2 posts tagged “church”

I keep offering little teases about the island and the resort but I haven't posted anything yet.  Too many things to talk about is the problem I think - I don't know where to start.  Here are a few pictures to make up for my lack of writing prowess.

We stayed at an all-inclusive resort - the Aquarium, so-named because it sits right in the water and fish swim around the boardwalks and in the swimming area.  I waded through a school of small fish to get into the water when I went swimming.  They're so used to people sloshing around near them that they didn't bother to get out of my way.

On our first day, we toured the island in one of the huge old Chevrolets that do duty as taxis there.  The driver drove along doing about 20 km's an hour with his arm out the window so that he could point out the big houses on one side and the boats way out on the horizon on the other side.  If he had something particularly interesting to show us, he just stopped on the road.  The slow, erratic driving didn't seem to bother anyone - everyone meanders around in second gear it seems.  We hired a broken-down old golf cart the next afternoon and drove to the next town on the main road.  The cart didn't exactly race along, but we found ourselves passing scooters and buses on the way.

Even with stops and our slow speed, the taxi got us all around the island in less than three hours, because it's so small.  I got a bit delirious looking at the bright blue water and white sand, and thought I might move there to go swimming every day with all the local kids.

The taxi driver stopped at a couple of little tourist traps so that we could feed fish and drink rum out of coconuts, for a small fee.  The island's main business is tourism, and it's not a very prosperous-looking place once you get away from the resorts, so I didn't mind handing over some Columbian pesos.  We looked at crabs and souvenirs and dodged the gangs of dogs that were lurking around.   The island has a huge population of dogs, all making free with the place, having sex in the street, and crapping wherever they please.  They don't seem to belong to anyone in particular but they all look well-fed.  We also found a large grey cat to hang out with while we had our drinks.  I made Travis take pictures of the cat because it was so big and healthy-looking - it didn't cooperate though, hiding its face at the crucial moment.

Travis has the work van for a week or so because his boss is away attending a conference in London.  We took advantage of the transport to get out of town at the weekend.  North of here the Palmares festival is going on.  From what I can make out it's a cross between the Calgary Stampede and a huge New Year's party which involves ferocious amounts of drinking and eating, mainly drinking, with a bit of horse riding thrown in.  The road to the town is crammed with cars, buses, and the odd horse, and the town itself is jammed full of beer and food tents.  So we decided to go south.  Although I wouldn't have minded seeing the spectacle.

Just past Cartago, the site of Las Ruinas, we found Paraiso and the Valle Orosi.  Paraiso is a real Costa Rican town - only the main road, which doubles as the highway, is paved.  All the other streets are packed dirt lined with the small fortress-like houses you find here in the poorer parts of town.  There are no yards - the houses touch each other on all sides.  I wish I'd taken some photos because it's hard to describe, but I didn't think to stop.

We turned off the highway at Paraiso and drove into the valley to Orosi.  It's a tiny town set in the hollow of some steep-sided hills.  I was reminded of Waipori (the village I grew up in, in New Zealand), except that

Waipori doesn't have banana palms or coffee plantations! and liked it a lot.  Travis, being prairie boy, found the lack of sky a bit odd.  Orosi's the kind of place where everyone knows each other.  The cafe we ate lunch in was across the road from a row of taxis.  The taxi drivers lounged against their cars and most everyone who walked or rode by stopped to exchange greetings - handshakes and kisses - and chat.

We wandered around the town after lunch, found the great store in the picture, and looked at the church which is Orosi's main claim to fame.  It's a low-slung stucco affair, not very glamorous, but strong enough to withstand a couple of hundred years in an earthquake

zone.  We couldn't go inside because there was some kind of ceremony going on inside - First Communion probably judging by the number of children running around, and the glimpse I got of a woman photographing a group of white-robed children at the front of the church.

We checked out another small town in the valley - Ujarras.  We got there via an incredibly steep and very narrow road.  Parts of it had slipped away and the roading people had just put up a few warning pegs to make the road one-lane.  Good views though.  Ujarras's claim to fame is also a church.  In this case a very beautiful ruin.  It was badly damaged by flooding about 100 years ago and is now part of a carefully maintained park.

We managed to find all these towns and get in and out of San Jose without getting lost.  Which is a first - we usually get lost in the back streets of San Jose when we try to come back home.  And getting in and out of even small towns is tricky because the main streets are usually one way.  You come across a No Hay Paso sign (which means approximately "there is no through road") and get diverted into a maze of back streets.  Once that happens your chances of finding the highway again are not good!