In the USA, I mean. No potholes, no gravel, no pavement dropping off the side down the mountain. No missing manhole covers. No ditches. No roads (so far) that go from pavement to gravel to rutted riverbed to pavement to riverbed to grassy knoll… well, you get the picture.
No terrified pedestrians waiting to cross the street… in fact, U.S. pedestrians are brazen. Yeah, they step right off the curb and cross anytime. Sometimes without looking!!!!
No horns. I miss horns.
And drivers here are so coddled: streets are named here AND they have signs with their names right on them at every corner, some with the street numbers included so you know about where you are all the time. It’s so cluttered looking. I mean, can’t anyone remember what road they are on for more than three blocks???
There are one way signs on all the one way streets so you don’t get to play the guessing game to see if a street is one way or not. In Costa Rica, you have to approach a corner slowly, wondering if you can turn right or left, needing to see which way the cars are driving or parked on that street, since there is no other indication. Correction: sometimes there is an arrow painted on the road. Often wrong, because city elders change the direction at some point in time but not the arrow. Waste of paint.
Drivers let you in here. That is so co-dependent. What, they need to be liked?
U.S. drivers stop for red lights and stop signs. That is interesting. They don’t stop in the middle of the road to run in a store for a minute. It’s all so… boring here.
I miss Costa Rica and I’m not even unpacked yet.
I know. One of the first roads I regularly traveled when first back has all these signs “Narrow Bridge” “Narrow road” “Steep curve” – it was nothing. In CR it would have been a primo road. Here it was a perilous side road.
looks like the very thing you escaped from is returning to aggravate you, lol
the USA is so over-regulated with street and highway signs and cluttered with billboards, traffic lights every block, etc. No wonder road rage is the norm here. Sorry you have to leave beautiful CR where simplicity and stress free living was taken for granted
I STILL prefer the deteriorated Costa Rican country roads upon which on many of them you will probably not see more than several other vehicles during your journey. I am so sick to death of sitting in bumper to bumper Miami traffic with stop lights every quarter mile.
The funny thing is, I’ve seen blog post after blog post bemoaning the deteriorating state of America’s infrastructure!
They should visit the third (well, second and a half) world once in a while.
That said, when I return to the States next month, I don’t expect to miss Costa Rican roadways. Except the cattle. For a while I lived outside Bebedero, and it was charming (usually… when I wasn’t in a hurry… and who in their right mind comes to Costa Rica to be in a hurry?) to stop and wait for the cows to move out of the way.
Some of my favorite memories are of “traffic jams” on Tico roads, where the cows have the right of way simply because they are there. I, like James, am sick to death of waiting in the rush hour traffic (except that mine are on my local California freeways). I can hardly wait to get to my property near Lake Arenal, where there are more monkeys than commuters (well, almost).
Never thought about road signs being part of our over-regulated lives. Maybe that is the case, and I’ll enjoy the “freedom” of not knowing the name of a street when I approach an intersection in CR. Feels like a problem I’d love to deal with!
Well, Saratica, I’m really interested in following your observations now that you’re back in the good old US of A.
All my best,
Fred
That’s funny, Jen, but just exactly how it is!
George, that is nail-on-the-head accurate too: the stress free life. The number 1 thing I’ve taken from Costa Rica is slowing down. Way down.
Yes, traffic sucks. I don’t look forward to that at all. We had some in Escazú but you learn how to avoid it. With any luck, I will learn that here as well!
Coises, loved my cows in the road. How about coming up on one sitting in the road in the dark unexpectedly? Those are moments you know you ain’t in Kansas anymore…
I hated the idea of addresses in Costa Rica, Fred, because then we’d have junk mail and street signs and house numbers and more eye candy telling us where we are and where we are going… yuck. I loved having to know the landmarks, knowing to ask for the landmarks in a new place. It’s cool and way easier on the stress level for me.
Sally,
Not sure I’m ready for the modification of your header any more than you were ready to go back to gringolandia.
But… maybe you could soften the blow for some of us left still here with a minor change. How about? :
A Broad in Kaintuck-A-Rica
or maybe
A Broad in Bluegrass-A-Rica
Just maundering a bit…. [ sigh ]
==
I admit, it’s a little shocking… but I’m not sure where I’m going to end up and I only want to change the header once. At least only once a year, lol!
Saratica, I wish you’d do the Camino Santiago. Meat for a blog there I’ll tell ya! LOL Some do it for religious reasons…I didn’t…not religious! But most do it for spiritual reasons and my son, aged 22 and I walked 693 K’s in May from Pamplona to Santiago for a rebout of the spiritual genre. And boy did it work. I have a feeling you would like it big time and I for one would be glued to my computer if you did.
Wow sounds like you are settling right in LOL!
Actually when I run, don’t drive here so can’t relate to that, but when I run in the States it is soooo boring. No crazy drivers dodging pot holes at the peril of hitting me, no dudes staring at my daughters chest and almost hitting me, and no people on cell phones that try to hit me just for the heck of it! Man I miss that adrenalin rush when I run there.I have a theory that the adrenalin of the run here actually burns more calories than running there, just a theory. Not to mention the frequent jumps off the road into the tall grass and mud, man I hate getting my shoes wet because that means three days to dry time. So I will play chicken with that darn car just to save the tennies!
Have fun and be nice to runners and bikers!
I can’t wait till it REALLY hits you that you’re not “home” anymore. Maybe you’ll fall right in to the U.S.A. way but my guess is you’ll be missing the craziness you found here. Miss ya girl!
I bet it is nice that everyone speaks your language!
Sharon, THIS Camino Santiago? http://www.caminodesantiago.me.uk/
Yikes. 693Ks is like walking from Key West to Ocala… yeah, fodder for the blog. I’ll keep it in mind!
Well, everyone may be speakin’ my language in KY, but you’d hardly know it.