The Worst Roads In The World

Amazing to relate we did not ford this river. We were trying to get to Playa Cocos from Playa Guiones and Google Maps said this was the road indicated. We gave up and turned around. There had to be a better way. 

Yesterday was a crap show every way we turned. And as Layne pointed out indignantly we didn’t even get a glimpse of the ocean on this “coast” road. 

The mud hole above was cleared for us by the truck driver. He saw us looking hopelessly at the hole so he flattened it and waved us through. Amazingly kind. Then there was a section of sharp pointed rocks. It made us jiggle in our seats like Mexican dancing beans. 

It was Saturday so there was tons of traffic on the dirt roads to the beaches and they took the potholes at speed raising clouds of dust to cheer us up as we grumped along trying to find the least potholed way. 

They passed us any way they could, on the left or the right weaving and dodging holes as they went. 

I tried to photograph the nightmare but I couldn’t encompass the madness in mere pictures. 

It was ten miles an hour and coming to a complete stop for the ones we couldn’t weave around. 

Oh yes, they have weird antediluvian bridges to negotiate too. 

No sign of an ocean or a beach. We spent all day struggling up and down this coast looking for a place to camp and the wild camps were worse than the seedy campgrounds and the roads were worst of all. 

That was the best part: the iOverlander campgrounds were nightmares of grossness, and we are used to less than pristine campgrounds. Filthy facilities, cramped parking areas with no privacy and not a view of the ocean. 

We found one place that looked like a weird replica of a down at heel Florida trailer park with trailers piled up against the water front higgeldy piggledy. The owner came out and he looked like a mobster’s mechanic covered in dirt, greased back hair and a tattered wife beater scowling like we were bothering him by showing up. As he scratched himself we left, his gaze unblinking followed us out. 

It was exhausting looking for a place to park and we sure did explore the coast. 

We inspected beaches to wild camp, campgrounds and any road we could get lost on. Some beaches had wild surf, some camping spots were centers of Saturday revelry and others had dreadful approach roads, steep inclines, rainy season trenches dug in the surface or collapsed muddy holes.  

Another popular campground in Playa Cocos looked good on paper but it was tiny and filled with so many coconut trees we could barely turn around and get out never mind find a spot to park. The enthusiasm others reported for these nasty places baffled us. 

It went on all day. We left our beach camp before seven in the morning and it was sunset by the time we found what looks like a really good spot which I’ll write about tomorrow as we may be here two days, maybe three… 

But the rest of Saturday was an off the charts struggle to find our way. The towns and villages we passed through had no architectural merit whatsoever.  

GANNET2 was brilliant taking it all in stride. We backed and forthed, made u-turns on narrow lanes and struggled up and down dirt tracks dodging vast holes in the roads without a problem. 

We spent almost ten hours looking for our next spot and we now know all we need to know about the state of this part of Costa Rica. It is not to our taste. 

Been there and done that including the dreadful unmarked speed bumps that hid from us in most of the villages. Invisible and lethal. 

What a day. 

Oh and some impossible hills. 

The Gulf of Nicoya, a glimpse in the distance, as we tumbled down another impossibly steep hill whose angle is masked in the photograph.

Oddly we neither of us were too fussed at not knowing where we would overnight. There’s always a place no matter how desperate things look. We’ve been doing this for a while now, living on the road in a van. 

$9 each per night, showers, toilets, electricity and picnic table included. 

We landed on our feet in Pochote Costa Rica.

911 To Flamingo

Chaos is not the word that comes to mind when one thinks of Costa Rica but we had our share of it yesterday after we finally left Bahia Salinas. Outside Liberia we bought some delicious refreshing rambutans. Breakfast of champions. 

They look odd but they taste fresh and delicious.

We drove to Liberia the biggest town in northern Costa Rica and you will be delighted to know they have Walmart and Price Smart (a Central American membership warehouse chain also present in Colombia for future reference). We went to Walmart out of habit and Layne came back out looking pale and perturbed. “$123!” she said. Prices apparently are worse than the US and not just on imported items. She said she stopped looking at prices when the modest block of Costa Rican cheddar she wanted cost $10. Costa Rica is known to be expensive and that’s all there is to it. Bollocks. Let’s move on. 

The road deteriorated as we went deep into the countryside. I drive slowly as I’m not keen on breaking anything under GANNET2 or aboard my little home so I pull over frequently to let traffic by. But there were enough potholes the others cars were swerving pretty much all the time to avoid them too. 

Then things got really weird. The road split into two muddy dirt tracks and I had no idea which way to go. The car behind me had stopped so I went to ask her what to do. She said there was a river to ford or you pay ten dollars to go over a bridge. Well, obviously we had to pay the ten bucks. So we turned right. 

We paid out ten bucks at the booth even as a string of foreigners on all terrain vehicles waited for us to get our receipt. Then off we went with absolutely no clue where we were going or why. We got lost of course and surprised some workmen mixing cement. Back it up! It was some kind of gated community offering tours and homes in the woods. 

We tonked around for a bit feeling like idiots, mostly because we were. We saw other cars zipping by but we couldn’t catch them up to follow them as GANNET2 bless her heart handled more like a lame hippo than a sprightly gazelle on these absurd privately owned trails. 

We did cross a rickety wooden planked bridge and then found a workshop on the woods. One of the youths there took our receipt as though we might have snuck in tiptoeing past the guards like a Disney elephant in a pink tutu and then he let us out. 

For a brief moment we felt relief to be released back on the highway as we watched a truck grind up the hill from the river dripping water as it went. We’d probably have drowned had we tried to be frontiersmen. 

Then we settled down to navigate Highway 911 to the beach town of Flamingo. Just our luck I said to Layne if we had a 911 emergency on Highway 911. 

The road was narrow and winding and unmarked with signs or paint and travelers fling themselves at it at  full throttle. It seemed inevitable something would go wrong. 

I hugged the right hand side and tried to let the speed demons pass but confronted with large trucks which had no intention of yielding or slowing I just hugged the shrubbery and hoped for the best. 

The idea is to explore the coast and Flamingo was said to be a nice beach town so we were indeed exploring. On Highway 911. 

Google Maps estimated our speed would be about ten miles per hour and they weren’t wrong. 

We got there intact but Flamingo looked like a pit to us. I’m sure surfers would like the waves but it wasn’t swimmable or pretty or anything too appealing to us.

We drive on through. 

We arrived at the water and found ourselves at a day use beach with boats on moorings looking lovely. 

I never expected the end of the Highway would land us in Croatia but that was what the marina looked like from a distance! A castle on a hill but I think it was just another hotel or something. 

Then, when I once again pulled over to let a car by this one stopped alongside me and rolled down his window. “Are you a citizen of the Conch Republic?” He asked grinning and leaving me at a loss for words. Yes. Yes I am actually. 

I suppose this wild camper spot made us feel at home in that way. People came to the beach to watch the sun set. Not unlike Mallory Square at home. 

Eventually they left and we slept not in Key West but in Costa Rica. Pura Vida!

Swimming Not Driving

We were going to drive away today but yesterday the sirens came out on the waters of Bahia Salinas and the waves went flat as the winds dropped and we were swimming in a vast salt water swimming pool. 

“Let’s stay another day,” Layne said so who was I to argue?

How many days would you want to spend here? We are alone except for a few locals who walk their dogs past us morning and evening and a handful of hotel guests who stroll across the highway and stare at the water for a few minutes. Oh and Josef who lives in a rental house for sale across the sandy track behind us. 

He really lives in Linz in Austria and spends his summers flying helicopters so during the cold winter months he travels and sail boards in places with strong winds. Like Bahia Salinas. 

We swim in the wavelets raised by the winds blowing across the bay while he zips almost out of sight in seconds. “How was Nicaragua?” I asked after one his flights in the direction of the mountains that somewhere imprecise mark where the two countries join. 

Our other Austrian friends, youngsters we met in Mexico have arrived in Panama City. They are in a hurry as they have to be home in Europe in April so they took a chance and worked their way around the road blocks that still have Panama closed to highway traffic. 

For us retired old farts with time on our hands we see no advantage to pushing into Panama before the country settles down. The protestors have won, the copper mine they objected to will have to close but they don’t trust the President to honor the ruling of the Supreme Court in their favor. So the PanAmerican Highway is still closed and Lisa and Sandro had to scramble on dirt backroads to get to Panama City. 

Neither of us feels like pulling a John Wayne to get somewhere we don’t have to be right now. Confront masked protestors or go for a swim? You choose because we made our choice. 

Josef and his girlfriend have invited us out to dinner with them tonight at a Costa Rican place  nearby and tomorrow we really do mean to get on the road south stopping wherever we find the next pleasant swimming beach.