The car rental place is 20 kms from SJO. With the added complication of my having no credit card, it was 3:30 before we were in our Yaris and on our way to the remote mountaintop “finca” my wife had booked – 60 kms from San Jose. As I now know, you do not want to be in a car anywhere near a city in Costa Rica at that hour. In all my life I’ve never seen so much traffic congestion. It took us two hours to travel 17 kms, and almost five to reach our destination. It was fully dark for half that time, road signage here is famously inadequate, and our finca – “a hidden jewel” – is difficult to find by design. It seemed a miracle to me when we finally arrived.
Among my discoveries about Costa Rica gleaned from our first day’s drive was the relaxed attitude of “Ticos” (Costa Ricans). In the chaos of all that traffic and continuously merging lines of vehicles, I didn’t see any frustration among the drivers around me. Under similar conditions in Canada I would expect to see glowering faces and violent acts of road rage. Here, it seems nobody is in a hurry and nothing is worth getting bent out of shape for.
