Jim's Blog

Costa Rica - Part 2 - Transportation

In my ever lazy pace of blogging, this is the second part of my Costa Rica "series". See Part 1 to catch up on all the exciting details.

Traveling in Costa Rica more touristy areas is pretty much like anywhere else I've gone minus the public transportation. A bunch of crazy cab drivers who can zoom around while you silently pray to yourself. In Alajuela by the airport they're a little more crazy. Blowing through red lights and stop signs, looking like they are about to smash up their car, getting you to your destination through a dizzying set of roads and back alleys so that you aren't sure exactly where you are. Pretty standard stuff.

Around Arenal we actually rented a small car for the day so we could get around. Driving there was actually kind of fun with the gentle up and down of the roads. That was the first time we had rented a car in a foreign country and over all it was a brief and pleasant experience.

Domestic Air Travel

From San Jose we flew down to Puerto Jimenez on a small 12 passenger plane. It's a very different experience to be so close to the front of the plane where you can reach out and touch the controls. The landing in Port Jim was interesting. I don't know what they are saying with the graveyard right beside the airstrip, but I figured that it was better not to ask. Pretty smooth operation overall. When we flew back it to SJ was really, really windy. As the plane was about to touch down the it was swinging left and right about 30 degrees off center. I think that we landed on one wheel instead of them both touching down at the same time. A great experience.

Taxi's in the Osa

Some taxi's in the Osa are nice, new SUV's. However, most seem to be pickup trucks where they have 2 bench's in that back that you sit on. Padding on the bench is a bonus. Not bad overall. This is how we got from Port Jim to Carate on the taxi colectivo. It was fine going there since they just kept on pulling up more trucks based on how many people were leaving. If you see your stop, just pound on the roof of the cab and the driver will stop. Coming back from Carate was, shall I say, "interesting". They had only sent one truck to do the trip back on the afternoon we decided to leave, but there was 16 or 17 people that wanted to go back on the afternoon bus (note: try and take the morning bus). So in the back of the pickup truck was 11 people, a spare tire, a propane tank (?!?), everyone's gear (huge backpacks), with 3 people literally hanging off of the back and 3 in the cab.

About 50 minutes into our 2 hour journey we met up with another "taxi" that had been sent and half of the people switched to the other cab. About 5 minutes after the transfer we got a flat tire. In the middle of the jungle. Nothing around except for squirrel monkeys. The driver had a X tire iron and actually torqued the end of the iron trying to take off the rusted nuts (he used a pipe for leverage). As I had mentioned in Part 1, people are really friendly and a Tico stopped to talk and help. He had a X tire iron too, but that didn't seem to work. It didn't take long until our driver took out a hammer and chisel. No joke. He was wailing one those nuts to try and get them to turn. I've never seen or heard of someone trying to take a tire off like that. There's a reason: it doesn't work too well. I wasn't paying too much attention and then I heard a car door slam and the guy who was helping us drove off with our driver. Luckily he came back with another tire iron after like 10 minutes, but we didn't know that. He didn't explain it before he left... we wouldn't have understood him anyways. Short story, he came back, was able to change the tire and we got back just a little late. As for how many lug nuts we had on the tire: I don't ask questions I don't want to know the answer.

Posted by jim at March 25, 2008 07:38 AM