Random Musings, Costa Rica

Monday, 25 August, 2008

 

This afternoon I am off to Monteverde for the next seven or eight days or so.  I will return here to Pension de la Cuesta for my final one or two nights in San Jose before I fly back to Vancouver.  So, I have "done" San Jose, or let´s say that San Jose and I have done each other.  I have been reviewing since I woke up this morning my reasons for coming here to begin with.  They are as follows:

Of course I was wanting to take a month off from work for what would be my first real trip somewhere in fourteen years.  I wanted to go someplace that was a bit familiar where I spoke the language, more or less, because I haven´t travelled in fourteen years.  I wanted to see what San Jose was like, because I´m interested in cities, but I also wanted to put paid to the fear I had of this place.  During my first trip to Costa Rica I avoided San Jose altogether because of my fear of violent crime, and this was being fed by the trauma of having been robbed at knifepoint on my first night in Amsterdam in 1991.  I would say that this was my first real experience of letting fear get the better of me and I think that this helped set up in me a pattern of avoidance that also helped with other conditions to bring on post traumatic stress disorder.  I also wanted to find out if I could actually live in Costa Rica, as my first visit here, spent mostly in Monteverde, had thoroughly enchanted me about the place.  I wanted to get a better idea of what life in this country is really like, to know the people here better, the culture, the language, before I could make this kind of decision. I also had to factor in some reality checks.  Being low income and working in the mental health field made it pretty clear from the onset that if I made this kind of move it could be very difficult to adapt.  Also, given the insularity of Ticos towards older male gringos, I would likely have to settle with finding my place among other North American and European expats, but little or none among the Ticos.  I also have had to reckon with the realization that I don´t particularly like Costa Ricans as a people.  We are like oil and water, I'm afraid.  There is also the language barrier.  My spoken Spanish is quite good, but some accents and dialects are incomprehensible to me, and this I have discovered about the Tico dialect.  I have given up on trying to understand these people, on all levels I think.

I also came here in order to test the strength of my personal mental health recovery.  As many of you already know, following being homeless in the late nineties I was diagnosed with PTSD, from which, thanks to an excellent therapist, I believe myself to be recovered.  I wanted to see how well I would do, four weeks in a foreign country without familiar props or supports.  In a way I have cheated a bit with this e journal as it also helps me feel your support of me day by day, gentle readers.  I know that it is too soon to tell, but I have survived the first two thirds here in one of the nastiest cities I have yet visited, and I hear that in Latin America San Jose is by far one of the less nasty ones.  So far I believe that I am doing well.  I have at times been extremely upset, but these things seem to have passed fairly quickly. Let´s see how I do once I´m back in Vancouver.  And it isn´t over yet.