Aero: David Whitt – Costa Rica 2016 – Travel

Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project

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Firsts started happening immediately for me when we started traveling, as I had never even stepped foot in an airport prior to the trip, so every single thing in the airports were firsts! Something interesting to me was that they had snacks and beverages on the plane. I thought people always bought their own snacks for the plane ride, so it was very interesting to experience. Most of the plane ride down was very quiet. We never really had any issues with time going down, so it was a calm and collective first experience for me.

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David Whitt

Travel in Costa Rica is very scary, according to American standards. Pedestrians have no rights in the roads, cars never stop for pedestrians, even when someone was in the middle of the road. Cars are always pulling out in front of others at stop signs, Taxi driver didn’t wear a seat belt, and riding in the back of a truck in Nicaragua were all very interesting, and kind of scary considering we are expected to look many times to make sure no cars are anywhere around at stop lights, taxi drivers will probably lose their jobs if they didn’t wear seat belts, and I have never ridden on the back of a truck before, as it is illegal here in the United States, and my parents have been very cautious people, so they wouldn’t ever let us ride in the back, even if was legal.

Our primary source of transportation was Alvin’s van. The best part about it was the room inside. There was a lot of room everywhere in Alvin’s fan, so it would have been better for all involved if we had taken Alvin’s van to Nicaragua. One thing that was surprising was the amount of effort that Alvin has put into his van to make sure people can’t break in and rob it, such as the stronger security windows, tinted windows, and his never-ending effort to make sure he was always in the vicinity of the van, even eating by himself to protect the van!

Getting stuck at the border was quite the experience too. We drove to Nicaragua just fine, but they wanted paperwork we didn’t have with us, so we couldn’t provide it. While we were waiting for everything to be sorted out, we had to go outside into this gate, which kind of made it feel like they were putting us in jail, so that was interesting. After a while, they have us a three-day pass, but we were leaving in two days, so that was fine. Although, from this trip, I will never forget sitting there in the gat while everyone stared at us, probably thinking “What did those Americans do wrong?”

This was definitely a very fun first traveling experience, and it has definitely done nothing less than encourage me to travel in the future if I desire. It also showed me that public transportation is a very viable, and sometimes even better, source of transportation, whereas in the United States, it is typically only used if you cannot drive, so that was very different.

David Whitt
LEAF Contributor
ML@FLCC: Costa Rica 2016

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