Dominical Dot Biz

Getting through San Jose, that is the question.

The following are some instructions that I gave to my clients that wanted to get from their hotel at Dominical to the airport in San Jose.

From Dominical proper, go up to the coastal highway, head north, cross the bridge, pass the guard shack, and turn right. This is the road to San Isidro.
Drive thru San Isidro When you get to San Isidro, you will know it cuz there are a couple of one lane bridges. In between the two bridges there is a coffee processing plant, known as a “Beneficio”. You will wind through the barrio “El Hollon”, and you’ll get to a Y in the road. Well sort of a Y, it is actually a possible left turn that goes up a hill or you can stay on the road that you are on the veers off to the right there.

You have the following 2 options:

Option 1 bear right: you’ll go past a stinky settling pond on your right. Do not stop for a swim as this is sewage. To the left is a wood mill where they sell treated pine wood, and packages for pre-fab pine structures. Shortly thereafter you will get to a left jog in the road, and then a sort of dog-leg type thing… I don’t think that any of this will be confusing since the main road is clearly apparent. The road gets straight and flat. On the right side you will pass the soccer stadium. Go to the “No Hay Paso” sign and turn right, go 100 meters, which is as far as you can go, then turn left and go as far as you can go (about 300 meters) then go right again as far as you can go. This puts you at an intersection of the PanAmerican Highway. Hang a left there and drive over the Cerro de la Muerte (Pass of Death) to San Jose.

Option 2 bear left: you’ll go up a hill that tops out onto a rather cramped road that circumnavigates the center of town (the centro). If you want to drop down into town from here you can choose one of the roads going down to your right. If you stay on this upper road, and take it all the way to the end, you’ll be at the PanAmerican Highway where you can hang a left and go to San Jose.

The drive from this point to San Jose is about 2 1/2 - 3 hours. You go up, up, up, up, up. Then down, down, down. (San Jose is higher than San Isidro) After having gone down for awhile, the road will finally level off and be flat and straight for a ways, passing through what is obviously becoming civilization again. You will come to a right uphill jog with a stop sign that you actually have to observe. I think that it is one of the few in the country. This is the intersection for either going to Cartago (right) or going to San Jose (left). Go left. Now you know you are close (10-20 minutes). After the “T” intersection, you will drive for a ways, go up another little ridge, drop back down to another flat, and go to the end of road and turn right. Your on a city street, go up 300-400 meters (i.e. 2nd stop light—main flow of traffic) and turn left. Takes you past a Pricesmart, some malls, McDonalds, etc… then your at a turnabout, roundy round, glorietta thingy. Go around the thing and continue on straight and head towards Alujuela. Your now on the south side of the city. Now it gets confusing and this is about as helpful as I can be since I usually at this point start to wing it. Just throw yourself into the city. If you have a compass, you can head Northwest. Don’t worry if you are forced by one way streets to go south east or whatever. Just keep working it until you get to the highway that will take you to the airport. If you need to ask for help, and don’t speak Spanish, say this: “Donde esta el aeropuerto ‘eye-row-puerto’”. The Ticos are just all to happy to help.
If you get to the Alajuela exit, you have gone too far.

Drive into San Jose from the airport.’ You will pass by the Sabana park, lots of eucalyptus trees on your right, then a Nissan dealer on your right, keep going past several intersections that have stop lights and guys selling cell phone acoutrements. There is a final left turn prior to McDonalds. I think that it will be rather easy to find since most of the traffic will flow that way. This will put you on a big ole drive that runs straight into the southern edge of the city. Stay on this as it goes through an industrial part of the city, and a dumpy part of the city, and then seems to get into a kinda nice part of the city. Take it all the way to the end. Go left, then right, follow the flow of traffic that will do another left then right to get up onto a highway in front of the San Pedro Mall, which actually has a sign on it that says something like Planet Mall or some such. That is the San Pedro Mall. If you end up stuck at the end with no where to go, just back track a little bit and turn uphill to get to the highway. You will go to the roundy round in front of the mall and go to the right toward Cartago. Go to the next roundy round and go around the thing 3/4’s and head toward Cartago again. Take that road straight through to the stop lights and everything. Just go straight until you get to a confusing array of options. One of which is Cartago again. Take that. You are now on the main road to Cartago and San Isidro. You have just one more possible snag. You have to take a right fork off of this road to the San Isidro highway. It is just past the large Shell station and actually has a green and white sign. Once you get here you can relax… well as regards getting lost. Don’t relax really cuz it is one curvy mountain Latin American road that requires that you expect to have someone coming at you in your lane around every blind curve. Not what one would call relaxing, but it is gorgeous. This road’ll drop you down into San Isidro in about 2 1/2 hours. Turn right at the McDonalds and drive to Dominical.

In a recent conversation that I had with a client of my real estate office, I was made aware of the fact that there is very little info available on the web with respect to banking in Costa Rica. There have been a number of horror stories floating around. I’m not sure if any are true, but they are there to keep one wary.

Depositors here in Costa Rica can essentially be put into two groups. Those that will only work with governmental banks: Banco Nacional, and Banco Costa Rica. Then there are those that will only work with non-governmental, or private banks: Banco Cuscatlan (no links yet for the following) Banco de San Jose, Banex, and a smattering of others. Banco de Costa Rica just recently opened a branch in Dominical, which is huge news since getting cash has been a bit of a struggle, what with no ATM (cajero) around. Also, Banco Nacional has a van with an ATM in it in Uvita. So it would appear that progress has come to Costa Rica’s Southern Zone.