Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

This place is so over run with Gringos it is really starting to get on our nerves. Even the $18.00/night hostel we stayed in Liberia had cable TV with all the major American TV stations CBS, TNT, Nickelodeon, Food Network, HBO, Cinemax, and others. I think it is totally crazy that all the room rates we have been quoted so far were in American dollars. If you actually want to pay in the local currency you have to ask them to convert the bill (which they do at a pretty shitty exchange rate).

We arrived in Liberia last night and after settling in our room we went out to the closest restaurant to our hostel.

It happened to be a Chinese restaurant and we were greeted at our table by their fat young son who asked us in broken English “What you want to drink?” They are so used to Gringos here that even the immigrants don’t speak Spanish with us.

Despite all my complaining about the TV here, I did relish the opportunity to watch some mind numbing TV. I never watch football, and you could even say I hate it. Maybe it was the deliriousness accompanying the stomach flu I came down with, but the only thing on TV other than an un-watchable Hugh Grant movie was American football. There are definitely aspects of home that I miss and football seemed like a great way to catch up on them. I was actually enjoying it, despite the pictures of people wearing foam blocks of cheese on their heads. All the commentary was in Spanish and it really wasn’t so bad. At halftime I realized it was also being broadcast in English and we switched channels. When I realized that all this yapping was about how certain players were recovering from sprained pinkies and weather it is “1st down” or “4th down and inches” made me ready to switch channels. I also think that the entire country has dyslexia. Has anyone else noticed that the ‘V’ comes before the ‘R’ in Brett Favre’s name? In every language I’ve ever studied it would NOT be pronounced like “farv”. But still all you here is Brett FaRVe, Brett FaRVe. What is up with that? I’ll tell you, I’ve had enough of America and am ready to go back to Central America.

We were in a store today and in front of us were some Americans. They were paying when the guy leans over to me and asks me “Hey, what is the exchange rate here?” He didn’t say “Hello!” or “How are you?” or “Where are you from?” I tell him the approximate exchange rate and then he asks me “What is the currency called here?” I tell him they have colones in Costa Rica. How could you go somewhere and not at least “sort of” know what the exchange rate is? Matthias pointed out that Americans can book flights, tickets, vacation packages and charge everything to their credit card (in dollars) and never have to deal with details like local currencies and exchange rates. A lot of hotels actually have websites here and you can even book some of them online. This is very different from the rest of Central America.

A lot of people that we have met during our travels have described Costa Rica as “less authentic”. I actually don’t like that description of this country. I don’t think any of the people we have met are any less authentic than any other country is. (What does that mean anyway, to be less authentic?) They are richer. Does that make them less authentic? They don’t have garbage piles on the side of the road like Guatemala does, and they have better health care than other Central American countries. Most of the Costa Ricans I’ve seen are not dirty and barefoot. A lot of them are renting out their crappy bungalows for a pretty penny and that seems just as authentic as the American capitalism I’m used to. In a lot of ways they are worlds apart from the other Central American countries that we’ve been to, but that doesn’t mean they are less authentic.

Still, one of the nice things here has still been the Central American spirit. Matthias has been asking every one we meet if they know of an apartment for rent. Here’s an example of how this goes: We’re buying some groceries at the grocery store and Matthias asks the checker in Spanish “Do you know where we can go to rent an apartment. We would like to rent an apartment of 5 or 6 weeks. Do you know of anything?” The checker thinks for a moment, doesn’t know of anything and asks her manager. Her manager looks like he’s thinking of something and goes outside and asks a group of men standing outside. One of the men knows something and writes the name down for us. We ask where it is, and he says, “Oh, just follow me in my car.” We hop in our car and follow him to a hotel and he is able to get us a good deal if we agree to stay an entire week. Unfortunately none of these leads have panned out so far, but it is this part of the adventure that continues to make this trip interesting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Costa Rica. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.