Meaning to Life

Potholes, recklessness, falling trees and earthquakes – have a safe trip!

Now that the 2010 World Cup that Costa Rica could have won is over (don’t forget Costa Rica only very narrowly lost to the team that narrowly lost to the triumphant Spanish) the country can get back to planning and not just for the Brazil World Cup in 2014.

Some serious attention to transportation control and transport infrastructure planning would certainly not go amiss.

I have in previous blog posts passed comment on different aspects of San José’s transport situation and by way of an easily identifiable example I highlighted in some detail the very surprising lack of street signposting in San Jose causing considerable difficulty for the directionally challenged. I surmised from what locals said that the old bureaucratic evil of corruption was the villain behind this. Ticos were again willing to offer this as the ready reason for the deplorable state of some of the roads outside the capital.

We journeyed by car the length and breadth of the country and observed that virtually anywhere away from the notably “developed” Guanacaste region on the Pacific north side there was a serious problem with potholed roads. I came across this highly illustrative cartoon from a national newspaper noting that the problem has hardly gone unnoticed in Costa Rica.

The translation of the caption would go something like: “Look, excellent!... they’ve put down road markings!”

We observed apart from the fact that potholes were a common occurrence the true danger lay in their sporadicness and occasional dramatic size. In simple terms, just as you may be relaxing your attention on a relatively long uninterrupted section of smooth asphalt a single huge hole can suddenly appear that can swallow a large part of your car momentarily with underside damage being the least you are likely to get away with. I often cringed imagining what the perils must be like for motorcyclists and at night… dios mio!

Unfortunately driving dangers were not restricted to this but added to by commonly observable reckless driving habits. Some while ago I recounted my views of the narrow margins of safety afforded the pedestrian in San Jose by the car driver. Well, the San Jose car driving mentality is given space to fully blossom out in the provinces where speeding circuit takes on a more sinister meaning. Our observation was that the going rule for Tico drivers is that completely regardless of whatever else is happening you really must overtake. Very regrettably there were few days that passed without us seeing multiple remnants of accidents on the road side including numerous upturned cars. One could only conclude that many of these other drivers failed to see any correlation between the overturned vehicles at the roadside and their own overtaking recklessness.

Nature also plays its hand occasionally. Tropical rain quite easily loosens the soil and before you can say “timber” you might have to stop for a fallen tree or two. Here you can see -during our only night-time journey- the simple technique of removal. This particular tree blocked our way on the very scenic lakeside road that hugs the shores of Laguna Arenal.

And do not forget the aftermath of earthquake damage to Costa Rican roads either.

Bon voyage (buen viaje)!

For more background on aspects of current road transport in Costa Rica read “therealcostarica” blog especially the section on Road Conditions

Costa Rica Transport – Driving Dangerously

Shivering and quaking in Antigua, Guatemala

I was moved to post a blog regarding an earthquake experienced in Costa Rica a few months back in a partial attempt to try and keep a live feel to this blog. As I keep my ear close to the ground (probably the very best thing to do for the latest seismic feel on the subject) I now attempt to go one better and peek into the earthquake future.

The result of my findings is that a strong earthquake is due in Guatemala in the near future.

Considering all the extensive hype related to planet-ending Mayan predictions for 2012 I would hate to think this prediction is related but my source although perhaps having Mayan blood coursing through its veins is based on ground-zero experience…

I hadn’t been in Guatemala very long at all before I discovered that “earthquake” is a resonant word around the old city of Antigua at the very least. Raul had welcomed me graciously as he does every guest at his amicable and well run hostel in the centre of Antigua, Guatemala – Hotel Welcome to Stay (perhaps the most originally named place I have stayed at on this tour, though I then wondered if perhaps Antigua specialises in creative and/or surprising names for hotels having spotted another around the corner uninvitingly named “Hotel La Sin Ventura” (which can cheekily be translated as Hotel Without The Adventure).

On my first evening at the “Welcome to Stay”, there was a fresh wind blowing down through the surrounding mountains which in the night bordered on cold – not helped in my case by the fact that I did not discover the availability of blankets until the next morning when I tripped over an attractively and cosily stacked unused pile in the room next door. That morning I commented on my surprise at the cold to Raul and he offered me a destabilising backhanded reassurance in that it was a rare phenomenon. “Actually it was rarer than anything they had experienced since 1976”. Next followed the destabilising part of the reassurance. “Yes,” he said, “all the older people are saying that this resembles that time in 1976. That was the last time the temperature dipped this low and that was accompanied by one of largest earthquakes in living memory. They are also thinking about what has been happening on this continent in Haiti and Chile recently so the older people are sure that Guatemala is next.”

I do hope the older people are wrong and the Mayans even more so!

The old people have seen this!

Earthquakes are relatively frequent occurrences in Guatemala. The country lies in a major fault zone, known as the Motagua and Chixoy-Polochic fault complex, which cuts across Guatemala and forms the tectonic boundary between the Caribbean plate and the North American plate.

A very distant afterthought: older people in the UK say that 1976 was the hottest summer ever. I wonder, if Guatemala does indeed suffer from an unwelcome earthquake, does that mean that Great Britain would be headed for a very long overdue rainless hot summer? Maybe the Mayans have the answer to that one too!

Don’t mess about in Masaya or even tiptoe into Tipitapa!

In a perfectly uncorrupt, prison-free and selfless world (another reasonable Obama goal?) there would be no headline news items talking of man’s inhumanity to man just the occasional accident and natural disaster accompanied, of course, by stories of man’s humanity to man.

A similar picture would hold when people meet up travelling from country to country exchanging stories solely on their experiences of how well they had been treated in previously visited villages, towns and cities. It has to be noted that most of the unseemly stories that are chewed over on the subject of safety and security are what people have heard or felt with regard to a place, rather than necessarily a matter directly affecting them; thank goodness. Where there is a notable discrepancy between poverty and wealth the ugly matter of theft often raises its head. At this juncture please allow me one more deft knee to the groin of the British Members of Parliament recently charged with theft: they, too, surely couldn’t have believed they were being rewarded insufficiently in life and therefore had to carry out a little wealth distribution of their own?

Anyway, how safe is safe in Central America? If you never have anything stolen then it is as safe as anywhere else you haven’t had anything stolen. Conversely if you are held up and/or lose money and possessions then you just might think it is the worst place in the world. The very general consensus from what I have heard in my travels so far is that Costa Rica and Panama are some kind of step ahead of the others and the others namely: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras rank fairly equally in terms of security. There are measures you can take that will reduce the possibilities of problems but of course bar never leaving your accommodation nothing is foolproof. Touching a very large piece of wood, so far I have been untroubled by theft but have certainly picked up some tips as I move along that if I had not known could have got me into the kind of trouble certain other souls have had to endure.

In Costa Rica I was witness to a taxi driver being punched in the face -for what reason I have no idea- and also the theft of a bag (not mine!) from immediately above my head on a bus from La Fortuna to San José. I saw the bandage on the nose of a fellow hosteller who had been attacked and robbed immediately outside our hostel in downtown San José by some form of taxi connivance (legally registered taxis or not I do not know). Unfortunately this sequence of unnerving incidents took a much more serious turn for the worse when my hostel neighbour Steve from Davis, California tried to get to Masaya by bus one typically gorgeous day in Nicaragua from the much-vaunted and visited colonial town of Granada.

Over breakfast Steve and I had had one of those very enjoyable penetrative humanity-examining conversations before he skipped off to see some “events” in Masaya later that day. The next time I saw him was the same evening when I stretched out my hand to welcome him back “home” to the Hospedaje Cocibolca, our hostel in the centre of Granada, only for him to shockingly reveal that his day had largely been taken up with a very unenjoyable penetrative and humanity-examining phenomenon called kidnap. His ordeal was extremely unpleasant for what actually occurred but far worse for what his kidnappers led him to believe they were going to do to him. Thankfully one could sense Steve’s relief that at the end of the day because he was still in one piece and had “only” lost a camera, a couple of plastic cards and cash, perhaps as much as US$400, presumably together with as much adrenalin as the body can manufacture in a day.

Although being a very experienced traveller Steve’s mistake was overshooting Masaya on the bus and then trusting the apparently innocent woman who coincidentally descended from the bus at the same point as him while talking on her cell phone. The cell phone was the key because the seemingly friendly group (of kidnappers) turned up on cue in a car to “help” Steve, and the lady who Steve thought was another wayward traveler, back to Masaya. It all looked fairly innocent at this point and in usual foreign fashion Steve, not understanding too much Spanish, was liberated from thinking about any suspicious innuendoes they no doubt were making. However, when he began to suspect something, for example the car going back in the reverse direction and then not stopping at the gas station as they had explained was the motive for retracing their steps, and then actually tried to get out of the car, the five incumbents revealed their collective hand by immediately and forcibly restraining him on the back seat.

It is quite a few years since Nicaragua had a problem with roving bands of terrorists. In fact, ironically, Steve last travelled through these very parts back in 1978 when his travel plans were severely hampered by a major military incident on the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border at Peñas Blancas between the Sandinistas and Contras. Almost knee-jerk reaction-like he jumped to the assumption that they were terrorists. They took his spectacles and covered his face with his hat and began to punch him with the intention of intimidating him into not only handing over everything he had but revealing the pin numbers to his cards also. He was surprised that the women were worse and being the forgiving kind of fellow he is Steve defended their circumstances by not only recognizing that they were poor but that they might have been as scared as he was. They threatened to kill him especially if he did not give them those pin numbers: not sure if Steve’s forgiving nature ever came up with an altruistic excuse for that because surely at that point he had to be far more scared than they were! After a lengthy and very frightening ordeal, by which time he realized they were all just thugs and nothing to do with any kind of political terrorist group, they actually gave him back his spectacles, passport, antibiotic medicine and just enough money to get the bus back into Masaya the right way. Steve even mumbled to me something about them actually being quite nice after all, considering this parting sliver of a gesture of man’s humanity to man.

In Masaya police station he made a full and difficult report to the police with the help of a few local people who could speak some English but realism indicated that the perpetrators would not be caught for this crime because Steve recognized, again either realistically or excusingly, that the police just do not have the “resources”.

While Steve was busy on the internet trying to recover his financial situation I became immersed in a conversation with the hostel management who had been contacted by the police earlier in the afternoon to alert the staff to the fact that the villains probably had Steve’s room key although there was no indication on the key as to which establishment in Granada it was. The conversation with the management put the blame immediately and exclusively on a band from Tipitapa. According to them this was a town near the capital Managua where there is a very high percentage of delinquents and malcontents. According to them this group came from there without any shadow of a doubt whatsoever.

What can one learn? With varying degrees of importance: don’t stop anywhere near Tipitapa, be very careful when you get into an unknown vehicle, don’t trust single women with cell phones who get off the bus in out of the way places with you, and proven -yet again unfortunately- there are just too many people in our world who want more than they have and will stop at nothing to get it.

Steve, to his excellent credit, recovered quickly and fully and continued happily with his travels after several laborious hours in communication with various financial institutions in the USA and the American Embassy, the latter making the customary almost entirely unhelpful token offer of a list of telephone numbers of “reliable” taxi services in Managua should he want to head back that way again.

Goodbye Masaya and Tipitapa as Steve takes the safer travel option.

Admiration from German and Japanese Industry Just-In-Time Experts

The motor car and bus dominate the transport scene here in San José. There is a quirky rickety little single railway track with a quirky two carriage train that slowly passes very near-by continually sounding its horn and quaintly tingling its bell in warning because there are no level crossings and I suppose also because it does run right in the middle of the street. If the trains were a frequent occurrence I would imagine it could become irritating but seeing as they are few and far between the fanfare of its passing adds another dynamic dimension to the local bustle and an almost romantic yesteryear dimension in contrast to the humdrum of the all-pervasive motor transport.

It seems to me that Cost Ricans are drastically different animals when they are behind the steering wheel. In the limited time I have been here they appear to be amiable, placid, polite and considerate when you meet them in person but I would not describe them that way if I were to judge their temperaments based on their car driving.

On the bigger scale I get the impression that they have completely given up on a concept of car and pedestrian integration. It seems to be starkly one or the other. Where the car roams they not only have thrown up their arms in surrender to its power but have arranged things to accentuate its dominance. Thankfully there are some extensive pedestrianised central thoroughfares where you can walk mostly oblivious to this other dualistic landscape.

The overriding objective seems to have been to speed the cars on their way as much as possible thereby encouraging drivers to believe even more in their right to priority. Most of the roads are one-way. Traffic lights hang up high often at difficult-to-see angles when you are not in a car seemingly intentionally denying the pedestrian the opportunity to anticipate whether a car is about to stop or start at junctions. Then the road surface seems to be maintained in surprisingly good slick-asphalted condition, at least here in the downtown district, in complete contrast to the poor pedestrian who has to negotiate over and around countless holes of every magnitude to get to wherever he or she might want to go on the sidewalk. Next come the gulleys separating the roads from the sidewalks. I suspect that this was not intentional but set up to handle the not infrequent torrential downpours but all the same adds to the sense of alienation between car and walker. On top of this there is very little on-street parking which certainly creates less of an eye sore but, my goodness, the greatest beneficiary is the motor driver who can whisk through the city just as fast as he likes with the only impediment to his progress being that of the traffic signals.

This whole observation came to my attention because of the surprisingly narrow margin of safety I noticed when trying to cross the road. I haven’t seen anybody injured yet, though at the same time I have yet to see a single old-aged, infirm or invalided person have a stab at such a challenge. It could be I haven’t seen it because none has ever made it to repeat the exercise!

If you put your foot on the road you have the sense that any hint of hesitation could be your undoing. You will be allowed time to cross but it is an interval that demands an efficiency level that even German and Japanese industry would admire. I brought the subject up with Geraldo the resident maintenance man, a man with dual US Costa Rican citizenship and he was quick to agree that it was a problem. Excusing it by being a gap in Costa Rican education but swiftly added it is notably worse in Mexico – “Dios Mio!”

Siesta destroyed by earthquake!

There is a sense when writing a blog that it is a kind of news report and if that is the case then the report should be of the moment. So here it is of the moment. Hot on the heels of this morning’s blog post and perhaps because of the energy drain of that little exercise in conjunction with the usually well rounded Costa Rican lunch I was lying on my bed having a very welcome siesta only to very soon have the odd sensation that the bed was shaking. I thought some fancy trick was being played on me: although wide awake I actually decided I was asleep. As the shaking intensified my thoughts jumped to this morning’s recollections of Tokyo and Kita-ku wondering if perhaps that was inducing this surreal experience. At the same time I had to acknowledge how my geography for dummies level of knowledge had failed me so badly recently and so could it after all be that Costa Rica has earthquakes and if so how strong do they get? I now decided I was awake and acted as if I was by leaping from the bed to stand in the door frame just in case I really was awake and just in case it really was an earthquake but just as the earthquake shook itself out.

So hot off the press is it that I cannot find data on the internet yet but the local residents inform me they think it was about 4.3 on the Richter scale and the TV reports that it was at precisely 15.20 (21.20 GMT) that a very strong (actually muy muy fuerte) quake was felt in the area . In respect of real live reporting I will take that figure as given and pass right over the fact that in the real world of news and science you have to readjust the figure up or down depending on where the epicentre was.

Wherever the Spirit Takes Me!

Where I am has been quite fully explained but how and why rather less so. This could be considered relevant especially as I gave most friends and acquaintances the distinct impression that I was headed for Managua in Nicaragua.  I too had the distinct impression I was headed for Managua in Nicaragua. In fact my travel plans had hardly been less firm in that I even had an air ticket that clearly stated Managua in Nicaragua.

The crux of the matter was an admittedly tight 45 minute turn around to make the connecting flight in Fort Lauderdale after leaving Santo Domingo. It was so tight that the check-in assistant in Santo Domingo suggested I might like to take my roll-on case on to the flight with me – for some reason unknown to me she wouldn’t let me check the case all the way through to Managua. I hesitated on that point because I had to unfortunately throw out anything resembling a container with liquid in it including items I had recently replaced after having had to throw them out on leaving Lima airport a few weeks before.

Immediately I boarded the aircraft the flight attendant announced that all the rear overhead luggage spaces were full and invited any more passengers sitting to the rear to bring their baggage to the front for storage. “And where would you be travelling to, sir,” she chirpily asked as I handed her my case. “Managua,” I replied of course thinking that everybody knew that already. “Don’t worry then sir we will see that your case is checked right through to Managua for you,” she reassured me.  “Great, wonderful, perfect, that is what I wanted originally,” I more than chirpily extolled. Super spiritual omen I thought for this new journey of mine as I settled into my Spirit Airlines seat. About 10 minutes after take-off the same attendant had kindly remembered me and kindly came to inform me of a change. My case was now stored in the hold, would not be going through to Managua and I would have to pick it up in the regular way and pass through security. My chirpiness dissipated and I forgot the spiritual association for quite a while.

At Fort Lauderdale I ran everywhere it was possible to run between points and breathlessly asked the attendant at check in if I still had time for the Managua flight. “Not a lot,” she said but valiantly offered to give it a go. Unfortunately the next piece of “Spiritually” misplaced information added significantly to the unfortunate delay. The telephone assistant that I called in Florida prior to booking had informed me that a one-way ticket to Managua was fine; no onward travel documentary proof would be needed. Unfortunately the check-in assistant had doubts about this, went to check with her boss and then insisted I had to buy a return ticket. I thought that was the end of that; where the heck would I be able to buy such a ticket at this stage and in time? “Right here,” my new found angel said as my sinking spirits rose again. She also offered that I could purchase a fully refundable ticket just in case I wanted to change my plans afterwards (what a novel way to get around the bureaucratic nonsense of satisfying immigration requirements I thought, although I didn’t give it a lot of thought because I had this image in my head of a plane, my plane already taxiing down the runway).

With all the necessary tickets in one hand but also still the infernal case in the other because there was no way the case was going to make the flight unless it was with me, my new-found guiding angel had insisted. At this point I thought it was a done deal. I thought that once you were checked in they didn’t actually go without you barring extreme delay so I stopped sprinting while maintaining a rapid walking pace. I passed very swiftly through the remaining security checks to arrive at gate H6 and just couldn’t understand why the door was shut and not even lots of people milling about at the entrance like usual (I quickly adjusted to that in full recognition that nearly everybody, okay everybody, was already on board. The gate was shut stupid, because the plane was indeed about to taxi down that runway!) The sole remaining member of the ground staff calmly pointed out that once the connecting canopy was rolled back then that was it. “But there is my plane, all they have to do is open the door and I could jump the distance,” I pathetically whined. “Sorry, canopy back no can do!” she repeated.  Spirits had naturally spiraled in the downward direction but there was still some life in the optimistic standpoint. I was watching the plane and it did not move, not one inch. “What,” I offered, “if there is a delay for some reason then surely you could let me on, and you wouldn’t have to move anything if I jumped? “ “No sir, you don’t seem to understand, the canopy is BACK!” she re-repeated. Rather a nice personal case in point of actually NOT WANTING to understand, don’t you think?

I sauntered, perhaps it would be fairer to say more between a trudge and a saunter, back to the lady who had handled me at the check in. “Oh, but sir, you can get on the next flight,” she enthusiastically offered. I had to applaud her optimism but for the first time I was more informed than her, regarding flights at least. Spiritual flights to Managua were just a weekly event! “What else have you got then to offer, leaving Fort Lauderdale tomorrow in the Central or South America direction,” I asked. Now this was going to be stretching the limits of that geography for dummies course because we had no map just a list of names and doesn’t San Juan sound like San José to you? It was all in all quite chaotic because my dear angel kept interspersing with places on today’s list so from time to time she threw in Managua again and even Santo Domingo where she had forgotten I had just emerged from – I guessed that was just to keep the game of raising and lowering spirits going. She would mention a place and sometimes I would have to ask her or anybody around which country that might be in? Colombia came up a few times and I don’t like to admit that I was swayed by all the bad press that the country gets regarding its drug related problems –shame on me for toeing the mass media line on this occasion.

In the far from comprehensive list you will now know that I chose San José carefully separating it and myself from the capital of that American dependency not many miles from the Dominican Republic where I had just come from called Puerto Rico. As this was quite a spiritual journey then I guess those Colombian drug barons must have got wind of my decision. In the same way I had seen the plane taxiing down the runway I now saw them crying volubly into their beer lamenting the extraordinary spending wealth I would not be taking to Columbia, not to mention poor old Nicaragua. Somewhere out there I suppose I owe Columbia something and probably Nicaragua too!

Footnote: That’s the Spirit!

In full recognition of my value to their future and in response to my explanation that their misinformation had caused me to miss the flight by the skin of my teeth Spirit Airlines have quite honorably and fairly credited me with the US$110 that they charged for needing to rearrange my flight to you know where. I am now very much looking forward to knowing where the Spirit will take me next.