Dad - Early Morning July 28

July 28, 2007, 5:15 AM
El Sesteo Apartotel,
San Jose Costa Rica

Hola. Estamos aqui. Por el tercero tiempo.
We arrived yesterday at 3:30 pm, under dark clouds, after an uneventful but early trip from Boston. The kids’ passports – newly acquired the previous day after only an 8 hour sojourn in Boston, at the end of our passport fiasco/fandango for 2007 - performed flawlessly. May they acquire many stamps.

San Jose in July. This is the rainy season. We saw only a few sprinkles but the ground was wet. Low dark clouds which filtered a bright orange sunset. Our taxi driver took a back route south from the airport through working class neighborhoods to avoid an accident. We passed over ravines with brown rain swollen streams, carrying all sorts of urban junk. Lots of people walking, riding bikes, waiting for buses. On all sides of the horizon there are the big green mountains, some with villages or newer housing spread out along them.
There is plenty of commercial prosperity – billboards for Volvo and BMW SUVs, big Office Depot and Payless stores, dining choices including Outback Steak House. These are along the main drags. The small painted stucco houses with the scrawny dogs and the men sitting on the stoop and the women lugging plastic bags of groceries and little kids on foot are never far from the highways.

I wonder if traffic is seasonal – like the rains. We sat for 25 minutes inching our way along the South side of the Parque Sabana, inhaling the diesel fumes, listening to fruitless horns and watching motorcycles slither in between us. In the end, our driver escaped by cutting across a median and two train tracks at the next intersection.
Then at dinner, under an awning at bright red and white tables, we raised our voices to be heard above the non stop din at the intersection next to us. Regional buses, full of commuters, rushing to make it through before the light turned, commercial trucks and lots of cars – most Hyundais and small Toyotas. There was grudging respect for the light, and traffic cops seemed content to stand on the side of the road with their hands on their hips, but it appears the chief virtue of the SUV in San Jose is that it allows you to climb over curbs and medians to get through traffic. We walked back in that familiar mix of dark streets lit by the lights of oncoming cars and the blue fluorescent lights of storefronts and garages; you jump off the curb to ford the stream of cars.
Our hotel is plain on the outside with an inner courtyard of a pool and a few tropical plantings. It looks similar to but in fact is not where we stayed last time. It took us a while to figure that out. The clientele appears to be mostly Costa Rican – some here for a duration, judging from the furnishing in their rooms – and Europeans. The kids have their own room with a TV that gets "ESPN deportes" and Disney channel. Once again, cultural immersion consists of watching english programming with Spanish voiceovers, and knowing that you want papas with the hamburgesa.

I am up early because of the time change. The birds are starting up. I had forgotten how loud they are – even in the city.