A week from now I’ll be back in Costa Rica. Three months gone, and I’m ready for the plane to touch down and to hear the words “Bienvenidos a Costa Rica.” I’m even looking forward to slogging through immigration and customs and walking out into the labyrinth of ride hustlers. Their numbers will be fewer as I arrive around midnight. It’s a sketchy hour for public transportation.
Up here I used Waymo driverless cabs. They all drove flawlessly. I felt like taking notes. They stopped, merged, turned and anticipated upcoming obstructions with casual effortlessness. Modern tech in total control: every street, every alleyway, every sidewalk, curb and driveway mapped in meticulous detail, all movement fed through and controlled by the 21st-century god of Artificial Intelligence. It was a weird, freaky dream at first, sitting in a moving car with an empty driver’s seat, but after a few minutes I was a believer. I sat and watched in awe as we magically navigated the winding, hilly streets of Los Angeles.
I know of no driverless cabs in Costa Rica. Could that day arrive? Costa Rica is no different than most places – the masses enjoy tech and are ready to buy the latest gadget. The line might be drawn at driverless vehicles. Their arrival would be the one thing that would unite rojo taxis, pirate taxis and Uber drivers. It’s easy to imagine ambush scenarios, with the torched remains of the robocars left behind as a protest.
Speaking of scenarios – as financial fraud (and getting away with it) seems to be a growth industry worldwide, I wondered what would happen if one of these driverless cars bumped me or maybe ran over my foot. I would sue, of course, as you may have heard of Waymo’s parent company – something called Google. I would sue for billions. In my scenario, I had my lawyer picked out, a guy called Sweet James. His billboards are seen throughout the L.A. metro area, and yes, that is the name he goes by. I could not trick the cars, though, so Google survived.
Weird fantasies like that are another sign that I need to get back to Costa Rica, where we have no Sweet James equivalents. I was talking last week with a friend whose time in Costa Rica goes back as far as mine. I noticed we complained about the same things – government corruption, bureaucracy, the colón battering the dollar. I also noticed we talked a lot more about amazing places we’d been in country, and the beautiful beaches (both of us partial to Manuel Antonio), the greenery and scenery, all that is Costa Rica – our picturesque little nation populated with friendly, generous locals.
In a few days I’ll be back at nine degrees north latitude. After three months in Gringolandia, I’ll be ready to slow down and decompress. The 180-kilometer Costa Rican leg of my journey from airport to home, via taxi and bus, will take as long as the 5,000-kilometer flight from Los Angeles to Juan Santamaría. That sounds like a good start. Let the decompression begin.
