Developing country. This is our tag. Costa Rica waffles between trying to keep up with the big boys, yet stay out of the mix of things that just are not it’s style. For one thing, Costa Rica does not condone war. We have no army; no sons or daughters will die as a soldiers. But we wage other battles: hideous driving records, a marginal infrastructure, and as you’ve seen barely a sidewalk to pass on. Organization and forethought, I believe, are one of this country’s biggest barriers to creeping out of the “developing” category and moving into a “more developed” sort of label.

On a main road that I take once and awhile, it is packed with cars - almost any time of the day. When I moved here, this road had a Caterpillar dealer, one hotel, a long bridge, a cardboard box manufacturer, a guy selling guayabo trees, and a lot of empty fields. Today, the hotel if for sale, and even though the guy still sell fruit by the road side, every empty lot has given way to an office building, a housing development, or strip mall. All this booming development to the economy could be seen as a boost; however, after thirty minutes of sitting in traffic congestion, bumper to bumper breathing fumes, and inching forward to drive just three miles (or less), it becomes terribly obvious that no one thought about a plan for the road. More office buildings = more traffic. More shopping malls = more traffic. More housing = more traffic. The three lanes just don’t cut it. For a lot of folks, there is no alternative route.

So when I see a little development, I get more excited than most. A new bridge went in by my house, and I giggled with excitement. This bridge was years overdue in completely. Even landscaping can offer me hope. Look closely at the top of this photo. The house at the ledge was about to fall off the cliff. The big orange retaining wall was an engineering must - without it there’d be no road. But one day we drove by and wow! Landscaping. No, it’s not the wildflowers dotting the landscape that Lady Bird Johnson imagined, but it’s a few palm trees, flowers and even a color scheme.

Why in the world does this offer me hope? Because somewhere deep in the bowels of the bureaucratic machine, there is this one person (or maybe two) that thought ahead a little bit, and possibly even researched other models on what makes an infrastructure successful. And if there’s one, that’s enough to ignite change. All it takes is one. And then another. And another…….