“Addresses” in Costa Rica

Major Intersection – No Street Names Displayed

Have you ever driven in Washington, DC?  You know how although there are streets going north-south and others going east-west, many others going diagonally interspersed with some making loops and circles.  Then there are countless landmarks, parks, etc. placed in the middle of things forcing you to go around things instead of going in a straight line.

Pretty bad, huh?  Now remove all the street signs.  You say What?  Yes, that’s right, remove all the street signs.  And while you’re at it, remove all the house and building numbers.   Next, blast the populace with a ray gun that obliterates their memory of the street names, building and house numbers.

Ok, now its time for you to ask for directions to your destination.   Buena suerte.  This is the Costa Rica system.  I kid you not!

As crazy as this sounds, the system works, and none of the Costoricences have a problem with it or even perceive it as a problem.

You ask, how the heck do people get around?

 How Do They Do It?

The address format is something like:

<Landmark> -> Meters N/S from Landmark, Meters E/W from Landmark

Optionally <Landmark2> -> Meters N/S from Landmark2, Meters E/W from Landmark

-> Description of Destination

Suburb Name (eg. San Pedro de la orca), Barrio Name, San Jose, Postal Code, Costa Rica.

This is not a joke.  This is how they do it.  And yes, somehow it works.  I have yet to figure out how to put my homestay address into the “Home” field of the Uber app.

Sometimes official addresses include street name and intersections.  However, the streets have no signs identifying them and the buildings no numbers, so you would need to recognize them by their features/landmarks.  If you had that much familiarity with it, you might not need an address in the first place.

Many of the streets do have names and I think some buildings and houses have numbers, but they are not visibly displayed.

I generally have an excellent sense of direction, frequently by maintaining a sense/awareness of North.  But, because of the way the streets were curving, I mistook the street orientation of my house (East-West) for (North-South).  Having the wrong North in my head and not having time for a couple of days to explore the area, I was totally disoriented.  Now it’s much less of a problem.  There are still issues where large building complexes cause streets to be dead-ends and some large highways block pedestrian passage necessitating long detours.  But, I’m learning that in many cases the detours are not necessary because of other features of the roads allowing road crossing without visiting the morgue.

I don’t know if this is a country-wide phenomenon or just that of San Jose, but If the concentrated population of the capital city does it this way I suspect it is not just local.

I also noticed that when I arrived a few days ago it drove me crazy, but now that I’m semi-oriented, I no longer worry about it that much.