Costa Rica

License plates usually have blue text on a white background.

If a stop sign reads "ALTO," you're in Costa Rica, Mexico, Guatemala, or Panama.

Volcanic ash has left fertile land with a lot of fairly black-looking soil. The country sits between the Caribbean and Cocos plates and has plenty of volcanoes.

Sign posts are silver (grey), often in a square or U-shaped cross-section. The back of the sign often has an X-shaped brace too.

Fire hydrants are often yellow.

South of Mexico, houses often have a trash bin raised up on a stand out front.

You'll spot signs for kölbi, the mobile brand of the state telecom ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad), at spots where you can top up prepaid credit.

Guanacaste, the northwesternmost province, gets less rainfall than the rest of the country, so rainforest is scarcer and there's more dry terrain.

Heading further south, the Talamanca Range takes over and the mountains get higher. There are no roads through the range itself, only along either side of it. Rainforest and cloud forest cover the area, and the roadsides nearby are lush and green too.

Buildings equivalent to a local police box (koban) for Costa Rica's Public Force have the place name written on them.

A highway runs to Puerto Limón, Costa Rica's largest port, and the roads connecting to it carry a lot of container trucks.

The border crossings at Paso Canoas and Peñas Blancas also see plenty of truck traffic jams.