Patrick Brunelle

What can happen in any 32 hour period in Costa Rica

By Patrick Brunelle ⋅ January 2, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

This posting is primarily a warning to anyone traveling to this wonderful country and thinking they can drive as they do in their own country of origin. Obviously as a prominent tour operator in this beautiful country we would like to suggest taking private transportation, but if you want to rent-a-car we can arrange it for you, but please read first and beware!!

Let me preface this story by stating this is not altogether abnormal for my friends and I as danger and trouble seem to follow us around when we travel.

Three of my best friends from Canada were visiting me for 10 days shortly after I had arrived in Costa Rica to start my life here. Luckily both myself and George spoke Spanish reasonably well and we decided to rent an SUV and drive to Arenal to see the Volcano and experience the hot springs the Friday after they had arrived. To give you an idea of the type of absurdity that normally surrounds our trips together, up until this point of our trip we had already destroyed 2 of our 4 digital cameras in various ridiculous scenarios involving two unforgiving basic elements: sun and water.

Anyhow, on the way there my friend George was driving and decided to stop the Toyota Prado that we had rented and fill it up. An elderly Costa Rican gentleman from this small town where we stopped tried to engage in a seemingly important conversation as he gesticulated incessantly and raised his voice as we pumped the gas. According to George what the man was speaking was inaudible, although he felt it was most likely a Costa Rican Spanish dialect he had never heard before so he thanked him for wise advice he did not understand and we continued on our way. Two kilometers later, once our Prado had broken down, we realized what the nice elderly Costa Rican gentleman had been attempting to explain in his incomprehensible tongue: George was filling a diesel SUV gas tank with regular gasoline. After a nice two hour wait baking in the Costa Rican sun in the middle of nowhere, Budget sent us another Prado (this one was Green!).

Once in Arenal FOUR HOURS LATER than expected (the trip is normally 2 ½ hours), we enjoyed the thermal hot springs and went to bed at a reasonable time. We got up early and commence our Jungle river hike without a guide, almost destroying our last two cameras when our friend Long fell down into the river off a four foot drop. We followed that adventure by going Horseback riding and doing an exhilarating canopy tour. Well, George almost broke his toe and I am missing half the skin on the back of my neck, but it was worth the rush of flying down zip lines deep into the Jungle. When all was said and done we decided to head back to Heredia to go out to a nightclub in San Jose that we wanted to see.

On our way back to Heredia in the exact same town, with a population of maybe100, where our car broke down on the way there, we just about killed ourselves.

Essentially our good friend Long decided he would try to complete this portion of the trip as if he was Indiana Jones attempting to escape the Temple of Doom. But unlike popular action-adventure movies, when you drive at 70 km/hr in Costa Rica along a winding Cliffside road in the pitch black of night not to mention through a thick fog (or perhaps cloud cover… we were pretty high up), well… sometimes things don’t work out as the driver plans and you end up thanking God you are still alive. I still contend that the ditch we hit is the only one of its kind that exists in the mountains of Costa Rica. This was the only time I have seen something that can actually stop a car from going over the edge of the cliff when you drive straight through one of the bends in the road.

I swear I will always wear a seat belt from here on out because breaking the front windshield with your head is no fun. But we all survived the crash, except for the SUV of course, and the rental company at this point refused to give us another vehicle. This time it took us again six hours to get back, but we all survived and we still made it to the party we wanted to attend, just as we always do!