Going to Monteverde

[kragen@pobox.com]

2003-06-14

Today we got up at 6:20 to pack for the trip to San Jose.  I took a shower in the scary electric shower with the breaker panel, and we lugged all our hundred pounds of crap down the street to the bus stop.

Beatrice spent much of the trip amusing a very cute toddler in the seat behind us.  We arrived in San Jose around 11:30, leaving us 3 hours to get ready for our trip to Monteverde.  
Into our packs went thread, needles, fine scissors, cloth, extra water, nylon cord, a crude Leatherman knockoff (US$5), a small 3-tumbler padlock, snack foods (our Clif bar supply is quite low), a chloroquine variant, and some neomycin ointment (se llame Neobol); out came most of our extra clothes, my sandals, a notebook, and various other inessentials, to be guarded until our return by the baggage guard at the bus station.

We've been mostly eating at "sodas".  "Soda" is Costa Rican for "diner", and they serve mainly cosadas: black beans and rice, with fruits, vegetables, and meat or eggs.  (Costa Ricans, in a typically human fit of ethnocentrism, call this "comida tipica": typical food.  Similarly, many US supermarkets have an aisle labeled "ethnic food", as if non-ethnic food existed.)  Usually we pay about US$5 for both of us; drinks cost extra.  The food tastes great.

San Jose's downtown contains multitudes of people on Saturday morning.  It looks a lot like the Mission in San Francisco, only poorer, with corrugated steel roofs.  It also looks more paranoid than all but the worst slums of San Francisco: razor wire is everywhere, shop fronts all have roll-up metal doors that lock with the biggest, meanest padlocks I've seen in my life, front porches look like jail cells.  A lot of this same paranoia displays itself all along the highway.  Gated communities, high front-yard fences, and front-porch bars plagued the bus route all the way from Jaco.  Our hotel in Jaco had grids of welded rebar over its back windows, attached to the concrete wall.

In stores that sell expensive things --- fabric and drugs, for example --- we bought things as follows.  First, we told the salesperson what we wanted; they measured out the amount.  (We bought half a boz of chloroquine, for example.)  Then they wrote us a ticket explainijg what we'd bought and how much it cost; we'd take this to the cashier and pay them.  They'd stamp the ticket, indicating we'd paid.  Then, we'd take the paid ticket to a third counter where we'd actually receive the item.  Presumably this procedure combats theft.  I guess combatting theft in San Jose must be worth a lot of man-hours.

I wonder at all this evidence of a high crime rate.  Is it really that much higher than in the US?  Why?  I know Costa Rica is poor, but I think the US was even poorer in the 1930s through the 1960s, in terms of how hard you had to work to pay your rent and feed and clothe your children.  But we don't have razor wire and armored shop entrances all over the US left over from the 1950s, instead we have Americans lamenting that you used to be able to leave your front door unlocked and your keys in the car, but it's not that safe anymore.  We have locks retrofitted onto church doors that remained open for decades.  We have public buildings with many entrances, all but one bolted shut.  Was the US a safer place when its people were poorer?  Was it really safer from theft than today's Costa Rica, and why?  Was it really poorer?

Homelessness appears rampant in San Jose, far more than in San Francisco, and I suspect a connection.  Perhaps I'll have a chance to investigate more later.

My Zaurus continues to impress.  I had no luck finding SD/MMC cards to expand its storage in San Jose, but oh well.  I typed the previous 633 words over the course of perhaps half an hour of sitting in a cramped bus seat as the old school bus bounced over a wet, rocky dirt road.  I've never had a laptop that I could even open in such a situation, and it thinks it's used 10% of the battery over that time.

My Spanish improves apace, though I think Beatrice's oral comprehension is already better and improving rapidly.  It must be all that French and Latin, plus her sharp mind.

As the bus warmed up for the trip to Monteverde, a Quaker community founded by US pacifists in the 1950s, a street vendor hawking knives and handguns walked by the bus hawking his wares.  I asked if he had anything small; he produced this beautiful little double-dull-edged switchblade, with a 7-cm blade that extended and retracted from the handle with the flick of a switch. 1000 colones: US$2.50. I really wanted something better suited for cutting avocados than throats, and began looking at his jacknives, but then the bus took off.  So I ended up cutting the avocados with the imitation of a knife built into the imitation of a Leatherman I'd bought earlier.

I never did get the mini-USB cable for the cameras (in order to send this email more easily) or a money belt.

My body hurts and my mind is tired after a day of riding buses and walking around a bustling city market trying to avoid pickpockets.  It's nearly 18:00 and we haven't yet reached Monteverde.