The Roads Most Traveled
At some point, someone told us: 'in an expat relationship, one person speaks the language, the other drives.'
It is not a mystery who is who between us. Gesina, given the option, would have a driver under any circumstance. She's also better at Spanish. Sometimes life lines up neatly. Sometimes.
I'm not always in Costa Rica. When I'm there, I drive. When I'm not, Gesina drives.
Driving in Costa Rica, a primer (with gifs).
Driving in Costa Rica is like playing a video game. Pedestrians come out of nowhere. Bicycles and motorbikes swerve around you. There is an occasional horse (when you are outside of the city) and a lot of confident dogs. Vehicles are broken down in absurd places. Semi-trucks park on highway on-ramps. Even on the fast, mostly multi-lane toll road, vehicles stop to let off passengers and people selling snacks and fruit might be walking between the lanes. Most intersections are uncontrolled. At any moment there is something close to hitting you. If not, it is because you are close to hitting something. There is no relaxing on the roads in Costa Rica: you keep your head on a swivel.
At some point I was told that Australian military officers don't run or rush, even if they are in a rush. The point is to maintain control, or at least look like you are in control. I have no idea if this is true. Google cannot easily confirm it. No matter, after 20 years in my head, it's basically fact. The way you drive safely in Costa Rica is to never be in a rush. Being late to most anything is a universal state of being in Costa Rica; the excuse is always traffic. Why fight reality? Don't run or rush. No one expects it or rewards it. The penalty for rushing? The vast majority of accidents we've seen are rear-end collisions.
Related to not rushing is driving slow. Operating at standard pace is still too much. You need to slow down. Most of the time traffic will dictate this. Or the omnipresent speed bumps will, aptly called "reductores" in spanish. But if they don't, slow down. One's ability to successfully keep their head on a swivel is immeasurably improved by driving slowly. Standard highway speed is generally 80KPH, just under 50MPH. Surface streets might mean only progressing between 25KPH and 40KPH. You are not going to be going fast, but frequently it is better to go even slower. You never know when there might be a sudden pedestrian or dog. Or a vehicle without rear lights.
Costa Rica places an immense tax burden on the import of new vehicles. They are available, of course, but with prices 30-50% higher than the US. This means A) the used car market is very strong and B) people drive vehicles into the ground. Sometimes that ground is in a very inconvenient spot. Perhaps it is immediately in front of you. Or somewhere along your route of travel. Perhaps the vehicle is a bus or an old dump truck that is still running, but laboring up a single lane hill at 10kph on an 80kph road.
Less than 50% of Costa Rican drivers have auto insurance. For those that do, it is critical, when an accident occurs, for everyone to stay at the scene for police to ascertain fault and produce paperwork. Should the accident be in the middle of an intersection, a merge point on a highway, or someplace similarly inconvenient, there is no such thing as 'moving your vehicle to the side'. Everyone freezes in place, even if it brings traffic to a dead stop, regardless the severity of the accident. A minor rear end collision with no external damage could hamper traffic flow in a lane for hours. We recently drove through an intersection with an upright motorcycle and car parked in their impact positions. Neither vehicle looked damaged. Both vehicles were still there when we drove back 90 minutes later.
Do you feel more comfortable driving with guardrails, curbs and shoulders? Costa Rica does not care. Only you can prevent your car from slipping into a 6' drainage ditch, a two vehicle depth embankment, or sliding off the side of a mountain. The risk is a you-problem. Not succumbing to the risk is a you-solution.
After all of this, one might still ask, what's the big deal? Keep your head on a swivel, don't rush, drive slow, stay on the road...how complicated could this be?
The final complicating factor of all of this is the near universal use of single lane roads. Even multi-lane highways and toll roads frequently narrow to single lanes for bridges and other various chokepoints, often with zero advance warning. Everything described above in the suburban United States is resolved by more lanes and alternative routing. Neither really exist in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica is renowned for its natural beauty: rugged volcanic mountains, plunging river canyons, expansive jungles and untamed wilderness. More roads and more lanes would be a bit incongruent. Also, they would be very expensive. So they don't exist.
Thus, you must be prepared for the worst.
An example: our recent trip to the Caribbean coast.
There are multiple ways to get to the Caribbean coast from our home on the west side of San Jose. The best case scenario, when traffic is excluded, is a 3.5 hour drive. To accomplish this, you cross most of San Jose, take Highway 32 over the mountains (through a national park) and then follow it across the northern lowlands and banana fields of the Limón province.
Highway 32, as it goes over the mountains, frequently narrows to a single lane, often with sheer rock hillface to one side and an unprotected drop off to the other. It is also the primary semi-truck route from the port of Limón to San Jose. Most of Highway 32 is under construction in the lowland areas, but the lane changes are uncontrolled with little signage; most commonly you know traffic flow is being adjusted because CONCRETE BLOCKS are dropped in the road (we saw a semi-truck that had recently taken some of the blocks head-on, I can't imagine the driver survived).
As I'm writing this, I can't even show you the ideal routing because Highway 32 is currently closed over the mountains (noted by the road closure south of the Braulio Carrillo National Park label).
Highway 32 was closed when we drove there the Saturday before last, so we took the dark blue routing above. It was a straightforward trip to the coast and allowed us to see new countryside, so we really enjoyed the drive out.
Returning, however, was a different story. Not far outside of Limón, it took us 90 minutes to cover a single kilometer, due to a semi-truck failing a left turn and entirely blocking the road. Highway 32 was open over the pass that day, so we took it as the 'shorter' route. We spent more than 60 minutes in each of two different back ups, both for broken down semi-trucks on single-lane stretches. The breakdowns required alternating traffic in the opposite lane - neither time were there any police to control traffic flow.
A 3.5 hour trip took 7 hours. Even though (for the record) we took the route recommended by Waze, the ubiquitious traffic app that provides real time traffic updates in CR better than the alternatives.
In Waze we trust. We just had bad luck and the stalls/accidents happened not far ahead of us. Thankfully, we were prepared for the worst. In addition to the required-by-law box of hazard equipment, it is imperative to have a full tank of gas when you set out and keep water, snacks and activities in the car at all times. With a pack of conversation cards, drawing paper and pencils, fully charged pads and enough food to keep everything happy, we made it home only slightly disgruntled.
It was still a worthwhile trip, and will be the subject of next week's post.