Costa Rican Roads

Working in the tourist industry I can see we know quite a few of the roads. In a country the size of West Virginia I can assure you though that there are always new roads and it would be almost impossible for somebody to know all the roads of Costa Rica with all the hills and mountains.

The roads in Costa Rica is what gives a student travel trip or a Costa Rica vacation that extra bit of adventure. Roads that look as if they lead to nowhere can open up to some of the best scenery you can imagine. In the last few years Costa Rica has done an incredible job of fixing up roads all over the country from the long coastal straight roads to the high mountainous roads it seems all are better than what they use to be.

Just like any place on Earth mother nature can takes its toll on a road. With detours needed you can see in the picture above that arriving to the river for a day of rafting we had to have the clients hike 1 km which is not that bad and like I said added to the adventure because a road was out. It is best that on a Costa Rica vacation or a student travel trip to Costa Rica you dont let any of this bother you and you just roll with the bumps in the road. I often tell clients that people that work in the coffee fields or sugarcane might have to walk 10 km each way to then work in the hot sun for 10 hours. This is nothing compared to hiking a bit to enjoy a sunny day rafting in one of the most beautiful rivers in the world.

The famous Caldera highway just opened up in 2010 and literally cuts about an hour off your time driving from San Jose to the Pacific coast. For a Costa Rica vacation or a student travel trip this can really help out in the different activities we do. It turns out that they had to close the road to continue working on it because rocks were falling in the lanes. I heard comments from Ticos talking about how bad a road it is and that this would never happen in the USA. Well I have news for them. Driving on roads in the USA I know plenty of places that have signs that say "Warning Falling Rocks". Although I agree the road might need a little extra work it is still an extraordinary accomplishment for a developing country to have such a nice road out to the beach.

The New Highway from San Jose to the Pacific

With over 34 years of waiting it seems that the famous Caldera highway is now open. If we do the math the highway stretches 77km and if it took 34 years that would make the average of almost every 2 km took a year. They followed all the proper standards for road construction with 1 guy working and 4 guys watching. It took 34 years for the first week to have people still complaining when it was open. The main complaints I have heard so far is that the extra emergency lane for ambulance and fire rescue is only usable if you plan on rescueing somebody in a vehicle no bigger than a Harely. Another complaint was that the steep cliffs that have been cut through the mountains had softball size rocks fall into the road becuase of heavy winds. This could make it very interesting for the rainy season and lets hope it does not turn into a nightmare of landslides like Cerro de La Muerte highway. All in all the highway is still much much nicer than the other option of getting to the coast. The highway measures 77km and literally cuts your time in half of driving to the Pacific Coast. The cost with all the tolls comes to a total of $3.47 which most people are happy to pay to get to the beach before sunset after a long day of work. There are still some people that are not that happy to pay. The local communities where this highway blasted through has some of the locals not too happy. They are asking for stop lights which might not happen but they are also upset that they have to pay the tolls of which a lot of them might have to travel to San Jose daily for work and spend 20% of their daily salary on tolls. With all of this said the highway will open up amazing opportunities for this country and it seems that mostly everyone thinks it was worth the 34 year wait.