We were driving from Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the east coast of Costa Rica to San Jose to catch our late flight home. We had decided to go to the Jaguar Rescue Center in the morning, thinking we had lots of time for the drive. That turned out to be a bad call because there had been torrential rain in Braulio Carrillo National Park, our planned route on highway 32 was closed due to landslides, and alternate routes doubled our trip time. We'd budgeted lots of time to get to San Jose before our flight so that part wasn't a problem, but it meant we'd be driving through the mountains after dark.

Holy shit let me tell you, when tourist guides to Costa Rica tell you not to drive in the mountains after dark, it is for a good fucking reason. Picture a steep, winding mountain road. Now imagine gutters on either side of the road that are V-shaped, four feet deep with 45 degree sloping sides. Now blanket the whole scene in the thickest pea soup fog you can imagine. That's mountain driving after dark in Costa Rica.

This was done in a shitty little rental hatchback with no fog lights, because of course we weren't planning to do any mountain driving after dark but fuck if it didn't happen anyway! It was a solid hour of the most intense pucker-factor driving I've ever had to do. The only reason I'm not a corpse on the side of a Costa Rican mountain is because some local with fog lights passed me on one of those roads, and by god I got onto that guys tail lights like fucking tick and drafted him all the way down the mountain. Shout out to the Costa Rican in that beat-up red pickup, I'm only alive today because of him.