Y una mujer!

Before the Pan-American highway was put in, the road past our house in Quizarrá was apparently the main way to get to the south. This is laughable when you know this bumpy, untarmacked "road" (we'd call it a track back home I think), but understandable when you think that when Skutch first came to that area in the 40s, the only way to get in was by plane or by taking a horse over the mountains and through the rivers. You'd either ride the horse through or wade through yourself and lead the horse over - the former was usually safer as obviously horses are bigger and stronger, and alright at swimming it turns out. (In fact-checking this I came across this very sweet article "Can Horses Swim?"). I suppose equally it is unimaginable to me that there were ever no motorways in the UK, but they are a relatively new invention and certainly many didn't exist when my folks were young. 

Lis & Warren, the owners of that house-sit, told us that for the whole thirty years they had lived there, there had been promises to do up the road. Roads here are rarely tarmac - they are usually dirt or gravel, they often have washed away to fist sized rocks or bigger in places which can be difficult to walk or drive on.  The first time we travelled to Lis and Warren's there were lots of pot-holes and it was about 20-30 minutes of 4WD road - the teeth-rattling kind that makes it difficult to hear anything or have a conversation and which, for some reason, often lulls Iris to sleep (?). We did see non 4WD vehicles on there, but they moved very slowly. We also had the "pleasure" of doing that journey in a tow truck in the dark which I have to say was a mixed blessing.  

Wikipedia tells us that fewer than 25% of the roads here are paved. In the summer they are incredibly dusty, in San Agustin where the earth is orange, the dust gets in the cooling vents and the radio and the engine and there's an orange film on everything inside and outside the car.  

During the rainy season many roads have mudslides and tree-falls. Roads are often literally cut out of the surrounding earth. About a month ago when we caught the tail end of Storm Isaias down here in the south of the country we had two power outs of around 4/5 hours (this is unusual - power outs are usually fixed incredibly quickly in our experience) but on the Osa Peninsular they were out for 24 hours. When we went down there the following week there were tens of trees chopped up at the side of the road. Someone told us there was only one truck for the whole of the peninsular and they just had to go from pylon to pylon, getting rid of the falls and repairing the power cables. 

Other roads are washed away so much they are effectively ramblas and become unusable by vehicles. The "road" that edged our pasture in Quizarrá was one such road - it had become unusable, apart from some occasional foolhardy motorcyclists and the one occasion where we saw a man carrying a push bike over the Indiana Jones bridge (which was missing quite a few planks) at the bottom. 

It was a very steep road (track) down to a river and even walking up it was hard work (especially if you were carrying a small child and encouraging an old dog!). It was a through road to the next village. On a couple of other occasions we have either been warned off a route that Google was going to take us on or, on one occasion, managed to beach ourselves in a river bed (in a river), which is a story for another day.

There is - either consequently or because the most recent government is more committed - a lot of roadworks going on all the time. Road repairs, road improvements, removing trees or landslides, repairing electricity cables that have come down, cutting back the growth at the sides of the roads. 

Also often road widening, especially on "main routes" which are predominantly one lane roads but they do have tarmac. This is a very hilly (mountainy/volcano-y) country, with the centre of the country sporting a lot of hilly, twisty roads. The widening is often to allow a wider turning circle on corners as there are huge amounts of good vehicles that cut through Costa Rica on their way to Panama and further South into South America. Many of the roads have ditches at the side. We've seen a car and a van being pulled out of a ditch and have very narrowly avoided driving into them quite a few times ourselves.

Temporary traffic lights aren't really a thing here. Usually there is some poor soul standing on each end of the works - in the relentless tropical sun (if it rains and storms too much I think they just go in the truck) the other end is usually out of sight - far away or round a bend. The first time this happened, in the first day or so of our arrival here, there was some foot tapping on our part. This isn't a UK type amount of waiting. Often there's an earth-mover doing its thing. After it's moved its earth it then has to get rid of it and then drive to the place where it is also out of the way. It's not unusual to wait ten minutes, sometimes longer. So now when we see the "Hombres Trabajando" ("Men at Work") sign we know it's time to put on the hazards (whoever is at the back of the queue puts on their hazards) and turn the engine off, maybe have a drink of water, take some photos, have a chill. 

I can't imagine that anyone ever gets upset with this because everyone runs on Tico Time. It's tranquilo (peaceful/chill) here - there's not really a concept of being late because it's the land of do as you please! Seriously, if the weather is nice, nothing will happen because everyone will have gone to the beach. Someone recently told us about how they were buying a new phone from someone. They had communicated with them using their computer at home to organise a meet-up and had made it clear their phone was broken. When they got to the appointed meeting place and time, the guy wasn't there, they waited an hour in the rain, he didn't show. When they got back home he just said he hadn't come because the weather was bad. We have had the same experience the two times we've invited Tico friends or neighbours to come eat or visit with us. - One arrived three hours late, the other didn't show at all - because it was raining. On the one hand this can be annoying, but for someone who is congenitally late like me it takes a whole load of stress out of life! This type of thing would be summed up with the catch all expression "Pura Vida" (pure life) which might be accompanied by a V sign for vida.

 I remember making some kind of "heh, how 1970s!" comment about the "Men at Work" sign. I think we say "Workers in the Road" or "Roadworks Ahead" or something now right? Though I also conceded that all the workers were men and, admittedly this is a pretty macho society. 

BUT then we lived with roadworks for 3 1/2 months because, remember those road improvements I mentioned that had been promised for 30 years in the peaceful, rural, remote spot we were house-sitting? They started the week we moved in. There were at least four passes in that time that we saw past our ("our") 135 acre farm. Two were for widening, one I guess was for putting the chalky gravel down. Some of the work involved putting in big water pipes under the road, some to put in new cable runners over the rivers and creeks. I don't know - they're not due to finish till next year. The upside is that the roads were very much improved during our time there.

Sometimes we could hear them, sometimes we'd be aware they were near but then just come on them on the way to the shop or the market or the bakery. We didn't leave the farm often during that time because of Covid, but we did have the job of keeping the two farm vehicles running and we needed to buy almond milk and peanut butter (!), so once or twice, sometimes more often, per week we'd go out and usually ran into them somewhere. The road also cut through our land so we'd often see them when we were out walking the dogs. And THERE WAS A WOMAN! She was normally one of the people at the end of the works, stopping the traffic. 

So every time we saw the "Hombres Trabajando" sign I'd say "y una mujer". In passing I tried to imagine how I would feel if I went to work everyday seeing that sign. Would I just be like "It's just a sign, who even cares - pura vida" if I were a Tica? Would I be like "Hombres" - that means like Man - everyone"? Or would it be a little cut every day - "I'm not acknowledged here"?  Every time we saw that sign I'd tell Tom that I was going to make a "y una mujer" ("and a woman") sign to stick on it. Of course I didn't get round to it. 

But on our last day in Quizarrá we were driving away, car full of stuff, running a bit late, but not too late and we unexpectedly came up to the "Hombres Trabajando" sign. No-one was around. We looked at each other. I just happened to have a marker pen with me...so I eventually got to do my bit of (admittedly a bit whispery!) feminist vandalism, and then we high-tailed it out of Perez Zeledon!

 I wonder if anyone noticed. I like to think that it gave that female road-worker a little smile :)