Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

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Hello everybody. First blog entry and I'm already about two weeks late with it, promising start, eh? The plan was to start this about after a week of being here (I'm now in my fourth week) but a combination of many power cuts (we haven't had any water in the house for two days due to a big storm), disorganisation on my part and basic laziness, there will be three posts going up within a day or so of each other.

Being English, I guess the first place to start is with the weather here in San Jose. I have been leaving the house at about 8 everyday when it is usually sunny with a few clouds. These clouds increase in number and density through until about 2oclock when it goes incredibly dark, there is a massive crack of thunder and then it rains like Armageddon is here for about three hours. About 5oclock it stops and it brightens up a bit until night time. Repeat until fade. I learnt on my first day here that it's best to plan your day around being inside at all costs between 2 and 5 in the afternoon. I learnt this when getting soaked through in the ten minute walk from a pizza place to the office and have been reminded everyday since because my new Adidas Samba's (yeah, I know) are still not fully recovered from the two and a half foot deep puddles we were running through. Serves me right for being the kind of dick who spends £40 on trainers if you ask me though.

I am working in an area of San Jose called La Carpio, in a centre that looks after children from roughly the ages of 2 - 12. I have absolutely no reference point to explain how poor the area is so the best I can do is to say it's a settlement where 35,000 people live that doubles as the rubbish dump for the city of San Jose. Every home I've seen so far is a one or two room corrugated iron shack and there are seemingly loads of what appear to be stray dogs and the odd chicken just wandering around. Naturally we stick out like sore thumbs and even with my carefully maintained coffee coloured hue I don't look like as much of a local as I had anticipated - so far two people have thought I was Israeli, which is a new one for the list. I will say more, hopefully with photos, about Carpio next time.

San Jose, as a city, is not like the image you might have of Costa Rica. It's pretty much two hours from either coast and three or four from the northern and southern borders, so ideal as a starting point if you're travelling around the country, but maybe not as ideal if you're living here for a few months. In truth, it's like any capital city in the world I would think. Essentially, it's a busy place with lots of traffic where any genuine beauty is kept to a minimum in case that space is needed for an office or a road. The people are friendly, but again, it's a capital city and whilst it may not be London, a lot of people do have that 'head down, lets get to where I want to go as quickly as possible' type of attitude. The centre appears to be loosely based on the grid system which makes it fairly easy to get around once you have your bearings but the strangest thing from a Western point of view is the fact that there are no street names. None. At all. Everywhere is navigated using landmarks which presents problems when a) your directional sense is as poor as mine and b) even if you did remember what the nearest landmark was, the chances are you don't know how to say it in Spanish. For example, the office of the people I am here working for is in a town called San Pedro, which is about 15 minutes on a bus from the centre of San Jose. It's address is: Del Antiguo Higueron 100mts. sur y 50 mts. este. This means it's 100 metres south (about a block) and 50 metres east of the Antiguo Higueron. Sounds simple enough, but what is Antiguo Higueron? It's a fig tree. Albeit, a big fig tree, but a fig tree all the same. How can you not love a country where official and important documents have to be delivered by working out where the nearest park, church or public toilet is?

The other notable thing about the city is the driving. If you happen to have visited the Middle East you will have seen bad, reckless driving and if it was a straight fight Costa Rica wouldn't come out to far behind. It may be a little unfair to call the driving 'bad' as I haven't seen a crash yet so perhaps it's reckless but the drivers are actually really good. Either way, many of the roads that I travel on are officially two lanes, but there will often be three or four cars side by side vying for position. Somehow it just about works and isn't total gridlock. I'm not sure how though because if people drove like that in England, no one would get anywhere. The constant murmur of horns provides a pleasant backing track as I start my 90 minute journey to Carpio in the morning. Seemingly any emotion can be expressed by someone beeping their horn here. It's way of telling someone to get out of the way, to say thank you for getting out of the way, to express surprise, to let someone in, to show anger when someone cuts you up, to apologise for cutting someone up, to tell a pedestrian to get out of the way, to let someone know you're overtaking them and any number of other actions or emotions that need to put across while driving. Clearly there must be subtle differences between them all, and I assume it's a bit like Eskimos having thirty-odd different words for snow, but to the lay person they all sound the same.

We have been advised not to walk anywhere at night, even in a group. There is a definite feeling of menace around the city after dark - and being so near the equator it goes dark in about 20 minutes so lingering, romantic sunset for the Costa Ricans - but that could be more down to the language and the natural uncertainty that comes with being in an unfamiliar city than anything else. That said, I know three people who've been mugged so far so there may be something in it. At the moment I'm working on the assumption that common sense should keep you reasonably safe, so keeping my wallet in a zipped pocket, not holding anything in my hands that I wouldn't want to get stolen and sticking to main and busy roads should hopefully be enough. Fingers crossed anyway because I'll have egg all over my face if I get mugged after writing that.

That'll probably do for the first one I reckon. I'll put something up soon about Carpio and what we're doing there but for now I'm off to see if my shoes are dry yet.

Pura Vida.

Dave

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