The Mystery of Traffic in Costa Rica

I am sitting in a walled-in tropical garden eating breakfast to classical piano.  The B&B owner is playing Rachmaninoff, Beethoven,  ... the garden is filled with palms, bougainvillea, lemon trees, verbena ...  sun is filtering through the palm tree.  A perfect day in a sheltered and safe place.

But that is not what I came to discuss, because soon I will be walking to a bus and trying my luck at being a pedestrian here.  Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way in Costa Rica.

It's very tricky, and quite dangerous to the uninitiated, to survive traffic.  In getting my traffic legs, I've discovered a few things of import.  Evidently, traffic signals and  signs are considered mere suggestions for possible comportment.  Whether a particular driver will comply with these suggestions is completely unpredictable, and only the foolish (and possibly now dead) think otherwise.

Many sections of roads have no sidewalk and no shoulder, and might also border a deep ditch.  So one might be breezily walking along a sidewalk on a heavily trafficked, high-speed road, concentrating on how far and on which side of the road one might find his or her next bus, when suddenly(she) is faced with the end of said sidewalk.  There is no turning back if one wants to continue to conduct her business, so one forges ahead with great trepidation onto the edge of the road, and if she were a religious person, praying mightily, and trying not to close her eyes until she reaches the next stretch of sidewalk.

Another unsettling thing at first is that drivers here honk their horns a lot.  As a pedestrian, this is a little crazy making, since a honking horn could mean "Hey,"  "Get out of my way!" "You idiot"  "Could you please move over just a little bit?" or "How you doin'."  Perhaps even "Call me."  Of course the context is the clue, but as a pedestrian one often doesn't have a clue, from not having the vantage point of the honkee to determine what the hell is going on.

The mystery, of course, is that there are not more foreigners lifeless on the roadsides.

So far, so good.