Hola once again! I thought I would switch up what I have been doing for my blogs and instead of writing about what I have been doing I would write about some of the things I have experienced. As of right now, I have basically taken every form of transportation I possibly can. From taxis to Uber to public and private buses, I think I have tried it all, and it has definitely been an experience unlike any other...
The first mode of transportation I took here, besides flying, was the bus in San José. In Costa Rica, the buses are technically not owned by the state and are instead owned by private companies. This makes it a little difficult to use this form of transportation because most of the buses cost different amounts, and there are some areas of the city that have more buses than others. For example, after the fútbol game that we went to last week, we were waiting at the bus stop for our buses to come so we could go home. A bus that a couple of the girls could take showed up basically right away, and for the next 25 minutes that the rest of us waited for one of our buses to show up, probably 15 of the same type of bus showed up at the stop. I do not know if this has anything to do with the buses being owned by private companies or not, but there is also not an exact schedule for the buses, so when you get to a stop, you have no idea how long it will be before another bus will come. There is also not a map for knowing where the buses will go, so we just had to learn from our families which bus we could take and where it would go. The other strange thing about the buses is that although they do have certain stops they can make, they do not make them every time. The buses will only stop if you flag them down because you want to get on them or if you tell them to stop so you can get off. This can be nice if you are in a hurry to get somewhere and your bus does not stop at every stop, but it can also be annoying because if it is dark and difficult to see where you are, it can be hard to know when to signal the bus driver to stop the bus, at least if you are still new to the system.
Another form of transportation that I have taken is a private bus to various locations. For our first weekend trip to Jacó, we took a bus just for our group from our school to Jacó and then took the bus back from Jacó to our school at the end of the weekend. This is probably one of my favorite forms of transportation because we get the whole bus to ourselves and we do not make stops every 20 minutes (Refer to the third paragraph for more information). We also can ask to stop for bathroom breaks and this is a lot faster than taking a public bus to wherever we need to go. We can also schedule this bus for when we want to leave so we can leave at a time that is convenient for us. This can be a bit pricier, but for the comfort it provides, it is almost always worth it.
The type of transportation that we took to La Fortuna this past weekend was a public bus. Besides having buses that can take you places in the city, there are also buses that can take you to other towns. Apparently there are some public buses that are direct buses, but there are also buses that are not. The direct buses will take you directly where you need to go without making stops to pick up others on the way. But the bus we took this past weekend was not one of those. Instead, we made multiple stops in just about every town we drove through to pick up other people and drop off people in other stops. I have taken buses to other cities before, but I have never experienced anything quite like this before. The weirdest thing about the whole experience was that the bus did not just fill up the seats, but also had tickets that people could buy to stand on the bus to their destination. I fell asleep very briefly on the bus, and when I woke up, I was super confused to see people standing in the aisles. We were going to take this type of bus back to San José on Sunday, but there were no tickets left when we went to buy them, but if we wanted we probably could have bought standing tickets. However, that would have meant standing on a bus for around 5 or 6 hours, and none of us wanted to do that, so we took a private bus instead. I cannot say I would ever recommend a public bus unless you are on a direct one because that was the longest 5 or 6 hours of my life and I never wanted to do that again.
Besides buses, I have also taken both Uber and taxis to get around the city. I personally prefer Uber because you know ahead of time how much you will be paying to get somewhere, and taxis frequently do not take the most direct route so they can charge you more. But yesterday when I went to the mall with my roommate, we could not get wifi so we had to take a taxi home instead. It was probably only about 2 dollars more than a taxi, but it was still more than we wanted to pay. Uber is also a bit safer than taking a taxi because you know who your driver will be and the company takes the safety of the passengers pretty seriously. The best thing about taking either of these is that they are a lot faster than taking a bus.
The last form of transportation that I have taken here is the train. Last week, a few of us went to Cartago, a city about 40 minutes away by train, to visit a basilica. We were able to buy a train ticket for about a dollar for a one-way trip, and although it was not the most comfortable train I have ever been on, I prefer it to a bus. We made about 6 stops before getting to Cartago, but it was still way faster than a bus would have been because the train did not have to stop for traffic. The train also runs on a schedule and sticks to it pretty well, which I appreciated greatly.
Besides just the forms of transportation that I have taken, I have also witnessed how traffic works here, and let me just say, it terrifies me a little bit. Obviously, I am used to Kearney traffic that is not really that bad and normally people do not drive that crazy, and I do not have enough experience in big cities to really have an opinion about them. Here though, it just amazes both how good the drivers seem to be, but also how many risks I feel like they take. For example, if a bus or car is stopped in the road, drivers will just go around them most of the time, even if that means driving on the opposite side of the street, even if that street is a main street with actual traffic. And do not get me started on the motorcycles. Although it is illegal, most of the motorcycles will just weave in and out of traffic all of the time. I have heard there are a lot of accidents involving motorcycles every year here, but I cannot believe there are not more with how they drive. We do not have a lot of places where traffic merges in Kearney, but there are a lot of places here where that happens. I always just cringe watching our bus merging with the other traffic at various places because the bus driver just decides he is going to merge and he does it. The trains also run through town, so we occasionally have to cross tracks. But so far, I have not seen gates that prevent people from crossing the tracks when a train is coming. All you hear is the train loudly blowing its whistle, and you had better not be on the tracks when it comes. Probably the most important thing I have noticed here is that the bus waits for no one. Sometime cars will stop and let people cross the street if you are not at a crosswalk. But I can almost guarantee you that a bus will not stop, so you better not cross in front of them.
We took a boat to get from La Fortuna to Monte Verde this past weekend, but that is not a common form of transportation by any means, so there is not really much to talk about with that. Although I have enjoyed Costa Rica, I cannot wait to get back to "small city" traffic and not having to deal with some of the traffic things I have dealt with here. I think I could have appreciated the transportation here better, but I was spoiled in Europe with their public transportation, so I had high expectations coming here. Overall, it has gotten me where I need to go, which is all you can really ask for, but I seriously wish it had a little bit more structure to it. But I only have two more weeks here, so I will keep enjoying everything else while I still can.
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