Friday, February 24, 2006

It takes a truly special city to really look nice on a gray day. San Jose is not that special. Even New York City can’t always manage it. But so far I like San Jose. The Lonely Planet calls it “the necessary evil before heading to more virtuous rural landsapes.” I say, “whatever.” Why 24 hour electricity and a variety of international cheeses are evil, I can’t imagine.

But unfortunately, we will not be giving San Jose its due. We’ll only be here two days at the most and we’ll be spending our time catching up on the blogs, (which will involve hours of indoor writing and editing on my part) and doing boring but practical big-city errands like replacing my Maglite bulb and mailing home a package.

This is too bad because I like the looks of the small bit that we’ve seen so far. It’s nice and busy, which I like, and the area near us has an interesting look to it. If San Salvador was American, San Jose is European. Not Paris, but more like an Eastern European capital. I would like to see it in the sun.

As for fashion, the young women here wear the tightest jeans we’ve seen yet. Tight as in, I hope you got a free tube of Monistat with those. We even saw a girl in skin-tight school uniform pants, with a jaunty little red tie. Next time I come to Central America, I’m going to leave the frumpy nun clothes at home.

We had Burger King for breakfast today. I’m not a huge fast food eater, but it’s been a long time and I miss it a little. Some girls we met on Little Corn said they had a ban on fast food on their trip. But why think about it enough to ban it? If you don’t want it, don’t eat it. Personally, I like trying out the fast food places in other countries. I like seeing the local variations on what we have at home and the differences in style.

We went into Burger King at 9:00 a.m. and they were willing to serve us from the lunch menu. Breakfast choices included “BK pinto” which is Burger King’s version of the local specialty of gallo pinto (mixed beans and rice). It comes with natilla (sour cream) and tortillas (tortillas). The cash register girl took a quick second to wipe her hands with antibacterial goo between handling our money and getting us some ketchup packets.

So, not only will we not be giving San Jose its due, but we won’t be seeing anything else of Costa Rica. I wanted to see some of the national parks and cloud forests and things, but most of all we want lots of time in South America, which was the original goal.

So from here it’s a fifteen hour bus ride to Panama City, from where we’ll figure out the best way to get to Columbia, which is probably going involve either a) spending a lot of money or b) flying or c) both. We’ll see.

 

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Pura Vida!

Back on the gum trail. Ok, you have to touch this gum wad in order to make the bed. So why is it still there?