My mother, Veronica Gonzalez, travels very often to Costa Rica, so she must go through all these procedures. She admits that traveling can be a pain. It can be very pricey because they require you to pay for both tests and a place to stay at while you are quarantined. All these procedures are to make sure she doesn’t put her family at risk.

The United States has safety protocols to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and in my recent trip to Costa Rica. I have realized how different their protocols are compared to the ones here in the states, specifically ones from Florida.

According to Corona.help.com, an official Coronavirus tracker, proves that Costa Rica has one of the lowest mortality rates meaning they have been dealing with this pandemic pretty well; They have several protocols and you can start to experience them way before you even enter their country.

Prior to entering your flight you must get tested, and you will only be allowed to board the flight if results come back negative. When you reach the country, by law you must quarantine for 5-7 days before being allowed to freely travel around the country with the mask on at all times.

Curfew is by far the most important protocol to pay attention to as it changes very often. During the week in Costa Rica, you must be home at 8:00 p.m. and during the weekends you must be home by 11:00 p.m. If there is a spike in the cases they get they may make the curfew a bit sooner, so from 8:00 p.m. they might change it to 6:00 p.m. and vise versa.

Curfew is always changing.Meaning you have to pay close attention to announcements and if you’re someone who is  busy, it can be a hassle to keep up with the time changes. 

 “I find the curfews a little bit annoying, I think  they can be treated a little bit differently to be more effective. The cases spike and drop a lot meaning that the curfew changes very often, and they only announce curfews on the news, and I’m usually doing school work so it’s hard to tell when its okay for me to go back home or not, I’m stuck asking friends and family when the curfew is and sometimes they don’t even know either so it can get annoying,” said former U.S. resident who now lives in Costa Rica, 24, Angelo Jimenez.

Busy streets are very common in a place like Costa Rica and can become overcrowded. However they have a very unique system to keep people from traveling inside the country and overcrowding streets.

Depending on your license plate number, certain days you might be restricted completely from driving. It may seem annoying to the those who can’t go out on certain restriction days, but nowadays it’s very easy to find transportation through Taxis or apps like Uber, and if you have a bike you can travel like that to a local corner store, which are very common to have one in at least every neighborhood, so if you need to get some groceries on a restriction day, you should be okay.

Going out in public is different as well, every store front and building is obligated to take your temperature and make you wash your hands before you enter to be safe, as well as count how many people enter the store and or building, and if they reach their preferred limit of people. They keep them from going in until some leave; restaurants require you to have your mask on at all times until your food comes, whereas here in Florida you can take them off the moment your seated.

While there are many differences between USA and Costa Rica with their safety procedures, it can be easy to get used to when traveling over there.

“It’s not as bad as you think because living here you kind of just get used to the whole system of washing your hands before you enter a store and and having your temperature checked so for me it’s no biggie but for any outsiders,” said Jimenez. “I can kind of see how they would have to get into that habit of things. It’s that little extra time we take to stay clean that helps a lot, you can never be too safe.”