Troubled Bridges

The first time Jal and I came to Costa Rica, the December ’05 exploratory trip (all of five days) to determine if Costa Rica was The Exotic Place To Spend A Year, we did a 24-hour speed tour of Manuel Antonio. I had heard there were monkeys here and I was going...

ETA: Daylight!

When you make your plane reservations, try to time your arrival so you have plenty of daylight left, particularly if you are renting a car and driving off somewhere your first day. You want to do your driving the first few times (months?) before dark, no later than...

Renting A Car

If you are the adventurous type and will be driving yourself around Costa Rica in a rental car, bring a compass (we have the Brunton) and a GPS. Garmin is state of the art. We have a Lowrance Avionics GPS, big screen and expensive. Jal was taking flying lessons before...

Hiring A Driver

Although we have never hired a car and driver, lots of people do and are very happy with the service. Jal, my pilot, uses a compass, a map and a GPS to get around. Now, we can pretty much get anywhere. But if you don’t care for the time buses can take (not to...

Arrive Alive

Every night I risk my life driving to rehearsal. The play opens tomorrow, then runs 3 weekends, 3 performances each. It’s been six weeks of driving every night and so far, so good. I’m alive. To add a nice layer of panic, the boys are working the play so...

Stop and/or Go

Driving in Costa Rica is a wild ting, mon. Not for the faint of heart. I didn’t drive here for the first six weeks. Scareless me was too terrified to take the wheel. First off, it’s all so confusing. Too many intersections have one too many choices: either...

Holy Freight Train, Batman!

If you are driving in Costa Rica, you need to know about the quirky way they handle railroad crossings. See the sign in this photo? These are before and after railroad tracks. Sometimes. Sometimes only on one side. And only some tracks. Not all, not by a long shot....