Hell and High Water : Costa Rica Trip Is Not Your Typical Drive in the Country

One of the pleasures of traveling by car in a Third World country is how challenging it is, and the great satisfaction you get from spending a day on the road and not getting killed.

Costa Rica, unlike Costa Mesa, is just such a Third World place--one of those areas where there aren’t enough drivers to create gridlock (except in the capital, San Jose) but more than enough to make driving a thrilling, hands-on, full-contact blood sport guaranteed to get your heart pumping.

Forget white-water rafting, hiking up a live volcano, sneaking through a rain forest or deep-sea fishing; if you want thrills in Costa Rica, just rent a car, grab a map, pick a destination and put your foot to the floor. I can guarantee you that by the end of the day--if you make it that long!--you will be vibrating with a sense of catharsis and achievement that few real-life adventures can induce.

In urban sprawls such as those found in Los Angeles and Orange counties, most people drive with the idea that safety comes first. Even if we don’t really believe this, we have to comply because the average freeway speed is something like 34 m.p.h. now, and is predicted by experts to dwindle to a mere 17 m.p.h. by the year 2000. Add to this all the police and Highway Patrol officers lying in wait to cite you for just about anything under the sun, and the results are submissive, spiritless drivers reduced to sticking signs in their windows announcing, of all things, that their babies are on board.

In Costa Rica, however, safety comes third, behind 1) getting there fast and 2) doing anything you have to to accomplish this. Police presence is minimal--in 10 days I saw one cop. Although Costa Rica has a thriving middle class it is not a wealthy nation, and the automobile is not the disposable status symbol that it has become here. A car there is difficult to come by, so once a Costa Rican has one, he is going to use the whole speedometer. As one savvy Costa Rican pointed out to me, “Here, life is cheap, but cars are expensive.”

Our motoring tour began in San Jose, where we leased a four-passenger Isuzu truck and a Hyundai four-door sedan. The lease company carefully itemized all dents and damage before turning over the cars to us. We were offered a special rate for the truck because it was already pounded to a pulp. The leasing agent gave us an undertaker’s smile when we told him we were bound that day for the Arenal Volcano. He also revised the insurance deductible from $750 to a cool thousand, the wisdom of which would later become evident.

The first few hours out of San Jose toward Arenal is paved highway. The capital and its suburbs are, naturally, packed with cars and trucks guided by drivers hellbent on getting there --wherever there is--fast. Traffic lights are haphazardly located and difficult to see. Horns blare, tires screech, non-catalytic converted toxins billow into the air and every automobile--every spewing, autonomous, self-obsessed potential suicide module--is wholly out for itself. We got the spirit.

The start of Daytona is no more fraught with testosterone or pedal-mashing. We jockeyed along the narrow highway in gleeful terror while our luggage, chained and padlocked in the truck bed, hurtled into the air and crashed back to the metal with thunderous reports. A dead horse lay sprawled on the roadside, then another. An airborne section of blown tire whizzed past our windshield.

This is motoring!

A few hours later we turned onto a dirt road that was allegedly serious enough to show up on our map. It started off innocently, as most dirt roads do, but as evening fell we found ourselves first-gearing uphill through deep, vicious ruts and over rocks the size of bowling balls. We felt some pressure to reach our destination before nightfall, because driving in Costa Rica at night is recommended only for those with an unquenchable death wish.

By then, we had reached that mysterious speed--somewhere between five and eight clicks per hour--when you actually get farther away from your destination the longer you drive. A sign announced “Arenal Observatory Lodge--5k,” but the next one, achieved after a seeming eternity of low-gear travail, said “Arenal Observatory Lodge--6k.”

“Cute,” someone muttered.

We meditated on what this lodge could mean to us. We had reservations. We would have hot showers. We would have food, alcohol, a chance to let our teeth resettle after the punishment of this road. We would know how the pioneers felt.

Just as the sun was going down, our little caravan came to a sudden stop, because a river was now rushing over the road. We groaned. All this way for a washout? It was inconceivable. Dave floored it and the truck swooshed through the water, somehow finding purchase on the stones.

It’s an odd feeling to drive through water at night, without much idea, if any, of how deep it might be. We found solace in the fact that the road continued on the other side of the water, though no vehicles had come from that direction in quite a long time. We finally rumbled to the other side. Plopping onto the road again, we agreed that there is a God and he intended us to make the lodge.

Unfortunately, halfway across the river, the Hyundai stalled. It just stopped and sat there, butt-heavy and content, like an infant in a warm bathtub. From the far shore we listened to the diminishing vigor of its starter, and recalled the leasing agent’s funereal smile. The river ran on around it, illuminated in the headlights.

“We could unchain the luggage, pull them out,” said Dave.

“Who is going to wade in and do that?” someone asked.

“We could draw straws,” I said.

Across the valley, Arenal Volcano groaned--a prehistoric, atavistic, otherworldly sound--and we discussed the aesthetics of being buried alive by lava while trying to get a blue Hyundai sedan out of a river. It wasn’t much as headstone material, though it had a certain cache. I wondered morosely if any of my fans would trek this far to visit the humble grave of their favorite Orange County writer and could only conclude: no.

Somewhere in the jungle darkness above us huddled the Arenal Observatory Lodge. In the river behind us sat the Hyundai, starter wheezing, and its four brave passengers staring out through the windows. I could see those eyes--all eight of them--filled with worry, filled with hope, filled with the wonder at why eight dummies from the United States would fly to the bottom of the hemisphere, then drive six hours only to get stuck in a river. No answer seemed forthcoming.