To survive a 6+ Richter Scale earthquake first you have to make sure you don’t fall down. Keep your balance. Once the initial earthquake is over make sure to run out of the structure you were in and get to a safe place. In an ideal situation the staff of the resort at which you are staying will direct you to a safe and covered place, triage, and distribute food and water to everyone.
If you are at a resort in Costa Rica you may have to do just a little more to make it through because the resort staff may just decide to say something to the effect of “screw those tourists”; things like scavenging through the wreckage of restaurants and rooms for food and water — and toilet paper — in the dark, carrying firewood to make your own fire, and using as much charm as possible to convince some other tourists to let you sleep in their rented van. That evening you should then try to make arrangements for a helicopter transport — at any price — with virtually no levels of cellular service. When that doesn’t work you should then try to sleep in the van parked on the side of the cliff while it rocks back and forth quite regularly from aftershocks.
Eventually the next day, after not sleeping and sitting in relative terror the entire night before, you should then wait patiently for your $850 helicopter to show up for half of the day. While you wait you should eat the pineapples you scrounged, drink the remaining water and Coca-Cola, enjoy a cold Hershey’s bar (kept cool in the small cooler you picked up in the destroyed restaurant), and watch as the helicopters continually take out other people and leave you at the defunct resort. By some stroke of luck or through sheer force of will you will find another resort-owner-provided helicopter that can seat three out of the four people in your group and you take advantage.
The remaining person in your group should then get taken by four-wheeler across the ravaged countryside to meet up with the rest of the party.
The Red Cross should be in place by now, providing transportation for your party, sitting with luggage by the roadside, to a nearby refugee center. If your eyesight is good you should then accidentally bump into your travel agent’s driver and wrangle a ride back to San Jose where you then hook up with another driver to take you three hours to your next hotel on the Pacific coast. At that hotel you should immediately take a shower, eat, and crash on a comfortable bed.
When you return to the States you should then swear off eco-travel for at least a few years and stick to locations with minimal seismic activity.
Here’s where we were:
MAP
Here are some news articles about the earthquake:
Reuters
China Post
CNN
And here’s the room we were supposed to stay in (before the earthquake made that all moot):
Blah, Pictures, Prius, Trips
costa rica, earthquake, impromptu camping trip, vacation
