Toucans & traveling

Sunday, June 25

Yesterday’s trip to San Jose to drop my car for repairs proved to be a typical Costa Rican adventure. Nothing nearly as perilous as it may sound in the brochure, but still well worth the admission fee ;-) My drive into San Jose was pleasantly uneventful. The car, even with its various issues, behaved admirably, and at times, almost too well. This was most evident when I was trying to explain to the manager of the car dealership (in my slow and broken Spanish) how the driver-side window had been broken (the day before, it had come completely off its cradle in the door, to the point where I could lift and move it around freely with my hands!). When I tried to demonstrate this, the crazy thing worked like nothing had happened. The door lock, which had locked me out of the driver’s side earlier in the week (forcing me to climb over the center console for a day), worked splendidly too. At least the turn signal was completely off (after it had worked to a degree on the drive down—I only needed to manually get the signal to flash by turning the signal on and off by hand with the signal switch. And the engine, while it ran well enough to get me to san jose, still crank at least a half a quart of oil on the trip, so with luck, they’ll take my request to overhall the rings, etc, seriously. Even Costa Rican traffic was pretty mild, and the drivers on the Pan-American highway almost sedate (this is really saying something—Tico road manners make New York, Boston, or even Rome look pretty tame). This was pretty important, as I really didn’t need the distraction while trying to find the auto place (more on Tico wayfinding later…)

After successfully dropping off the car, I took a taxi into downtown San Jose to do some shopping. San Jose, for a city that is remarkably short on tourism appeal, sure does have a lot of business trying to cater to tourism! Still, mixed in are a wide array of retail shops, restaurants, hotels, banks, offices, public buildings, and service businesses that one would expect of any national capitol. Much of the city unfortunately reminds me of the seamier parts of Los Angeles or San Francisco. It is a tight, compact grid of streets (based on the same Spanish colonial pattern as LA & SF), with lots of 1 and 2 story buildings that all look to be 50-80 years old, and badly in need of at least a paint job, or more often, major renovation. The businesses often seem to be thriving, but there is little quality reinvestment in the physical appearance of the buildings. Here and there is an older architectural gem in Spanish colonial style, plus a few more recent public buildings in the beaux arts fashion from the early 20^th century. In the commercial center one finds many newer 4-8 story office buildings, in typically bland international style. They truly could be anywhere in the world.

At least in the old grid of downtown San Jose, it is remarkably easy to get around and know where you are! In the surrounding suburbs, with their streets designed more by happenstance and topography than any overarching plan, it is almost impossible for a newcomer to navigate. There are no street names, no street numbers, and no physical addresses that most of the world would recognize. Everything is referred to by approximate distance from “known” landmarks (they are unfortunately only known to those who have lived there long enough to build the massive cognitive map required to begin linking places together spatially!) The place where my auto dealer is located actually goes by the following address: “near the five corners of Tibas (the name of the suburb), to the north side of the Catholic Church.” When one checks a map, Tibas covers about 10 square kilometers, and there are dozens of Catholic Churches, and at least three intersections that one could arguably say, “well, it has 5 corners…” If not for the detailed directions provided to me by my car broker, I may never have found the spot!

In San Jose, I had a long list of things to try to find, but only a limited amount of space to put them (just my small day pack- which already had my raincoat, umbrella, car tools, etc. in it.). So I went for the smaller stuff. First, I found the mother lode of balsawood, which should keep Niall in airplane building materials at least through the first couple of months here. Then I found some coffee mugs for $.50 each, and lastly, some wine glasses—Bohemian crystal no less! Seems there’s a certain amount of symmetry that I should come all the way to Costa Rica to buy Czech glassware. That pretty well filled my bag, so it was off to the bus station.

As this was my first time on the public bus I wasn’t certain just what to expect, but for less than $4.00, I didn’t expect much. As we boarded the bus, and the sky literally opened up in torrential rain, I mostly hoped for a roof that didn’t leak. Well, almost; I only got dripped on every now an then, such as when the bus lurched hard to the right, I got a few drips from a hole in the roof, but otherwise I at least stayed dry. Comfortable is another question. I think the airlines have been researching seating capacity in Costa Rica. 5 hours in my seat left me with near permanent cramps in both buns, and knees locked at 90 degrees. It probably didn’t help that because it was raining so hard, no one opened any windows, so it about 110F the whole way. I’m not sure we would have been much wetter with the windows open! And now I have all week to look forward to my return trip to pick up the car- sigh...

Fortunately, just as the bus was finishing the climb up the mountain, the rain finally let up, and completely stopped as we pulled into Santa Elena. I walked the 15 minutes uphill to our house, and felt very thankful for remembering my flashlight. When the clouds are blocking the moon & stars here, it is REALLY dark. As I reached the house it occurred to me, “Oh no, I left my keys with the car…” Then I remembered I had left a spare hidden outside for just such an emergency. After pulling out the spare, I then discovered that the duplicate key I had made to the back door didn’t actually open the lock. Just great. *&^%^&!! I then punched the door, which responded by swinging open. Just great again-- I’m in the house, but I’ve been relying on a lock this crummy for three weeks! Oh well. That I can fix ;-)

Today I woke to discover that I wasn’t the only one breaking and entering yesterday. Apparently, the Marvin’s horses got loose from their pasture, and then managed to break through the rope gate to our yard. They then proceeded to raid my garden, eating the top off every single corn stalk, nibbled the leaves off almost every green bean plant, and generally trampled everything else. So I spent a couple hours weeding and repairing things as best I could this morning. At least the lettuce and cilantro weren’t big enough to bother with, and everything else had yet to come up.

This finally brings me to the “wildlife shot of the week.” This morning as I was eating breakfast, our regular flock of Toucans stopped by and I managed to get my camera set up and caught the fellow you see above. These are really beautiful birds, and quite large too (about a foot long, plus the beak!). And talk about colorful—I bet you thought the Toucan on the Fruit Loops box was an exaggeration didn’t you? If anything, I‘d say the opposite! Well, that’s all I have time for now, more later this week…