- Watch the car in front of you very carefully when on the main highway. If they swerve, you should swerve too because they're likely avoiding a pothole that you could fit a cow in.
- Don't follow too close on the main highway. Drivers will often stop with no warning to chat with a friend they see walking along the road.
- If you do suddenly slow down put your hazard lights on. Without your hazards on people will rear-end you and then blame you. Note that this doesn't apply to people who see a friend walking along the road and want to have a chat.
- Go very slowly on roads off the main highway. "Paved" doesn't mean "maintained", and it's not uncommon to see paved roads with potholes that you can't see the bottom of.
I suspect the sheer amount of water coming down from the sky and flowing across the ground makes fighting potholes a losing battle. Our host was very proud that lane lines had just been repainted in the last year, but they were already faded to basically being invisible in places.
We survived, but at one point we hit a pothole so hard our bluetooth skipped.
San Jose is completely different than the pacific cities. For the most part the main roads are decent but the dirt roads into the jungle are just that, jungle dirt roads.
Why would you drive at lot at night?
Did you go to any costal cities or stay in the mountains?
What kind of expectations did you have for developing world jungle roads?