The Magic Tico Bus

A long, long time ago, I wrote that I would have an upcoming blog post on the buses of Costa Rica. After repeated complaints from my fervent mass transit worker audience, I will now make good on that promise. Two mains points on the buses:

1) SO. CONVENIENT. Like Visa, they are in fact everywhere you want to be. If you time it right and know where the stops are, you can get to almost any town throughout the country in a few hours' ride from San José. And it's cheap! The most I've ever paid for a domestic bus ticket was about $7 for a trip that takes 4-5 hours. The city lines also run through almost every neighborhood in San José and rarely cost more than 50 cents one way. I take the Calle Blancos-San José line almost every day to the university or downtown. Love it!!!

2) Jesus loves it too. That's because a great number of the buses have religious messages in or on the outside of the bus (remember, Catholicism is the state religion here!). The messages range from a simple Dios conmigo, nadie contra mí (God with me, no one against me) to the slightly creepy Jesús nos ve (Jesus sees/looks at/watches us) with a rendering of the crying Savior gazing at the Earth in his hand. I also distinctly remember a bus playing the Spanish covers of such quasi-Christian hits as "You Raise Me Up" and such Christian quasi-hits as "El Shaddai". I'll probably do a bit of research soon as to whether the Church has any hand in funding the buses, or if the company owners just want to prove that they are God-fearing folk. Until then,

Pura vida,
Eric