// COSTA RICA

// COSTA RICA If you're traveling by bus across Central America, you're probably traveling on rickety old US school buses, complete with wicker cages of live chickens on top, with seats that drive every bump and pothole right into your soul, with chatty children, snoring men, and indigenous old ladies. You continue on like this in country after country, confronting the chaos that is the Central American bus terminals, which are really just massive parking lots packed with hundreds of questionable couches and drivers not only shouting out the names of destinations, but often trying literally drag you aboard. You can't help but notice, then, that once you cross the border into Costa Rica, it's suddenly like entering another universe. Those potholed roads are replaced by fresh black asphalt, the buses are air-conditioned, modern, and even announce the stops on a digital display, and the border agents are completely unconcerned that you may or may not be an undercover spy reporter (see: Nicaragua). Aided by the fact that Costa Rica is under US military protection, the country was able to dismantle its own military 75 years ago, which has helped it avoid the military coups of the last half century that have plagued so much of the rest of Central America. It is a country with a modern economy, an infrastructure that leans heavily into renewable sources, and a high standard of living. That should make it boring, but somehow it's not.