33 posts tagged “costa rica”

We're back, to a rainy rainy Costa Rica.  The rainy season started in our absence and the air in our condo is wet enough to make the covers of all the shiny new books I bought in Vancouver curl up.  Thankfully the sun came out today. 

Rain isn't all that rolled in while we were away - a thriving ecosystem has sprung up in our kitchen.  Big bugs, little bugs, in between bugs, all scurrying around on the floor and lurking in drawers and cupboards.  On Sunday night, everywhere I went in the kitchen was infested: the cutlery drawer, the sink, the odds and sods drawer.  I bounced from place to place squeaking and flapping my arms around.  Petra thought I was hilarious.  Each time I jumped she laughed and laughed.  I was less amused.  Tropical bugs are not my thing.  They seem to be figuring out that we're home now and they should be more discrete, so they're becoming less visible when I go in the kitchen, but I know they're there...

Spotted at an intersection last week, a nice summary of life in Costa Rica.

1) A young woman in pants so tight that I could see what kind of knickers she was wearing (a thong) and watch the movement of her butt through the cloth .  She teetered along in black and white stilettos that had improbably pointed and turned up toes.
2) A guy on a scooter wearing his helmet pushed back on his head like a baseball cap.  He had the chin guard  resting on his forehead.  It was on his head, but served no function at all.

I've just made it home from a hair appointment.  Getting my hair cut has been something of a mission.  The hair salon has been a construction site for a couple of months, full of dust and paint fumes and other such unsuitable-for-pregnant-women things, so I stayed away.  It finally became operational again a couple of weeks ago and I made an appointment for yesterday.  Come lunch time and I squeezed myself behind the wheel of the car to drive myself to Escazu.  When I arrived however, my hairdresser was missing.  Gone to Spain (of all things) they told me.  "Thanks for letting me know before I drove over here people," was my first thought.  My second was "no, I can't wait until October 30.  I could have a baby by then," when they tried to book me in some time the week after next.  After some umming and ahhing they found a spot for me this afternoon.  I'm now freshly coiffed and can see again.  I was looking rather like an old English sheepdog, peering at the world through a curtain of hair, but no more.  Yay!!!

I caught a taxi home today because the driving yesterday wore me out.  The driver asked me how many months pregnant I am.  Two weeks to go I told him.  Then he asked if it was a boy or a girl and whether I was having her here in Costa Rica.  I decided to ask if he had children as well to keep the conversation going.  In Canada or New Zealand I wouldn't have bothered.  He was but a lad, very early 20's, driving a hotted up taxi with metal floor mats, flashing blue lights under the dash, and a racing car steering wheel.  But this is Costa Rica where even the boy racers have bible verses stuck on their dashboards, and everyone has children.  And sure enough he did.  A three year old and another on the way.

All this had to be managed in Spanish as well.  With my pregnancy brain that is not easy.  I paid a bill yesterday and probably caused the woman behind the counter some pain and suffering because I kept forgetting the amount.  She rattled off the number - 41,325 colones or some such.  I remembered the 41 thousand and hauled out the appropriate notes, but the hundreds defeated me.  I had to get her to repeat it about three times while I fished the change out of my wallet, because the number just wouldn't stick in my head.  My maths is shaky enough in English right now; let alone in Spanish. 

Travis tried to sleep in this morning - something that mostly doesn't work out here.  And it didn't work this morning.  Just after 8, sirens shrieked, horns tooted, and a loudspeaker blared music.  I peeped through the blinds, expecting a union rally outside the CNFL or a fair in the school across the street.  What I saw though was a running race - streams of people going down the hill.  The sirens were to scare off oncoming traffic and the music to exhort the runners on I suppose.  Travis staggered out of the bedroom looking bleary and bewildered - so much for the Sunday morning lie-in.

We've been not taking pictures of San Jose all year - we go downtown and forget the camera, or forget to get the camera out of the bag or pocket it's stashed in, or it rains, or some such thing.

On Sunday, Travis remembered the camera, remembered to use it, and managed to beat the rain.  So here are some pictures of the centre of San Jose.

 

The address of our new apartment is:
Condominio H-C
Sabana Sur
de McDonalds doscientos sur
doscientos oeste
cincuenta norte y cincuenta oeste

In English that is:
H-C Condominiums
Sabana South
from McDonalds 200 meters south
200 meters west
50 meters north and 50 meters west

If you don't know where the local McDonalds is, good luck finding us!

All Costa Rican addresses are like this.  They begin with a local landmark (and god help you if someone cuts down the big tree or repaints the pink house) and just list the directions from there.  Very few streets have names (and if they do nobody except gringos uses them) and houses are not numbered.  It's all part of the slightly anarchic charm of the place.

Mail does get through - the bills always turn up anyway, flung over the fence or slipped under the door by some guy who roars up on a battered old scooter.

We have just signed a lease for a townhouse.  It's a huge place with two living rooms, three bedrooms and an office/maid's room, four bathrooms, and a little internal courtyard.  And, most importantly, it's away from the freeway and will be quiet, quiet, quiet!  We get the keys at the beginning of August.  I can't wait to move.

It's unfurnished, and when they say unfurnished here, they really mean it.  We have to buy an oven, fridge/freezer, and washing machine and dryer as well as the usual furniture.  I've never had to buy a house lot of stuff before, in fact I've never bought much furniture at all before because I was always focused on being portable and mobile, but pregnancy changes your outlook and now I want a nice comfortable home to nest in.

The only thing that worries me is that it might be a little gloomy.  I like my houses filled with light - but here in Costa Rica they build to avoid as much light as possible.  That's a sensible move in the tropics where direct sunlight in your house equals heat, but I'd rather be a little hot than live in a cave.

I've made an unwelcome discovery - maternity clothes are not easy to buy.  I went to the mall on Sunday in an effort to buy some pants and a t-shirt or two.  It was not a successful trip.  It's hard to know what size I am or what will be flattering now that I'm such an extravagant shape.  I feel absolutely enormous and am sure that I'm the biggest five months pregnant person ever.  I tried on everything in the store at the first shop and found that most of the clothes were too small - all the mediums had gone.  The exception was a beautiful pair of pants which only came in huge or huger.  I tried them on and ummed and ahhed over the wide too-long legs and was tempted anyway, until Travis asked the shop assistant how much they were and found out that they cost $177!!  Ouch.  I did manage to buy a cleavage-baring top on the principle that if I've got it, I might as well get it out there.  I've never had actual cleavage before and I'm rather liking it. 

After the mucho trabajo involved in buying one top, I retreated to the bookstore where the shopping is easy.  I came home with a couple of crappy detective novels and a handful of classic children's books (the store's selection runs to best-sellers and penguin classics, so my choices are limited).  I'm now sitting on the sofa drinking decaffeinated ceylon tea (decaffeinated because all the pregnancy books say to avoid too much caffeine and I'm not sure when enough becomes too much, so none seems safest) and reading Treasure Island.  Roewan wrote about the delights of R L Stevenson a while ago, reminding me that I haven't read Treasure Island or Kidnapped for years and that it's time, so I'm now the proud owner of Puffins Classics editions of them both.

This morning I read The Secret Garden - I've seen the movie but had never read the book.  Sitting here in the tropics, I found it a treat to read about spring on the Yorkshire moors - blustery winds and cool rain, bulbs poking shoots through the dirt, trees leafing and flowers budding.  I love gardening, even though I've only ever done it in a small way.  I used to walk through the botanic gardens in Dunedin on my way to university and wish to be a gardener instead of an overwhelmed graduate student.

Now that I'm allowed out of the house, I'm getting reacquainted with the joys of the roads and driving style here in Costa Rica.  Travis and I went for a "yay, we're normal now!" lunch at Grano de Oro, a very posh hotel not too far from here, last weekend.  It was most pleasant to sit in the courtyard, soaking up the atmosphere.  All I needed to make it perfect was one of Grano de Oro's drinks, but I had to settle for water and a sniff or two of Travis's mojito which was full of fresh mint and smelled great.

The ride home in the taxi shattered the whole luxury thing.  The driver swerved all over the road and hit what felt like every single pothole on the street.  Travis had to lean forward and tell him that I was pregnant and could he drive tranquilo.  He slowed down a bit, but I still needed a cup of tea and a lie down by the time I got home.

Last night we went out for dinner and asked the taxi drivers to go slowly when we got in the car.  I had two unbumpy rides.  That made me happy, but didn't do a lot for the other drivers on the road.  On the way home we were overtaken on the right by a suicidal guy on a scooter and a car or two swerved into the oncoming lane to get by us.   I think the  speed limit on the road is 50km an hour, but obeying it seems likely to get you run over.

Costa Ricans seem mostly to be pretty relaxed and non-confrontational, but their driving has real venom.  Crossing a busy street is by far the most dangerous thing you can do here.  Cars don't slow or dodge for pedestrians, it's up to you to run out of their way even if you're old or pregnant or lugging a small child.  It's a Darwinian jungle out there!

We had a DHL success this morning.  I took possession of a small parcel without incident.  No angry phone calls, no negotiating facturas in multiple languages, no searching the town for fax machines, no descent into slapstick as the delivery guys and I run all over the complex trying to find each other, no month-long delays, and an only slightly exorbitant bill.  Just a phone call from a very chatty DHL driver and the handover.  The driver was funny - he wasn't at all deterred by my minimalist Spanish and talked away at normal speed (damn fast), using complex sentences.  He was apparently quite convinced that I'd figure it out.  And mostly I did, although I can't vouch for the coherence of my replies.