I was too young to drive when my family moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, but even as a passenger, I remember the comments. It went something like this: “You know when you hit the PA state line because the quality of the road immediately falls off a cliff.” As I aged into driving, I would commiserate with fellow motorists about the poor quality of the Keystone State’s roads—because that’s just what everybody did. To some degree, it did seem true. If you ventured south, as soon as you hit the Maryland border, the roads suddenly became smoother.
With an admitted background as a road-complainer, I ditched Pennsylvania, my car, and the rest of my life and moved to Costa Rica. As soon as I arrived, I realized what a whiner I had been. Costa Rica’s roadways are a different animal altogether. Instead of the pavement not being perfectly flat, the issue was that there was a hole in the road so large and dangerous that a good citizen planted a banana tree in it so people wouldn’t lose a wheel in the crater.
One has a choice when moving to a new place: accept the differences or complain about them. Since the road quality changed at the same time as the language, culture, food, and nearly every other part of life, complaining never seemed like the solution. So, the only thing to do was get used to it and learn to navigate my new home’s roadways safely.
While many metropolitan areas and major roads in Costa Rica are paved, I’ve spent the entirety of my adventure living on back roads and in small towns. As soon as you leave a heavily trafficked roadway, you leave the asphalt and enter the realm of the dirt road. Navigating Costa Rica’s dirt roads requires different tactics depending on the season.
Let’s start with dry season. Often, at the end of the previous rainy season, the good folks at the local municipality do the hard work of fixing the dirt roads. Consequently, the beginning of dry season is pretty smooth sailing. Without potholes to avoid, you can build up a decent speed. That said, dirt road etiquette dictates that you can’t go too fast. That’s because plenty of people are walking, biking, and pushing strollers along the same roads.
Besides the obvious safety risks, another major issue is the dust cloud you leave in your wake if you’re moving too quickly. Nothing says “I care more about me than you” like making your neighbors eat a cloud of dirt.
Rainy season dirt road driving is completely different. It only takes a few decent storms to bring out the potholes. Now the problem isn’t going too fast—it’s going slow enough to avoid destroying your vehicle’s suspension as you hit every puddle in the road.
Slow commutes, mud-splashed cars, and bumpy rides are manageable. The real rainy season problem comes when you get a little too brave and decide to chance it through a muddy area, water-filled pothole, or swollen stream—only to find out halfway through that you’re not making it out.
Learning to navigate dirt roads has been just a small part of the education I’ve received by living far from where I’m from. Sometimes the road quality is good, sometimes it’s bad. The truth is, a lot of people work hard to make them as good as possible. And as far as I know, the act of complaining has never successfully resurfaced a road.
So, I avoid kicking up too much dust in dry season, try to dodge the puddles in rainy season, and when I’m in Pennsylvania visiting family, I shake my head disapprovingly at my younger self for being such a whiner.
About the Author
Vincent Losasso, founder of Guanacaste Wildlife Monitoring, is a biologist who works with camera traps throughout Costa Rica
