Driving: Revisited

Driving in Costa Rica is still an adventure. It is definitely not for the faint of heart. Here are a few more observations.

• Time doesn’t really matter. You will get there sooner or later. I take Spanish classes in Escazu. I have made the trip in 20 minutes before but it usually takes me about 30 minutes to drive the 10 km. Monday, was different. It took a full 45 minutes to get to my class. There were 2 different accidents, one of which I could drive around. The second one was at Panasonic and I never did get down to the corner. I could see flashing lights. So, I turned around and followed a line of cars the back way, on a street that I’d never driven on before. So, I was rerouted but did find myself back to Lindora. Right before the end of class, the sky opened up and it began to pour. We’re talking “llover gatos y perros”. I thought the trip to class was bad. It took me an hour and 10 minutes to get home. I passed another accident and a car stopped in the middle of Lindora.

• Motorcyclists are fearless and apparently have smaller bladders than the rest of the population. Every week I see a motorcyclist pull to the side of the highway, jump off his bike and proceed to pee. They don’t even spend much time finding a partially hidden place to relieve themselves. They are usually a foot off the side of the road. Motorcyclists, also drive all over the road. I think they believe that the double yellow line down the center of the road is their own special lane. If the traffic starts to slow down, it is guaranteed that sooner or later a motorcyclist will pass you, sometimes on the left or sometimes on the right. They like to keep a person guessing.

• Huecos y muertos. Potholes and speed bumps are two more obstacles to maneuver around. There are so many potholes the Ticos have a joke that goes like this : How can you tell the drunk driver? He’s the one driving straight.The speed bumps in Costa Rica can cause serious damage to a car. Ticos don’t stop at stop signs in Costa Rica but they do seriously slow down to go over any speed bump.

• Bridges are usually smaller than the road. There are many times that a bridge is only big enough for about a car and an half. Then usually one side will have CEDA written on the ground. That is the side that has to yield to the oncoming cars. The trick with one lane bridges is to plaster the car to the bumper of the car in front of you. That way four or five cars can go over the bridge like it is a truck. This trick also works for getting around cars that are parked on the side of the road.


• Panasonic intersection has the most varied group of people out on the road. You can always see a couple of guys selling phone chargers for your car. Then there is the man that walks with a handful of small plastic bags filled with cloudy fluid and some type of white sediment on the bottom. I don’t have a clue what he is selling. Several different people sell some type of lottery tickets. Weekly you will see a man in a wheelchair in the middle of the road. He’s not selling, he just has a cup for collecting money. About a month ago a juggler started to perform at the intersection. I wonder if he ever had a mom who told him not to play in the street.

• The saving grace with driving in Costa Rica is that we are only traveling in kilometers per hour. That is 60% less than miles per hour. Our reaction times are (and need to be) much faster. And if all this isn’t enough to keep you alert, there are 5 foot yellow hearts painted on the pavement wherever there has been a fatality.
 

On Wyoming

I try not to blog about work. I don’t want to shatter the illusion that we are on a “year long vacation” as several friends have suggested. Trust me, there are about 60 hours a week that don’t quite feel like a vacation.

But there are two work related items that I can’t resist writing about. The first was the flyer that I found on my desk one morning, complete with BSC logo, explaining in Spanish that the following week would be STD awareness week, and employees could make appointments with the company physician for screening. The flyer had lovely graphics (and I mean graphic) along with a “Mr. Condom” mascot. I thought this flyer must have been a crass joke on the part of a coworker, but I noticed that every desk had the flyer. I asked my boss what kind of operation he was running while I showed him the flyer (apparently Directors did not get copies on their desks – perhaps the physicians thought they’re immune). All he could manage to utter between guffaws was “Oh my God!” To top it off, the next week they sent a follow up email, again with the mascot. I forwarded it to my Maple Grove associates, who made a number of inquires as to whether I was in fact working or sampling the local culture.

Before leaving work yesterday, I went to check with some coworkers regarding the date of independence day in Costa Rica. For some reason, it is not on July 4th. Anyway, they asked if I was going to dinner with the other Quality Managers, our boss, and our boss’s new boss (who works in Massachusetts). Apparently I had been left off the invitation inadvertently. After checking with The Boss, I decided to go. So during the course of the evenings’ conversation, someone asked where I was from, to which I replied “Maple Grove” (meaning the location of the plant where I work in MN), but for some reason I added “but I grew up in Ohio”. The new boss asked “what part of Ohio?” “Cincinnati”. “I’m from Cincinnati” she said. “Where in Cincinnati?” I asked “Wyoming” she mentioned as if no one could possibly have heard of it. My jaw hit the floor – I was raised in Wyoming, and my folks still live there. She was as incredulous as I at this coincidence. We proceeded to compare notes on who we knew and where we lived, our teachers growing up, etc. with the bottom line that when I was a senior, she was a freshman. I did not know her then, even though our school only had about 800 students. When I got home, Nancy was on Skype with Greg and Tim, who proceeded to email a scanned page out of one of our yearbooks with her picture. I knew we kept those for a reason.

Now look at the pictures and resume your assumptions about our vacation.

No Puedo Creer Que Esto No Sea Mantequilla

“The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.” Erma Bombeck

That sentiment is so true, no matter where do your grocery shopping, even with a shopping list.
Let’s just say that grocery shopping has never been my most favorite activity and it still isn’t.

The Automercado on Lindora is where we do the majority of our grocery shopping (this is the Byerly’s of Costa Rica). You know you’re in a different country when you pull into the parking lot and see two or three guards standing around, complete with guns. When you walk in the front door it looks just like a typical store in the states but there are subtle differences. The main difference we have noticed is the lack of variety. Let’s look at salad dressings. At Rainbow (in MN) there is at least 15 linear feet of multiple shelving filled with all different kinds of salad dressing. At the Automercado, I have a dozen different bottles to choose from. Completely lacking any type of French dressing; including Jim’s favorite, Western dressing. There are several aisles where one side is dedicated to only one type of item. There is the chip and snack side that is opposite the beer and hard liquor side. Wine has a side of its own, as well as rice and dried beans. There is very little frozen food, just one side of an aisle.

Packaging is also different. Eggs are stacked on shelves at the end of an aisle, no refrigeration. Milk and juice is packaged in a brick-pack. You can find it both in the refrigerated section or just on a shelf. Mayonnaise and jelly come in a collapsible container. Sour cream in a plastic bag. You can also buy individual items, like one stick of butter, one package of microwave popcorn or one can of beer or pop. In fact, when I bought a 12 pack of beer (in a long chipboard box where you are supposed to rip off the corner and pull out one at a time) I discovered two 6-packs, complete with plastic rings, in the box. Any product that is imported usually has an extra label in Spanish just slapped on the package.

The fresh produce section is not particularly large. There is a long meat counter in the back of the store. It has taken me a while to figure out the pricing on meat. The weight is in kilograms (one kg equals 2.2 pounds) and the price is in colones (remember 500 colones to a dollar). So, on a package of “carne molida, 10% grasa” you’d see peso 0,510 kg; precio unitario 3430/kg; and precio total 1749. Basically, I paid $3.50 for a pound of hamburger (90% lean). They do have a bakery where you grab a bag and a set of tongs and you grab yourself a loaf of bread.

You check out and hand over your credit card and pay 40.000 to 80.000 colones.

The picture of the weird vegetable is Romanesco Broccoli. It is a cross between broccoli and cauliflower.
 

Shout It Out Loud

Here is our video of the spider monkey expressing his displeasure at our intrusion into his realm. Note that the high humidity tends to wash out the picture when the sun shines through.

I feel the earth move. . .

After a full day at Manuel Antonio NP, we went to the Plinio Hotel. This older hotel was built into the side of the hill. Our two-story room had the bathroom and a sitting room on the entry level and the bedroom on the second level. Three walls of the bedroom were screens. It felt like we were in a tree house. Sunday morning, as Jim was in the shower, I felt the bed start to vibrate. It then started to shake and I was aware of the walls creaking around me. Then it went back to vibrating. The whole process lasted probably 30 seconds and Jim didn’t feel a thing in the shower. After returning home, I checked the USGS web site and found that there was a 4.6 tremor about 40 km northwest of where we were staying.

As we left the town of Quepos, Jim was following a police car going about 20 km/hr. Really slow. We were also driving by a double yellow line. The police were oblivious to the line of cars behind them but we felt stuck. The road was straight and had good vision but it was still a double yellow line. Finally, a Tourismo van pulled out five cars back and came flying by at 80 km/hr. The police continued on their slow patrol. At that point, Jim became a true Tico driver. He passed the police on the double yellow line (along with the rest of the cars behind us) and we continued on our merry way.

Our next stop was at Carara National Park. There we took a guided tour into the rainforest complete with loaner rubber boots -- not that they kept our feet from getting wet. We did not see any of the Scarlet Macaws for which the park is famous (but we did hear them – they make a noise straight out of Star Wars). The trail we were on is in the flood plain of the Tarcoles River. Here we saw white-faced monkeys but they stayed high up in the trees and didn’t come prowling around for handouts. The trees were huge in this forest. We saw a couple of coatimundis, which is a relative of the raccoon. The highlight was when on our return trip through the forest we saw some spider monkeys, who showed their objection to our presence by shouting at us from high above.

It should be noted that Sunday was Mother’s Day in Costa Rica and instead of trying to buy jewelry for Nancy in celebration of her motherhood, we trekked through the jungle. At one point on the waterfall hike, as she was struggling to keep from sliding down a muddy embankment, I told her to just grab the vine and swing down like I had done. She informed me that women did not do that. On the Sunday hike we slogged through two feet deep water which filled our borrowed boots while the guide told us to keep looking for vipers. Yet not a complaint was murmured, not a reluctance to continue on was expressed. These adventures may not top her list of accomplishments or fill her with pride like finishing a beautiful quilt, but words alone cannot express my love for this woman who is so willing to share in this adventure. Feliz dia del madre, senora Nancy!

Monkey Business

What a weekend! On Saturday morning, we got up early and drove 2 ½ hours to Manuel Antonio National Park. It is one of the smallest parks as well as being one of the most popular. We enjoyed a guided tour along the main path of the park. We would never have seen the rainbow grasshoppers on the bottom of the tree branches or seen the difference between the 2-toed and 3-toed sloths as they lounged on branches 30 feet up. We definitely would not have seen the “stick bird” sleeping in the tree or the small purple and orange crabs under the trees or learned about the mimosa plant. We would have only seen large iguanas lumbering around the park and the white-faced monkeys.

The white-faced monkeys are all around the main beach area. They are “opportunists” and we suspect that they work in teams. One will come strolling around, so people will drop their backpacks and start to take pictures. Meanwhile, others will scope out the unattended packs. Then they will approach them, unzip the pouches and search for food. We did see one get a bag lunch. He then carried the plastic bag of fruit and bread up the tree and enjoyed his feast. They would also watch when people would go in the water and leave their packs unattended.

After the tour, we continued on a circular hike around a high promontory bluff with some spectacular views. We ate our sandwiches on the beach while a monkey prowled around us looking for a handout. We enjoyed the beach for a few hours and then headed off to find the “catarata” trail. After 30 minutes of hiking up and down the muddy trail through the rainforest (wearing shorts and sandals no less), hearing the Howler monkeys in the distance, crossing over streams and wading through them we finally came to the waterfall, which was nice, but not spectacular by Minnesota standards. The hike seemed quite remote on the way there, but on the return trip we realized how global the trail was as we met group after group asking (in Spanish, English, German and French) whether we had seen the waterfall.

Musical Chairs

Well, we now have Costa Rican driver's licenses! Fortunately, we had a delightful relocation agent at our side to step us through the process, because there was no way we could have managed the labyrinth by ourselves. Perhaps we should not have been surprised, but like many things in Costa Rica, getting what you want is less about following directions and more about having a frame of reference.

Our agent picked us up at 8:30 and drove us to the north side of San Jose (Uruca is about 30 minutes away during rush hour) where we parked in the last remaining spot and proceeded to walk about a mile to what was we were told was a clinic to have our blood typed. The word Clinic must not translate directly. This place was more like an abandoned apartment turned meth lab that someone decided could front as a legitimate business and launder money by pricking fingers. 40,000 Colones later (that’s $80 in case you’ve forgotten), we had our fingers pricked and our height and weight taken and eyes checked. Afterward we wondered if we could have saved the money and told them our blood type, height and weight. At least we now know our measurements in metric. Nancy likes that her weight is “under a hundred”.

We then trudged back to where we had parked and proceeded to wait in the “foreigner line” for 2 hours. The line started outside, where we had to leave our guide, then moved to one row of chairs in a lobby, and then to another row of chairs in the lobby. Then Nancy got lucky and stood in a staircase for 45 minutes while Jim relaxed in a chair. At the top of the stairs were 3 more chairs to shift through. As Nancy finally ascended the stairs, she counted 6 people whose job appeared to have involved standing around and chatting outside of their offices.

When Nancy finally made it to “the desk”, with me still down stairs in my comfy chair, she found what I later described as “take your mother to work” day. The “document checker” looked over Nancy’s papers and then read off the passport information to the other woman (aka “mom”). “Mom” then wrote the information into a ledger. Quality professionals in the readership will note that when “mom” made mistakes, she sometimes scratched them out while at others she just over wrote. (No need for GDP here – no one’s ever going to crack open the log again).

The two ladies examined Nancy’s passport to find the last entry stamp from immigration. The April 26th stamp (from our house hunting trip) made them think that she was over the three months requirement to get licensed. Nancy tried to say something intelligent in Spanish, but ended up motioning that there was another stamp from May 30th. They looked at it and then at each other and shrugged. When the immigration guy stamped the passport on May 30th, only half of the stamp came out, making it impossible to read the date that she entered the country. Nancy once again start to stammer in Spanish “mi esposo” and point down the stairs. Luckily, I had been given permission to get out of my chair and ascend the stairs. I gave the ladies my passport and they made a copy of my May 30th entry stamp and put it with Nancy’s papers. Then they started to write down more information in their book.

They laughed at Nancy’s maiden name “Dundon” (said as if it were Done – done) and then tried to spell Broge. “Ba” (mom writes down a V). “No, no Ba, Ba” (mom scratches out the V and writes B). “Ahrro” (mom writes down an R). “Oh” (mom says, “Si, Ahrro”). “no, Ahrro, Oh”. “Hey” (incredibly, mom writes a G). “Eh” (mom writes another G). “eh, no hey”. “Oh, eh”.

We noticed that mom spelled “Minesotta” incorrectly but fortunately the error was missed, or we would never have finished the story.

After the ledger, Nancy move down another chair to the computer guy, who took her papers and entered information into a computer, while continuing his conversation with someone else using Instant Messaging. After entering our address, he motioned to me and asked if I was Nancy’s “wife”. Then he gave us slips of paper that to take that to the bank (back on the other side of the complex) and to pay 4,000 colones apiece.
By this time it was 11:55, so we had to wait 20 minutes for the teller to return from his lunch break. Then we returned to the other building and waited to have our pictures taken and finally receive our licenses. We arrived at 9:00 and left right before 1 pm, right before the daily rain began to pour.

While this “process” was challenging, at no time did we have to prove that we knew how to drive or that we could even read the Spanish road signs…which seems to underscore our observation that the signs are suggestions.

July Weather Report

Total rainfall for July (at our house) was 14.6 inches. Who would have thought that we would have had eight whole days without rain! (We would have, but that was before we arrived). Of course, we had seven days with over an inch of rain. August looks to be equally wet. This week’s weather forecast, as reported in the Tico Times reads “Rain, a thunderstorm”, “rain and a thunderstorm”, “cloudy with thunderstorms” and “a couple of thunderstorms”. I’m not sure which daily description we should fear the most.

The largest rainfall we recorded was 2.8 inches on July 20th, and that fell mostly in one particular hour which happen to be when we were trying to get to a potluck dinner and Bible Study at 6:30 pm. We were unsuccessful. Our first clue should have been the water flooding into our front foyer, but we shrugged that off to a lack of weather stripping. We made it to the Panasonic corner just fine but after we turned onto Lindora the traffic stopped. The street was flooded in areas, but we managed to turn around. We asked our friend the Navigator to get us to Santa Ana (Tico pronunciation: Santana) by another way; “he” refused to speak to us (again), but plotted out a route which we soon realized directed us in a big circle to the same spot on Lindora. When we returned to Panasonic, Lindora was filled with cars and the line went all the way back to the Coca-Cola sign intersection, on the unnamed road. The traffic lights were now out so getting back home through the winding, intersecting roads was hazardous. We could have tried the long way around, going three sides of a rectangle, but that would have included driving on the outer belt of San Jose. Since it was Tuesday and our license plate ends in 3 and it was before 7 in the evening, we were not allowed to drive our car downtown or on the outer belt (which is at the edge of San Jose). Costa Rica has tried to reduce traffic congestion in town during work days by restricting cars from entering. On lunes, cars with license plates (which are 6 digit numbers) that end in 1 or 2 are prohibited from entering the city (including the outer belt)(martes 3 &4; miercoles 5&6; jueves 7&8; viernes 9&0).

We had a little family conference when we got back home to sort things out with the Navigator. He is back on speaking terms with us, and we have agreed to believe him when he tells us that there is traffic ahead from now on. Now if he could just do something about all this rain!

A Canopy Tour

Last weekend, we ventured north with a group of work friends to La Fortuna and the Arenal volcano. Arenal is an active volcano complete with lava flow, its own weather system, hot springs and a perfect conical shape. The country side surrounding Arena is lower in altitude than the meseta central where we live, and Arenal is about as far from an ocean as anywhere in Costa Rica, meaning that the weather is hot and humid, without much of a breeze.

Our first stop was the Fortuna waterfall where we descended hundreds of feet to the canyon floor and enjoyed a swim in the pools below the falls. The water offered welcome relief to the heat up above, even to the extent that Nancy commented that it was the first time she had been cold in two months. Of course, that was before the climb back out of the canyon.

As with most attractions in Costa Rica, the area is accessed by paying an admission fee. Being the recent recipients of proclamations by the Costa Rican immigration service granting us temporary residency status (and no, the process is not done yet!) we decided to try to get the Tico admission price. Pero, no hablamos espanol! Since we do not speak Spanish, the guy at the desk was insisting on seeing our Tico ID cards, which have not been issued yet, and we kept showing him our printed proclamations, while one of our group kept telling him that we were residents. After about 10 minutes of discussion between the clerk and our friend, the clerk finally relented and we paid the admission in Colones (which Nancy learned in class means “Columbus”). Our friend proudly proclaimed that we had saved about a dollar.

After lunch we headed to the forest to enjoy a canopy tour. For the uninitiated, a canopy tour consists of riding down a series of zip lines anchored to trees. In our case, it was 12 lines, the longest of which was about 500 meters. It started out simple enough – we walked down a few stairs to a platform, where the guide hooked our harnesses (one person at a time) to the zip line, telling us not to brake because this one was short and shallow. This instruction, of course, followed a 10 minute safety lecture on the importance of braking lest you crash into a tree. As promised, the first line was an easy glide with a rapid transition without pause to the second, steeper, longer line at the end of which the guide hooked us to a static line on the tree. Standing on the platform anchored to the tree waiting to hook into the third cable, we noticed that despite the descent, we were well above the forest floor. We popped out of the trees on our way across the valley on the fourth line. Regular readers of this blog will remember that hillsides in Costa Rica are quite steep, and the sides of this valley were no exception. I’m not sure how high we were above the river, but it was high enough to give me that feeling of braking on black ice. After mumbling a newly acquired Spanish swear word (gleefully taught to me earlier in the week in a staff meeting) I realized that if the harness or cable broke, the leaves on the trees below were so large that they would surely break my fall. Nancy, who found this experience exhilarating, was quite amused by the juxtaposition of tension, since I am the one that enjoys climbing activities while she has to lie down to look over a cliff. By the last line, we both felt the excitement and highly recommend the experience.

The remainder of the day and evening was spent in a series of hot spring pools that varied from cool to “you’ll be cooked in 15 minutes”. Unfortunately, clouds covered the volcano so we could not see the glowing lava beds up above.
Sunday we climbed aboard a 4-wheel ATV and rode across a farm field to the base of Arenal, then down to the Fortuna river (complete with a heavy downpour) and back to where we started in time for a hearty Tico lunch before we headed back home. Nancy’s canopy tour exhilaration waned as she drove for miles on end behind a slow moving truck full of cows along mountain roads that make the “Going to the Sun” road in Glacier look like I-80 across Nebraska.