribbean. The route opens on the spine itself, in the páramo above 9,800 feet, then drops to the Pacific flank for the rest of the expedition — down through the Dota Valley, out to the central Pacific coast, and south into the Osa Peninsula. Nine summits on the first running day. A self-supported descent into a valley where families you have never met will hand you agua dulce and empanadas through their kitchen doors. Esteban has been refining this sequence for more than a decade.

Nothing about it is left to chance. Six to eight athletes, two professional guides, one dedicated photographer, and a logistical commitment as quiet as it is uncompromising. Each night you sleep in a lodge chosen for the way the morning light falls across the bedroom, not for its star count. Each day's distance is calibrated to the previous day's recovery. Each meal has a name and an origin and someone who made it.

You finish the way every long expedition should finish — at a long table, with people who started as strangers and end as the only ones who understand what just happened.