A Little Backup

 I had a little bit of time yesterday to trudge through my last computer full of thousands of images.  If you want to see the real Costa Rica, I have a little more digging to do.   So lets back up just a little to San Jose.  

This is a typical street, jam packed with cars.  There was not a time in the day that traffic wasn't terrible.  As you can tell, none of their electricity is buried underground and is the most suspect I've ever seen.  I cringed every time I turned on a light switch.

 

Aside from the two main roads in the country that are paved, there are some villages with concrete paver roads.  Here's how it works.  The entire town gets together and decides they want to fix the road.  The government does repairs only up to the edge of town.  It's up to the town to pay for and install asphalt or bricks.  Asphalt is hard to come by and we saw very little.  Each little town also has it's own government so to speak.  No business income in town equals dirt roads.  A rich (by their standards) tequila farm will get you pavers.

The towns seemed to have electricity but the rural areas had very little.  Every intersection had a rats nest of wires.  I doubt they have electrical inspectors anywhere.  The same goes for house inspectors. 

This was the fabulous pool at the hotel, but we saw no one swimming in it.  There is a block wall with razor wire around the entire perimeter.  Every house in the neighborhood also had block walls, razor wire and bars on the windows.  The capitol of San Jose is not where you want to live.

I did find this map showing our trip.  The line to the far left goes to Tamarindo.  Much further south on the coast is where all the tourists and ex-pats go.  We of course went on the off-road trip of Costa Rica.  Little did we know just how FAR off that road we were going to get!!

This is our beautiful new bus.  I have to say it was very comfortable with lots of room.  Our group took up the entire bus.  Lucky for us at least twice we got to sit right up front.  I was a little suspect when I talked to the driver who said this was the first time he ever drove it.

Or maybe it wasn't lucky at all since we could see where we were going.  This is what it looked like for the majority of the trip.  There were a couple of times where the driver had to stop, get out and survey the road with the tour guide to see if he really thought he could make it.  Patty and I were holding our breath.  

On one serious side slope, the entire bus load of people actually leaned to the left to keep us from falling over.  If you like excitement, this tour is for you!!!

Bakersfield or bust ... I'm almost packed and ready to head out.  It's froggy this morning (that's what we all the fog around here) so it will be a late takeoff.  See you down the road.