Getting a Driver's License in Costa Rica

 This was written by a friend of mine. I share this just for educational purposes, not to claim copyright.

"I got my Costa Rican license today. This. Was. Funny!
Step 1-
First, you get online on Thursday mornings at exactly 8:00AM, to get your appointment.
Step 2-
You repeat step 1 for many weeks in a row until you get an appointment.
Step 3-
You send off your foreign license to be translated. They write you back with pick up instructions that are straight out of a spy movie—- drive to this gas station an hour and a half from home. Find the auto parts counter in the gas station. Walk to the back of the store. Give the woman $20 in American dollars. She will give you an envelope.
So awesome!
Step 4- Go to the clinic. Pick up a health voucher. This costs 5000 Colones or about $9.
Step 5- Drive to the DOMT. When you arrive, park in the parking lot. A guard will meet you. Park where he tells you.
Step 6- The guard will then instruct you to walk back out of the parking lot and around the fence along the highway which brings you to a gate. The same guard will meet you there and let you in through the gate.
**This one was perplexing, but I came to realize the back part of the parking lot is for driver’s tests.**
Step 7- Go to the waiting room. Wait.
Step 8- Meet with a really nice man who ensures all of your papers are in order.
Step 9- Go to the waiting room. Wait.
Step 10- Take your papers to another really nice man who will enter all of the information on your papers into the computer.
Step 11- Go to the waiting room. Wait.
Step 12- Go back to the first really nice man who ensures everything is ready to go and tells you where to pay.
Step 13- (This one is AWESOME!) Walk back out of the building, down the walk way, through the gate and CROSS the highway (highway!). There is a hotel called the Santa Ana on the other side of the highway. Walk along the highway and then around the back of the hotel to a reception area where you need to pay a Chinese woman 5000 Colones for a receipt.
Step 14- Cross the highway again. Walk back through the gate and go inside.
Step 15- Go to the waiting room. Wait.
Step 16- Go back to the first really nice man who by now is family and greets you warmly and by name. Give him the receipt.
Step 17- Go to the waiting room. Wait.
Step 18- Go back to the second really nice man (who by now, you are ready to hug) and get your picture taken. He will also take your signature and fingerprint you.
Step 19- Recieve your new Costa Rican driver’s license.
🤪🤪🤪
For any of my US friends being critical reading all of this.... it takes as long at the DMV, except instead of sitting in that awful waiting room for 4 hours holding a paper number in your hand, deciding which of the people around you are actually criminals based on their furious expressions, while you watch animals attack each other on Animal Planet showing on the TVs all over the room (as if you need more stress in the moment), and while you contemplate walking for the rest of your life rather than renewing your dumb license anyway, remember that at least Costa Rica keeps things interesting and the same amount of time passes in the US as CR, only much more quickly!

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