SOL: D20, Directions Before GPS

A friend and I were driving back from meal prepping tonight and it was 30 min away by back roads. 

I said to her “do you remember printing your directions from mapquest and hoping you can read and drive at the same time ?!” 

We talked about getting lost many times because we would miss a street or there eas a road closed and you basically had to guess on how to get around! 

Let me ask you an question. Have you ever used a map (paper folded gas station map) to drive to a location ? 

Well, my one crazy experience doing so was in Costa Rica. They didn’t have gps for the cars and our cell phones didn’t work there either but we didn’t have Internet on the phones at that point either. 

We were driving across the country of Costa Rica using a map. Holy hell it was scary!

We drove through the mountains in the dark and there were no more signs. I have no idea what happened to them but we were lost. I spoke the best Spanish of the two of us and we stopped in this road and knocked on someone’s door asking for directions in Spanish. I know how to say left and right in Spanish but like full blown directions ?! Terrifying. Mind you it was night time and we were very, very out of place. 

Somehow we determined the way we needed to go and we were driving through the jungle and eventually came to an area in the way to Jaco (west coast) where the map said the road was being built that year! Was it completed ? Was it there?! 

The answer was no. 

No, the road was not completed. We had to detour and it brought us through local roads. This is all by using a foldable map at night. 

Somehow, we made it to the west coast. 

Thinking of mapquest and printing directions and hoping to make it there brings back so many memories. That was just one of many! 

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