San Vito, or the Italian Tropics

I took a side trip over to San Vito, Costa Rica from Cerro Puta, Panama. San Vito is the result of a government program in the fifties in which several hundred Italians moved to the area to found a town and farm the area. The current result is a charming highland town with an Italian feel.

Going to San Vito from Volcan, Panama is sort of like falling off the map. You take this absolutely gorgeous, well-surfaced paved road to Rio Sereno, Panama. You then get your exit stamp at the Panama border station, get your entry stamp at the Costa Rica Station, and you're technically ready to go into the new country. In my case, I saw about ten indiginous people piling into the back of a pickup truck that looked like a cattle truck, but had "taxi" written on it. I asked the driver, and he was indeed going toward San Vito, and would take me all the way for a few bucks. The Indians and I then proceeded to have a bumpy, swervy ride until they all got out, at which point I got in the front of the truck with the driver, his lovely (i.e. gorgeous) wife, and their little boy. As usual, there were no seat belts. We then tore down the ridiculously terrible road , the driver passing with reckless abandon, going all over the place (playing chicken with oncoming traffic) to avoid potholes, all the while laughing at particularly scary moments. I admittedly was chuckling quite a bit myself, and we kept looking at each other across his wife and young son in that "Isn't this stupid fun?" kind of way. I think it definitely has something to do with the male chromosome. His wife was not smiling.

After we almost had a head-on collision, the driver's wife expressed her disapproval more strongly, and we slowed down the rest of the way to San Vito. The driver said to me "Drivers in Costa Rica are crazy!". I responded that it was okay, when I was younger I drove just like that in Tennessee. There are rednecks everywhere, thank God.

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