by Christina Ramirez

Living in the campo, one of the first things you learn is to get around on your own two feet. I’ve seen people, young and old, walk from where the bus drops them off at the main road, all the way to San Miguel, which is about 7 km on a climbing, winding, dirt and gravel road. By the way, the gravel is more like river rocks. They use these rounded, less-ground-up stones because they hold the earth better when you’re driving up and down muddy roads. This makes a difference when you walk down the road too, because most people don’t wear tennis shoes or hiking boots. The people that do the walking are usually women and their children, and most of the time they don’t wear work boots like the guys. Even rubber boots would be better walking on this type of roads (and most of the children use these), but women normally wear sandals.

The technique of navigating the rocks in stylish sandals must be passed from generation to generation of women as sacred information, and I’ve been trying to investigate it. So far, I’ve concluded that the position of the toes inside the sandal really makes a difference in whether or not you fall.  I’ve discovered this by experience, because if you wear your sandal too loosely without a good grip with your toes, you may become de-sandaled among the rocks. My daughters, of course, do not have the benefit of this inherited information, and many a time whether using rubber boots or sandals, I’ve just have had to dust their knees off and kiss their tears away without any explanation of why they keep falling.

When my husband, Hector, or I drive the truck into town or back to the farm, we almost always pick up some thankful soul along the road to San Miguel or Sabalito. One time Fred, my husband’s partner in the plantation business, was waiting for Hector to come out of the farm to the nearest soda (roadside café). When Hector pulled up to the soda, an old man jumped out of the pick-up and hustled to cross the street to hitch another ride going the rest of the way into town. Fred turned to Hector and asked him, “Is he a friend of yours?” “Well, he was a friend of my grandfather.” “How old is that guy?” Fred asked in astonishment as the man hopped into the back of a pick-up truck that would take him farther on his journey. “Oh, I think around 100 years old or so.”

As for the younger guys, they sometimes walk or ride bicycles, but as soon as they have some money saved up, they either buy a horse or a motorcycle. Motorcycles (motos) are a more popular form of transport in our area, followed by ATVs (cuadras, short for cuadraciclo, or 4-wheeler). The motos have a real advantage over the animal transport in amount of passengers allowed. A horse can only carry two people, but on a moto I’ve seen a whole family squeeze all together to fit. The dad usually drives with a small child in front of him, and the mom rides on the back with a child in front of her. Somehow they all don’t fall off!

To get to school every day from the farm, I drove my 7-year-old and 2-year-old daughters on the ATV. We made a “mami sandwich,” with my younger in front and the older in back. “Dangerous!” you might say, or perhaps, “Crazy!” For us, it was just pure fun. It became our time for mother-daughter bonding. During our 15-minute trip back home from dropping off the oldest at around 7 a.m., my terrible-two child would transform into an inquisitive darling. We would see birds dance in the teak trees, butterflies float among the tall grass, and cattle munching on their breakfast. In the afternoons, my oldest would tell me all about school (most of the time) and give me great big hugs (as if she would really fall off going at our snail’s pace speed). We didn’t only use the ATV for school transportation. Sometimes, I would make a snack and some cold drinks to take to the plantation crew. Now that summer’s over and the rains have started, the ATV is impractical. We would get sopping wet and covered in mud if we tried to go anywhere. On the other hand, that might be fun too!

One way I would not use to get around the campo is by cattle truck. For me, this just goes beyond my sensibilities. Most often this form of transportation is used by whole teams of soccer players, and their wives, and their children all packed onto the back of one of these small trucks. The back of the truck is basically made of a wooden box, and several young people are usually hanging from it, on top of it, or climbing on it while the truck is moving! I just have too vivid an imagination and can see people flying off the top like monkeys sailing off a tree branch, except without anywhere to grab onto next.

To sum it all up, when it comes to people movers – this ain’t Disneyland! You just get around any way you can.

This article is one of a series on life in the campo, or country living in Costa Rica, as my wife and I experienced it on our visits and after moving to Costa Rica. When visiting Costa Rica, we used to stay with our then-manager's family. He is Costa Rican, and Christina is his wife. We are Fred and Amy Morgan, originally from the US, and we bought a dairy farm in Costa Rica to plant trees in its pastures, then later caught a dream of turning all the land we can to permanently protected, sustainably maintained forest once the plantation trees have been harvested for profit. We make most of the wood from the plantations into furniture, flooring, and other wood products.

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