Pura Vida

Todd, my friends Michelle and Bryan from Chicago and I took a trip to Costa Rica over the 4th of July holiday. We visited San Jose, Santa Teresa/Mal Pais and the following is the story of a drive Todd and I took to the town of La Fortuna, which sits next to the beautiful Arenal Volcano.

After dropping off Michelle and Bryan at the local “airport” (this place made a Greyhound bus stop look legitimate), Todd and I trekked our curiously indestructible Rav-4 rental toward the Gulf of Nicoya to catch a ferry from Paquera to Punterenas, the first leg of our journey. We were running late because a couple of incidents (unintentional 2-hour breakfast and burying the car in the bottomless pit of mud called a driveway) had set us back over two hours. Luckily we were in Costa Rica, LAND OF NO RULES, so Todd had no problem speeding past the guy who was already going 30 km over the speed limit (or what I like to call “speed suggestion”) because we were simultaneously being passed by another car. We ended up getting there with time to spare; it turns out that similar to Costa Rican laws, Costa Rican time is rarely enforced. Finally on the ferry a casual 30 minutes or so after its scheduled departure, we relaxed and indulged in a random assortment of fairground-type food, one of which revealed its innards and freaked out Todd enough for him to stop eating it.

The ride was an hour and a half of smooth sailing. When we got to the other side, Todd drove the car off the boat, I hopped in and we were off toward the north central valley. Well, until we weren’t. Just as we got out of the ferry town, we came to a standstill. And when I say standstill I mean Tetris, but with cars. What the hell were people thinking? We were obviously not moving yet drivers just kept coming around us as if there was some place to go. Instead, the small two-lane road just bloated with cars like a dam on a river. I was worried that the road was impassable and started trying to figure different routes on the eleventy-billion maps I had, but then I looked around at everyone in the other cars and they seemed utterly not surprised. Nothing on their faces said, “Crap, what’s going on? I’m worried.” In fact, no ones face in Costa Rica had that look ever. So we attempted to adopt the same aloof yet serene expression (Todd did well at this) and shortly after, cars started moving. Amazing.

The rest of the drive was nearly a constant climb in elevation; it was gorgeous. We past through thick rainforest, small towns with roadside stands and fields of what looked like tropical corn, marijuana and maybe coffee cherries. After 5 hours of hearing me imitate the car in a sad cartoon voice that said, “Shift me, shiiiiiiift me please!” (drive one Camaro in your life and you think you know all about manual transmission), we made it to our hotel that sat perched on a hill across from the volcano. We successfully road tripped in a country that doesn't have addresses and the road atlas looks more like a map of human veins than a navigation device. Hip hip!

We spent a couple days exploring the fantastic area of La Fortuna and Arenal then had to head back to San Jose to catch an early morning flight. I became a little weary on the drive as I thought the rug might be pulled out from our magical car ride when we show up at Budget driving something that once looked like a car. However, after reviewing the copy of our rental paper and seeing that on the car illustrations where employees are suppose to mark existing scratches, etc. the man back in Santa Teresa had just scribble over every inch of the car at every angle. So this other man at the San Jose Budget looked at the papers, looked at the car, looked under the car, looked at the papers, looked around the car then looked at us and said, "Okay." "Okay" the universal word for "we don't speak each others language so I am just going to fill the silence even though I don't necessarily mean 'okay.'" They even charged us less than we were expecting. "Thank you for driving our car through rivers. Here is a discount." This was the complete opposite of what I experienced renting a car in France. "Oh mon dieu, look at deez scratch. You pay 800 Euro."

Overall, the trip was incredible. Like I'm ready to move there. But did you hear? I'm moving to New Mexico. Another year and another town eats my dust.

D.Riggs

Small thing: I love when a dog sits when you tell it to sit. I feel so powerful.


After our flight from San Jose to Tambor.


Todd standing outside our bungalow in Santa Teresa.


Walking down the beach at sunset.


The view from our hotel looking at Arenal Volcano.


Plantains!


I wanna go fast.


25,000 for gas! Just kidding, just kidding. It was in colones. I really had you going there.


Harvesting tropical corn.


On the drive. The trees are blurred because we are going 500 mph.