46 posts tagged “costa rica”

This is the longest time between posts since I started blogging here in late 2006.  Back then I was newly-married and had just moved to Costa Rica.  Travis and I were on a kind of extended honeymoon.  We explored by day (when Travis wasn't working) and went out by night - the typical expat thing.  I miscarried and we went on a consolatory vacation to the Dominican Republic where I was charmed to have one of the local guides talk about "Sir Francis Drake, the English pirate."  In my anglo-centric history lessons, he appeared a great explorer.

Things are very different now.  We live in my home town in our very own house.  I've barely even left town, let alone the country since we got here.  I'm travelled out for the moment, although I'm still collecting places to go (Norway, Jordan, Tunisia, Greece, back to France and Spain...)  It's Saturday night and instead of going out I'm sitting in my dining room listening to spring rain hit the window.  I'm someone's mother, which still surprises and delights me after almost two years. 

Life is unexpected, but good.

Here are a few things that have appeared everywhere we've lived.  While the continuity is reassuring, there are some things I would have been happy to leave in the northern hemisphere. 

• The Late Show with David Letterman
• Fisher Price toy phones.  This was one item I was glad to find again because Petra loves her phone.  We're on our second one already.  The first one was no match for baby drool.
• French Jam
• Corona Beer with a slice of lime.  Also a good thing.
  
• Nickelback.  You can run but you can't hide from the behemoth that is Nickelback.  They're all over the radio in Costa Rica, Canada, and New Zealand (and everywhere else as well no doubt - Travis heard a girl asking for their new CD in a mall in Pretoria).  Their latest song is rather icky.  It's the one with the chorus that features the line - "Cause you look so much cuter with something in your mouth..." What is that about?  

We've been driving around a bit at night since we moved to Carla's house.  Petra has found it difficult to settle into a sleep routine in yet another new place so we've needed to drive her to sleep.  Before we packed up in Costa Rica, she went to bed between 8 and 9 most nights and got up around 8.  After the movers took away our stuff, the routine went all to buggery (as they(we?) say here in NZ).  Petra's a mellow, placid, amenable baby, who never seems to get really cranky no matter how tired she might be, but she's an accomplished resister of sleep.  She stays up and up until I feel about ready to fall over without ever showing much in the way of ill-effects.  It's impressive and rather daunting. 

We had periods in San Jose when we needed to drive Petra around as well.  We developed a regular route - along the old main road to Multiplaza and back home via the pista.  However, being on the road there late at night is not entirely safe.  We kept our doors locked and when we had to stop at red lights we watched for people behaving suspiciously because carjacking is a definite possibility.  In fact, after 10 at night, you can drive through red lights if there's no oncoming traffic so that you're not a target for thieves.  And Costa Rican driving is hazardous to your health at any time of the day, but especially on Friday and Saturday nights when everyone's been out drinking.  People drive drunk without compunction.

We haven't devised a route here yet, I've just been pootling around aimlessly showing Travis new areas of town.  We drove along the main street the other night, past bars and restaurants full of festive end-of-year students, and past groups of meandering pedestrians.  I noticed myself looking for the central locking in our rental car and being disconcerted when I didn't find it and had to leave the doors unlocked.  I've also noticed that I avoid the darker streets in our travels.  I didn't even realise that I was on heightened alert in Costa Rica, but I must have been, and I've brought that extra alertness with me.  

Something was said about safety in Costa Rica at our little party yesterday and Travis said that he feels a bit vulnerable being out at night in an unlocked car.  So it's not just me.  We're both still jumpy after our time in San Jose.  The Dunedinites were all very surprised.  Carjacking's just not a consideration here and it would never occur to anyone to feel unsafe.  I didn't think it would ever occur to me either, but it seems that I've got some newly-acquired wariness to shake off.

As we drove into our hotel in the quiet of the early hours of Thursday morning, we stopped at a red light and waited for it to go green even though there were no other cars in sight.  "No more running red lights," I thought.  Unlike Costa Rica, where you can legally run the red lights after 10pm and illegally run them any other time of the day as well, if you think you can get away with it.

When I mentioned to Travis that we'd have to be law-abiding now, he pointed out that, on the positive side, we weren't likely to get car-jacked in Vancouver if we stopped at a red light at night.

Well, there is that....

It turns out that it's good to fly five days after a hurricane that was serious enough to close the airport for a couple of days and scare off other travellers, but not so serious that the infrastructure of the airport was badly damaged.  All our flights were on time and Houston airport was wonderfully empty.  As the immigration officer in Houston said, "Only crazy people are flying right now.  I guess that includes you."

Petra flew well.  She slept pretty much all the way from Houston to Vancouver, only waking up in the taxi on the way to our hotel.  Even though it was around 1am by the time we checked in, she was inclined to think that since she was up, it must be time to play and it took us some time to persuade her otherwise.

Our hotel is great.  We have a little one-bedroom apartment with in-suite laundry (a must when travelling with a baby).  It's only a few blocks from where we used to live and is right next to Stanley Park.  We walked around yesterday checking out our old haunts - it's easy to slide back into our Vancouver lifestyle. 

I'm still getting my head around the fact that we're not on holiday, we're emigrating/returning home to New Zealand.  We had so much running around to do before we left Costa Rica that I didn't get a chance to catch up with myself. Now we're here though and I'm glad.

We've driven down Avenida 10 to the hospital and back home along Avenida 8 so many times that we've worn a groove.  I took a couple of pictures of the buildings, people, and streets on our way home yesterday.

Travis's suggested caption for this one - "Want a screw?"  You can get any kind of screw you can think of and probably a few you can't from this hardware store (ferreteria).

This is a hole in the wall takeaway place which sells ice cream and cigarettes and tipico food (rice and beans, and pastries). These two are typical San Jose streetscapes. San Jose's not a pretty city.  It's a low-slung, dilapidated, concrete and corrugated iron kind of place with only occasional spots of glamour and whimsy.  But it has its own idiosyncratic appeal - it's lively, teeming with people, and full of fascinating quirks.

Costa Rica gained independence from Spain in 15 September 1821.  The holiday's on Monday.  Petra will be ten months old on the same day. 

Independence Day is a big deal here.  Shops and buildings have been decorated for weeks with flags and red, white, and blue streamers and decorations.  Vendors are selling flags and crepe paper bird cages on the side of the pista.  And people have flags waving from their cars and houses.  Travis risked life and limb this afternoon to rush across the road to buy a small cloth flag for Petra.  I want some reminders of Costa Rica for her.  She's a Tica and will remain so, even when we're away from here.  Any time someone asks for her place of birth she'll get to say San Jose, Costa Rica.

We went to the pediatrician yesterday for Petra's ten-month check up.  I took the chance to take some photos of the hospital and surrounds to add to our collection.

I would have taken the pediatrician's photo as well, but Petra decided that she was totally opposed to having him anywhere near her and screamed for the whole visit.  Not an auspicious time for photos.  Although I did take one of her outside the hospital and still showing her displeasure.

The movers came in today to pack our stuff and put it in a container for shipping to New Zealand.

We began at the crack of dawn, or 7:30ish anyway, and were done by late morning.  Costa Ricans are systematically, chronically late for everything, all of them, it's a national characteristic.  Except when they tell you they'll be round early in the morning.  If they say 9am, they'll arrive at 8, if they arrange to meet you at 8, they'll appear just after 7.  And so it was this morning.  "We'll be there at 8," the agent told me and four men in a truck arrived at 7:20am and began dismantling our house with startling speed and efficiency.  We had to move quickly to keep up with them.  I nearly lost my favourite carry-on bag to a box and I did lose the books I planned to take for the travel day.  They were whisked off the shelf and into a box before I remembered that I hadn't put them aside.  Oh well, Atonement will have to wait for another day. 

The movers were so efficient that by just after 9 everything was boxed, labelled and piled downstairs by the door.  They even dismantled the dining room table and wrapped each piece individually.  Unpacking will be like a giant game of pass the parcel.

The truck carrying the container was late because its arrival time was outside the magic early hour.  It was supposed to arrive at 11 but rolled in around 11:30.  Our cul de sac was too small for the truck to turn and back into our driveway, so it had to stay on the street.  The poor moving men had to carry everything out to the truck.  Just as well that we aren't shipping anything particularly heavy.

And, as well as being too big for the street, the truck was too tall for the power lines festooning our street.  It dragged one loose as it drove by.  Oops.  If the people across the street lost power, they won't be loving T A Mudanza right about now.  The power supply is chancy enough here without trucks knocking down the lines.

We have a whole container to ourselves because there aren't exactly queues of people moving stuff from Costa Rica to Dunedin, New Zealand.  Our stuff barely took up a third of the container - it looked a little pathetic in all the space.  The movers packed it all in and fixed it in place by building a brace using a huge sheet of cardboard and some lengths of wood.

Once they had the container loaded we had to go outside to sign papers and watch them lock the doors and attach an orange seal.  If all goes well, we'll break that seal in Dunedin in about 6 weeks time.

It was all most impressive.  I've never given my possessions to movers before - I carry them myself or leave them in storage - and when it came to it this morning, I wasn't happy about sending everything off into the wilds without me.  I fear that I'll never see Petra's baby clothes and my books again.  But the movers' professionalism and efficiency went some way to easing my worries.

And I'm hiding in the office, away from the huge old roach that crawled off into a corner of the lounge.  Travis tried to catch it, but it's fast as well as huge.  It shot off under the tv stand before he even got close.  Now it's who knows where out there.

Ah, the joys of the tropics.  It's raining hard at the moment and the bugs swarm in through the cracks and gaps in our decidedly non-airtight walls looking for shelter. 

I'm going to pretend I never saw it and slink back out to my chair....

Avocados - they're huge, ripe, and flavourful.  Yum
Mangoes
Pineapples
Limes
Gallito Milan Menta chocolates - otherwise known as "crack chocolate" for their addictive properties
Britt chocolate-covered fruit and Britt coffee
Local cheeses fresh off the farm
Frescas - freshly-squeezed fruit juices
Menta de Limonade as made by Grano de Oro.  Mint, salt, lemon - it's to die for.

Searching for Britt and Gallito chocolates online lead me to Ticoshopping.com which has all kinds of Costa Rican goodies, but not the mint chocolates alas.  I'll have to take a stash with me when I leave.