Costa Rica
Costa Rica
I went to Costa Rica in order to interview with some schools. I felt my age might be a problem to get hired so I went so that they could see me and to see what the country was like.
September 14
Got up at 2:45AM to catch the 6AM flight from Raleigh, NC to San Jose, Costa Rica. An uneventful flight. Rather than have the hotel pick me up at the airport for $35, I opted to use public transportation. The bus ride of several kilometers into the city cost 400 Colones (about 80 cents). I hate the fact that you always get screwed at the airport. Everything is more expensive, especially food and transportation. They prey on our lack of choices (where else are you going to eat?)and our lack of knowledge of the local situation.
The ride into town was through hilly terrain and tropical vegetation. There were flags and red, white and blue decorations (the colors of the flag) everywhere, in the airport, along the road and in the town.
At first glance, Costa Rica and San Jose appear poor and dirty: not squalor, just lots of repairs, cleaning up and window dressing need to be done. Getting the trash off the street would help. But this was not unexpected. American fast food outlets had preceded me to the country. Even before I got off the bus I saw McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Quiznos, and PaPa John’s.
Had to walk about 200 meters to my hotel, a small price to pay for to say $34. The hotel was small but my room was rather large. Simple would be a kind description but spartan would be more accurate. Of course, all I need is a bed and a shower, though AC would be nice. The lobby was dark due to the dark paneling and the fact that they didn’t have any lights on. Several faded Salvador Dali prints were the only decorations. The room keys were attached to wooden carving the size of my fist. Mine was a mushroom but I saw an apple and a pineapple.
San Jose sits in a valley surrounded by mountains which are visible from almost anywhere in the city. The center of town has a active, crowded, loud pedestrian zone. Street peddlers hawk their wares, everything from DVDs to flowers, sunglasses, soccer shirts, shoes, shoestrings (separately), vegetables, peppers and macaroons. There were vendors everywhere selling Lottery tickets. They had card tables set up and covered with tickets to choose from. Lots of people were selling miniature flags and little red, white and blue boxes which I found out later were lanterns. All the buildings had red, white and blue steamers or decorations of some kind. There were long, long lines at the clinic and all the banks and ATM machines. All public telephones were in use and people were waiting.
In the park in front of the post office, two preachers were taking turns trying to out-shout the street peddlers and excite their audience, mostly disinterested onlookers sitting on benches or on the steps surrounding the statue of some dead hero.
About 7:30 that night, I heard a barrage of fireworks. When I asked if there were a reason, I was informed that the next day was Independence Day. September 15th , a national holiday,marked 188 years of freedom from Spain for Costa Rica and three other Latin American countries. So much for my plans to interview with schools the next day. But now I knew the reason for all the flags. And the lanterns were to be carried through the streets in a parade that night.
I didn’t go to the parade but wrote e-mails and tried to find the locations of the schools I wanted to talk with. And I discovered they give very strange directions in Costa Rica. The address for Maximo Nivel is “del Antigua Higueron, 100 meters south and 50 meters east , San Pedro”. That’s fine if you know that San Pedro is an area of town and that”del Antigua Higueron” means “at the old fig tree”. So you find the old fig tree and walk south and then east. Idioma International is located on “Paseo Colon, 150 meters south of Subway”. First you find Subway. How many countries do you know that give directions in relation to a fast food restaurant? It turns out that Idioma is not on Pasero Colon at all. Subway is. Find Subway on Paseo Colon and walk 150 meters south and you’ll find Idioma. Realized that I was going to have to depend on the taxi drivers.
September 15 – Independence Day
Showered and had breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. Heard the beat of drums out on the street so I headed for town. The In dependence Day Parade was in progress and it was only about 9AM. Lots of bands, flags and children in costumes. But not your normal bands, mostly just drums. One group had 50% drums and 50% xylophones, portable, of course, shaped like lyres. Another group had drums and recorders, what I used to call tonettes. Not a single brass instrument or woodwind in sight. No trumpets, tubas,clarinets or saxophones. Don’t have an explanation for this. Don’t know if it’s an economic issue but don’t think the xylophones would be cheap. Maybe they’re just simpler to learn and to play. Each band had a group of flag-bearers carrying large Costa Rican flags. The flag-bearers marched in formation and performed routines when not moving forward. One band had a drummer, a little girl, who could not have been over six years old. She didn’t seem to be totally sure of what she was supposed to do and she didn’t have the ability to perform as well as the teenagers surrounding her’ but she was there, she was in uniform and she could keep a simple rhythm. She was cute as could be. She was my favorite.
One man stopped me on the street and began asking questions. “How long have you been in San Jose?” “Why are you here?” When I told him I wanted to find a teaching job, he was happy to tell me that I should try to University. Then he told me I should take off the gold necklace I was wearing and put it in my pocket. Told me it wasn’t safe to wear jewelry.
Walked around town. Took some pictures but not many. San Jose has no historical center and few old, historical buildings. There’s nothing particularly interesting about the town. As I walked back to the hotel, saw several homeless people settling down on the street for the night. Costa Rica does not go on Daylight Savings Time so the sun goes down earlier than I expected. And the downtown area empties out after dark. Was told that most people live in the suburbs thus the center gets quiet. Since there wasn’t anything to see there was no reason to stay downtown. Found several TV channels with movies in English and was happy to retire early, watch TV and read.
September 16
Made appointments for interviews this morning. First stop was Idioma. Found Subway on Paseo Colon and went south 100 meters and there it was. Think the interview went well and think they will offer me a position if they get the government contract they hope to get and thus will need more teachers. Course, they have been waiting to hear from the government for a couple of months so they may not know anything before Christmas. The facility is clean, nice and fairly new. The neighborhood is not.
The second interview was with Nate Howell at Maximo Nivel. I gave the taxi driver the address del Antigua Higueron and he asked which Antigua Higueron. It seems that in days past, there were two old fig trees that were used as landmarks. We wanted the one in San Pedro. The original old fig tree no longer exists but there is a work of art that stands in its place. It’s simply several gently curving tubes of metal rising about twelve feet in the air and everyone knows that that is the old fig tree. From there we found the school. The facility is very clean, very nice and very new. Everything is modern, up-to-date and the newest technology. It’s away from the city center but the neighborhood is still not very nice. There is a huge iron gate at the front door. You have to ring a bell, they look at you and then let you in. But this was true at the other school and at my hotel. The school had a nice interior courtyard but the walls were topped with that razor barbed wire that you see around prisons. Not a very comforting sight.
I talked with Nate Howell who is from Union City, Tennessee. Nice fellow. Had a pleasant interview. Also got to see Ken Jones, the owner of the school. I had met Ken when I got the TEFL at the Maximo Nivel school in Cusco, Peru. Maximo Nivel in San Jose is fairly new and only has 50 English students. They are teaching ten TEFLers at the moment and evidently several of them have also applied for a teaching job, so I think my chances might be slim.
I talked with Nate about the security at the school and in town and he said it was necessary. He told me of several muggings that had taken place in broad daylight. Said that if he sees a group of teenagers standing together, he turns and walks away. As we were walking along on the street we passed two high school aged boys and one yelled “hey” as loud as he could and for no apparent reason than to try to scare us. We just looked at them and walked on but it wasn’t very pleasant. It doesn’t seem like San Jose is a very safe place and, in fact, I never felt safe, especially after dark.
Later that day, as I was walking through the middle of town, I passed a group of men sitting on a bench in a park. One of them tossed a piece of wadded up paper in my path. I noticed it and looked at him. He was looking at me with a blank stare, no smile. There was a message there, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I walked on but decided then I didn’t want to live in San Jose for a year. So that night, I booked an excursion out of the city for the next day.
September 17
Was picked up at the hotel at 6:45. We gathered others at their hotels and left the city. The first stop was the ruins of a cathedral that had been destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt several times. Nothing special. Then we passed a cathedral about 25 kilometers from San Jose. Though it was beautiful and a working church, we didn’t stop. Our guide told us that each year there is a pilgrimage to the church and that thousands of people walk the 25 kilometers from San Jose to the cathedral. Some make the entire trip on their knees. Hard to believe but I’m sure it’s true.
Then we left the central valley and started climbing up. Our destination was the Irazu volcano which has three craters side by side, one filled with a lake. We climbed up, up, up, through the clouds. We went through farm country where they raise potatoes onions, lettuce and cows. The soil was black and rich. The volcano is inactive and there is little to see but I had never though of a volcano having three areas where it had erupted. The volcano is billed as the highlight of our trip but it wasn’t very interesting. There is another volcano where you can watch lava flows. In the parking lot we saw a white-nosed coati, a relative of our possum but much larger, rummaging through the trash cans. More entertaining than the volcano. So we had completed the highlight of the tour and it was only 9:30 in the morning.
We stopped for breakfast, eggs, toast, bacon, coffee, fruit and a mixture of rice and beans called “pinta” which is a specialty in that area. Very good. There were hummingbird feeders and hummingbirds everywhere around the little cafe, male and female Crowned Woodnymph Hummingbirds.
Next, we headed across the country toward the Caribbean Sea. Crossed the mountain range that runs down the center of the country. Our guide gave us bits of information throughout the two hour ride. Interestingly enough bananas are the chief export of the country though I never saw a banana tree. She explained that bananas were grown in another part of the country, I assumed in the low lying areas. Pineapples are the number two export followed by coffee. Surprising.
After a couple of hours in the van driving through the mountains, we came to the next stage of our trip, a river boat ride. To me, this was the most interesting part of the day. I like being on the water. The river was muddy. You couldn’t see into it at all. The captain and our guide were on the lookout for wildlife which they spotted very quickly. Our first sighting was a two-toed sloth high in a tree dining on leaves. They said it was a two-toed sloth. All I saw was a dark blob high in the tree which I would never have noticed. I fell that the sloth is always in that particular tree and they are able to find him every trip down river. Lucky for them. Don’t know how they spotted him in the first place.
The next sighting was a green Iguana sunning himself on the roots of a big tree and shortly after, an anhinga. Anhingas are a dime a dozen in Florida. They we found a group of Howler Monkeys jumping from branch to branch and howling at the intruders on the river. We eventually saw two or three groups of Howler Monkeys. On the underside of a big limb hanging over the water, we found nine Long Nosed Bats. They were only slightly larger than mice and in a straight row clinging to the bark of the limb. They didn’t seem to care that we came so close to them. And we saw a couple of alligators, but they were very shy and slipped into the water before we were able to get close enough for good pictures.
Along the waters edge, we saw several boys swinging on ropes and dropping into the water. Our guide explained that there were so many fish in the river that the alligators were never hungry enough to eat the boys. The river banks were generally steep and about fifteen feet high. At several points we noticed where there had been small landslides into the water. Sometimes even large trees had been washed down into the river. Maybe that was one of the reasons the river was so muddy.
At the end of the boat ride, we stopped at a large jungle hutch with a thatched roof and no walls. Some of us had lunch and those who had signed up to go zip-lining headed off to the treetops. While waiting for their return, we walked around the grounds. We saw several Basilisks (not sure about spelling). A Basilisk is lizard about 12 to 15 inches long. Its common name is Jesus Christ because it can run on the surface of water. You’ve probably seen them on Animal Planet or Discovery. We visited the frog house in which they have poisonous frogs which are really beautiful but small. The Green Poison Arrow Frog is an inch to an inch and a half in length. It is black with splotches of fluorescent green, very bright. The Strawberry Poison Dart Frog is called the Blue Jeans Frog. It is only about an inch long and has a bright red body and blue legs, thus “blue jeans”. Our guide told us that they are poisonous to the predators and only poisonous to humans if you lick them. I wonder who was the first to lick a frog in order to find out if it was poisonous. Not me!
Next was the snake house where they had a variety of snakes including several which were poisonous, extremely poisonous. They had a Bird-Eating Viper, a Jumping Viper, and a Eyelash Viper. The Eyelash Viper was my favorite. It has a small projection right over the eyes and is the color of a banana, only brighter. They had a Coral Snake, a Rattlesnake, and a Fer-de-Lance, one of the most poisonous of all snakes. There was an empty cage where the Bushmaster used to be. He died. The Bushmaster is poisonous and, I was surprised to learn, grows to a length of eleven feet. I guess he would be the master of the bush. Sorry I didn’t get to see him.
They also had a butterfly house filled with butterflies with beautiful blue wings. Unfortunately, when they land, the wings fold up and are completely nondescript. I was unable to get a picture of the blue wings. The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around spotting birds and eating fruit off the trees.
The boat ride back was in the dark followed by a two hour ride back to San Jose. We road around town dropping people off and spotting life on the streets after dark. Not a pretty sight. What I thought were ladies of the night in very tight, very short dresses, they others thought were young men in ladies clothing. At any rate, they had very good figures.
September 18
I had to catch an early flight so I arranged to have a taxi take me to the airport. I didn’t know if the buses ran that early. Promptly at 6AM one of the red taxis was waiting outside the hotel. (All the taxis are red). It cost $22 dollars for the 22 minute ride to the airport. Oh well, I had to get to the airport. Inside I showed the lady my ticket and she said “You need to pay the tax,” and showed me where to go. I had forgotten that in some places you have to pay an airport exit fee. They had about ten clerks at desks to collect the tax. There were several ATM machines nearby. Obviously, most people try to leave a country with as little local money as possible and boom you have to come up with some money. Fortunately, Costa Rica accepts US Dollars which was a good thing because the tax was $26. I bought some coffee to take home as a souvenir and spent the local money I had remaining.
I was happy to leave San Jose.
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