Aero: David Whitt – Costa Rica 2016 – City Life

Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project

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At home, I live in the middle of the City of Canandaigua, so I am used to city life, but city life in Alajuela was much different. A couple major differences was that Alajuela is much louder all times of the day, had heavier traffic, and it is much harder to cross the roads. In America, drivers must do everything in their power to stop and wait for pedestrians to cross. In Costa Rica, it’s the exact opposite. Pedestrians have absolutely zero rights on the road. No drivers will stop, and you must wait for every vehicle. I experienced first-hand, a couple times, that if you start crossing in front of a car, they will not even slow down, so you had better run for your life because they will run you over!

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David Whitt

The city life in Alajuela is an experience in itself. It was very encouraging to see people hanging out and mingling with each other. At home, everybody stays cooped up in their own home and don’t really mingle with many people in the public, which is very discouraging, and a sad part about life, so this experience was awesome to experience!

The traffic in Costa Rica is crazy! They don’t seem to follow many road rules, such as rolling stops being not only okay, but encouraged! They seem to drive really fast and are constantly pulling out in front of each other. One thing that helps this though is that there are a lot more one-way streets than they are around home, so they don’t have to worry about on-coming traffic, but if they don’t know their way around the city, it can be very difficult to know which roads you can go down and which you can’t. With that said, I have already decided that if I go back, which I want to, then I am not going to drive! I will use public transportation and walk!

Public transportation is much more utilized in Costa Rica. Everybody uses it to get around, even people with their own vehicles use it every once in a while. The biggest difference between Costa Rican public transportation and that in the US is that they don’t care about time in Costa Rica. In the US, it’s frowned upon for the bus to be 2 minutes late, whereas in Costa Rica, the bus “gets there when it gets there.” They don’t pay so close attention to the schedule. They just travel at their own pace, which I think is kind of cool.

David Whitt
LEAF Contributor
ML@FLCC: Costa Rica 2016

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