My Costa Rican friends think of the trip as a holiday and ask how I enjoyed it. My answer to them is 'muy bueno, gracias.'
A Visa Run To Nicaragua
My non-Costa Rican friends think of the trip as my visa run...and we talk about the process of crossing the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua..and vice versa. Most interesting procedures to follow. The bottom line on the border crossings, as long as you are prepared to trust the process and go with the flow (sorry abut the clichès) everything will work out the way it's supposed to.
It also helps to travel with a company that sends eight bus loads of passengers across the border one way or the other each day. They certainly smooth things out...for the passengers as well as the border officials.
One of the joys of my visa run was being free of all work responsibilities...related to both teaching and website development.
Among other things, I had the opportunity to just chat...and that's what I did most, with and without 'Tonia', Nicaragua's beer of choice.
Soon after arriving a the hotel (Casa Capicho...one of the nicest places I have ever stayed) I met Sharon, an American currently living in an apartment in the hotel.
We enjoyed instant rapport.
Not only are we both involved in website development, we are doing it in third world countries, with all the challenges that presents. But we also shared similar experiences as a result of living in Nicaragua (Sharon—for several years) and Costa Rica (me—for only a couple of months).
Resourceful Central Americans
We are both very impressed with how resourceful Central Americans are at living their daily lives.
I think this resourcefulness flows from the 'necessity is the mother of invention' way of doing things.
In this part of the world the governments seem to intervene as little as possible in the lives of their citizens.
In practice, this means that road construction is not always generously marked by warning
lights, signs and flag-people. According to Sharon, when you come across road construction, more often than not you have to make your own way through it, which everyone seems to do.
In the San Jose area, I have seen traffic police use tree branches to warn of road hazards and shopping carts turned upside down to keep drivers and pedestrians off newly painted parking lot markings.
Sidewalks
Wherever I have been in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, sidewalk design, construction and maintenance has appears to have been the responsibility of the owners of adjacent property.
As a result, this means that when walking on the sidewalks, it is important to watch where you are walking to avoid holes, crack, bumps, dog droppings and who knows what else.
The good news is that there are small coins to be found by watching the sidewalk.
The bad news is that there are overhead obstacles like tree branches, awnings and signs to crack the heads of taller North Americans, like me.
Whenever I have mentioned to my Costa Rican friends the problem with the sidewalks, I get a totally blank stare, even from those who are fluent in English.
OK...I get it. The uneven sidewalks and overhanging obstacles are not the government's responsibility to standardize and regulate, as is the case in Canada. They are my issues to address and resolve.
This being the case, I think I may have a solution.
In one of the nearby restaurants, one of the waiters wears a yellow construction hard hat. I was amused when I first saw this.
But on my second visit I saw there was an solid metal structure over the waiters' station. Since Ticos tend to be short, most servers would not have a problem with this overhead structure.
But this waiter, taller than the average Tico, would be constantly banging his head on the light structure if it were not for his yellow construction hard hat, which probably now takes the impact.
I wonder where I can get a Panama hat with the same resistance strength of a yellow construction hard hat.
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