Bridges? We don't need no stinking bridges.

We took our trusty Suzuki down to Corcovado National Park yesterday - out on the Osa Peninsula, which is in the southwest of Costa Rica. We passed through Puerto Jimenez and travelled on to Carate - a distance of about 300 kilometers, round trip. We left at 8 in the morning and returned.... at 8 in the evening. We stopped for lunch and for gas. That was it. And here's why:


The Costa Ricans value many things more than the quality of their highways. When they're in good shape, they're in great shape; but when they're not...


Luckily, it was an astonishingly beautiful drive. The sun was out and the sky was clear (until dark, natch, when the rainforest really earned its name). And Corcovado, or the 200 sq meters of it that we had time to look at, was brilliant. And green.

Part of the problem in getting to the park was the recent (?) decision of the Costa Rican board of Transportation to renovate all of their old bridges. Which, all in all, was a good idea:


We drove over several of these on the way south, and let me tell you, I thought the bones were going to pop out of my knuckles I was holding on the steering wheel so tightly. You could hear the steel slats twang under the tires. And some of those holes looked plenty big enough for a little Suzuki Jimmy to fall right through.
And somewhere around Puerto Jimenez, they just decided: "Screw it."