Costa Rica Bridge
Originally uploaded by _s dot.
Let me start off by saying I love driving. I love it all the time: Rush Hour, DVP, Country Roads, 401 during construction (which has been all my life), and also driving in Costa Rica...but man, that may have been the most stressful driving of my life. Let me rewind a bit.
So Week 2 after all the family had left, some to head back home some to other parts of Costa Rica, Mel and I decided that we wanted the freedom to decide what we wanted to do on the fly, hence, we rented a car. Mel and I were pretty excited about drving, only to discover that Mel had left her license at home...I was secretly happy about this turn of events since I LOVE DRIVING (I secretly regreted secretly being happy about the license thing later on)..so anyway off we went! The plan was to drive to Volcan Poas on the outskirts of San Jose, stay the night, and then head to the Caribbean Coast.
Travel Fact:
Manuel Antonio to San Jose distance = 275km, Time to Travel 4hours in good weather on a Major Costa Rican Highway.
Anyway long story short we didn't see Poas that day or the morning after due to cloud cover (we did get to see the day we left though, it was beautiful, I think Mel might post that soon)..but due to some luck, the Park Ranger let us know Tropical Depression Ghandi was forming on the Caribbean Coast and wiping away all the roads..FUN! So we changed our plans to find the sun..we decided to drive to the Nicoya Coast to a wonderful little beach town that Lonely Planet couldn't stop raving about called Playa Del Coco.
Travel Fact:
Distance to Playa Del Coco from San Jose 305 km, Driving Time = 6.5 hours on the worst roads I have ever seen.
No pothole in Toronto can compare to any of the ones we saw on this trek. For your viewing pleasure we shot this video of a typical stretch of road, note, this is the Main Pan American Highway, the largest highway in Costa Rica.
Anyway, to spare you the details we now hate Lonely Planet too, Playa Coco was Kaka. Mel would want me to remind everyone that I was a wreck after this drive, cranky tired and moody..I blame the drive :) anyway, we soon realised that the sedan we had was nice but we'd need an SUV. We switched cars in Liberia(30km away) to take what the locals call the Monkey trail, the fastest way to get from Liberia to Playa Tamarindo a place we knew and liked :)
Here's a little taste of the Monkey Trail
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Yah..nuts
Anyway, here's some take aways
1)Get a Fricken SUV from the get go
2)Get a Standard Transmission, cause we needed it, not sure we could have pulled it off with an Automatic
3)If you want a very chill vacation, let someone else drive you
4)if you love driving, definatley do it...just break up your drives
5)Keep aware of the exchange rate: 1 Costa Rican km = 5 Canadian km
6)The fastest you are ever going to drive is 90km/h for maybe 1-2 minutes at a time
7)There is a cop around the next bend, we must have seen over 20 and pulled over 6 times. 5 for no apparent reason (I'm fairly certain it was to check Mel out) and once when we were speeding (HA!), but the cop was nice, after admiring the Hena / Mendhi on Mel's arm and coming to the conclusion that there was no way we could communicate with each other, he said something about being Canadian, had a laugh and let us go on our way..wonder what he would have done if we had American Passports?
OK back to packing. We leave tomorrow night! Cheers
1 comment:
Good video but a lot of reflection off the windshield ... hey Mel, next time, stick your head out the window to film !! :P
Those roads look as bad as the ones we went through from Chichen Itza to Tulum in Mexico during our trip in Cancun a couple of years back. The potholes were f-ing huge and we were driving some crappy little Chevy. I swear, these potholes were like PONDS in the middle of the road. We could never tell how deep each one was so I would try to swerve to avoid them. The shocks took a beating but I was surprised how durable the tires were.
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