Monday, July 18, 2011

Police in Costa Rica

We've seen police several places in Costa Rica, and most of the time they're riding small, dual sport motorcycles.  On the roads here everyone speeds, and not just a few kilometers per hour, but really speeding.  From what we've seen the police don't really care and we've never seen them pull anyone, even if people are driving twice the posted speed limit.  We have seen police along several roads randomly stopping people (cars, trucks, motorcycles, taxis, semis, tour buses, everything) and we have yet to figure out why.  We were stopped one of these times (on the way to Liberia) - the police asked for Chris' license, glanced at it, and then let us drive away.  We also dealt with the police a little when we hit another car on the small, dirt road towards Playa Pan de Azúcar.  The people we hit at first weren't going to call the police since it's not required in Costa Rica, but we had to because the car rental insurance required a police report or they wouldn't cover anything.  After calling the police we found out why the family we hit didn't plan to call them.  It took well over an hour for the police to show up, so we had to just wait around until they got there.  When they finally showed up, they quickly asked what happened and wrote a report.  That took less than 5 minutes, and then we were done dealing with them.  So for the time it took the police to show up, compared to what they actually did when they finally got there, it definitely is not worth it to call the cops unless you have to.

1 comment:

  1. I'm really enjoying the blog and hearing about your travels, see you guys soon. -Dad

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