Welcome to the pura vida

I am officially in Costa Rica.  I would say I have officially moved to CR, but I’m not sure that’s quite right, since I arrived with two bags and am staying at a hotel.

But I’m here, and enjoying it.

San Jose has a surprisingly nice airport, but they could use a few more immigration lines.  I’m used to locals speeding through while foreigners wait; that was mostly true here, but the difference was that a minimum of 2/3 of everyone deplaning was foreign.  There were two 20-min queues in the foreign lines, and the local lines sat idle a good bit of the time.  Apparently I have company here.

I heard my first “pura vida” as I hopped in the shuttle to get my rent car.

First mission: get a rent car.  Hertz here is basically what I imagined: a small building with friendly, slow-moving staff.  They had a dot-matrix printer.  Hearing it screech across the page brought back memories of childhood and dial-up modems.  I lost myself reminiscing for another 20 min or so while they fixed me up with a car.  I am the proud driver of a Toyota Yaris with 88,000 km and an engine that vibrates constantly, sometimes in a nice massaging manner and sometimes in a threatening I-will-fall-out-the-bottom manner.  It has no power nothing, including no engine power.

My car has two other things missing that are small, but make a huge difference: a convex mirror and a chime when the keys are in the ignition.  If you ever thought that “objects in mirror” note is annoying, try not having a convex mirror.  Mack trucks fit in my blind spot.  Also, if my keys are in the ignition and I open the door, nothing buzzes at me.  If you know me and my legendary absentmindedness then you are probably making bets now on how long it will take before I lock myself out of my car.  The odd thing is that the lights have that “soft dim” feature where they fade out instead of clicking off.  Quite a nice touch for a car that almost dares you to lock your keys inside.

It was now 2pm, so I headed to the office.  First, a bit about driving here.  Hertz charges $12/day for GPS in addition to ~$60/day for the car.  It really should be the other way around.  Your car is useless unless
a) You pick up a Tico tour guide
b) Your idea of a good vacation is wandering lost
c) You get a GPS
There are very few road names here.  Seriously.  Zoom in on Google Maps and you’ll see lots of completely unnamed roads.  Even if it has a name, you are never going to find it on a sign.  Half of my drive to work is on “Road.”

GPS is not perfect, however, as I discovered when it led me to what was obviously not my office.  Fortunately we have a relatively large facility there, so I stopped and asked someone for directions and, after a bit of stretching my Spanish and some gesturing, I made it.  I am still inordinately proud of that.

View from my hotel in Lindora

Part of the reason I am proud of making it to the office is that I didn’t hit anything on the way.  I’ve ridden around in Central America (Honduras) before, but I’ve never been the driver until now.  It’s not nearly as bad as non-South African Africa, but not as orderly as South Africa.  People are surprisingly courteous, though.  Another reason to get GPS: it’s very hard to tell what is a one-way street and what is not.

To finish day 1, I took a walk near my hotel.  There is a strip of nice offices and restaurants nearby, and the weather in the evenings (and all day, actually) is great.  I had some Peruvian food and then stopped at a grocery store to take a peek.  I paused at the diaper, fem care, adult incontinence, and toilet paper aisles.  If you are creeped out right now, you clearly don’t know what I do for a living.