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!

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.

The San José about-to-be weather system

What is San Jose like then, do I hear you ask? Already you know about it being perfectly centrally located making it ideal as a capital city which it so appropriately is. You also know that it is up a bit. So now you are manifestly better informed than I was just a few weeks ago. The population is closing in on 350,000 which would put it at number 53 in a trans-USA list of cities, just ahead of Tampa in Florida and number 11 in a trans-Tokyo list of districts, known as wards or ku, actually precisely between Shinagawa-ku and Kita-ku (which is an extremely circuitous way of getting the under-mentioned put personally very favoured Kita-ku a rare mention).

Like any other large city it is centred on a thriving shopping area but the sanitised concrete shopping malls of further north in the hemisphere have yet to make their mark and nowhere is there a preponderance of towering buildings indicating anything like a financial centre. The roads are arranged in the manner of the North American grid system although the numbering and signposting are of quite a different order. I would put it down to being lulled in to a false sense of security by the presumed easy-to-follow grid system, although if you consider my not being able to catch a plane to its intended destination and not noticing that San José was several thousand feet above sea level might lead you to a different conclusion, but in the first few days I don’t recall ever having got so easily lost in a city before.

I think there were a number of other contributing factors which I will now list in my own defence, chiefly because I can. Firstly, most of the streets are lined with two storey buildings close to the sidewalks making it difficult to get a bearing on the horizon, the sun, as you will learn, is more often than not behind the clouds further diluting the bearing option, the roads are ostensibly in a grid system but their ever so gentle undulating nature can imperceptibly divert you from any kind of bearings that perhaps you thought you had especially from time to time when the grid system actually deviates from being a grid system, a grid system that does not ascend or descend in straight numerical order but depending on which side of the city you are in pairs of odd and even numbers and then most significantly of all an almost complete absence of street signs.

The people move amicably about, all seemingly without any problem as to their bearings, at regular northern hemispherical moderately bustle pace and in appearance they are clearly genetically dominated by their Spanish roots.

There are two features which perhaps define a city more than anything else, following its location: its weather and its transport arrangements.

You will perhaps recall me saying that this month sees the onset of “summer” well rather like in the British Isles one could say “Oh yeah?” There seem to be three weather environments; sunshine sometimes, rain fairly frequently and then that which imposes dominance: about-to-be. By this I mean it is about to rain or get sunny with the about-to-get sunny variant mostly flattering to deceive. The one almost faultless consistency is that it is far more likely to rain in the afternoon and evening than in the morning. Even though I was brought up in the notorious about-to-be and take-your-pick British Isles weather system I can say with certainty that the uncertainty of the about-to-be is more intense here. The extremely welcome and redeeming feature though is that the temperature comfortably allows shirtsleeve apparel whether it is sunny, raining or about-to-be: guess which one you get wettest with though?

Comments on the transport system will be arriving shortly.

San Jose, Costa Rica bustling with Spanish roots and about-to-be weather