Hi everyone. It must seem odd that I haven´t even slept one night in San Jose and already I want to tell you about it. Let me begin by mentioning what obstacles I have been having to face by simply boarding an airplane, and this has nothing to do with difficult customs officials. I trace it back to the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001. The hype and the way our governments quickly cashed in on the fear and paranoia and how they have tried to drag us all into their cesspit with them I think has left a shadow of fear on all of us. This disaster occured while I was early in my mental health recovery and for me was a huge setback for a while. It wasn´t until I realized last night at Vancouver International Airport that I really wanted to just go home and forget about Costa Rica. I had become afraid of air travel. So, this feels like a push forward for me. The overnight flight to Mexico City was exhausting, and I slept poorly. I waited around for over four hours at the Mexico City airport and nearly missed my connecting flight because I had been given the wrong flight information and I had gotten thoroughly confused about what to do with the landing form they give everyone to fill out before they can enter a country. One official nearly punished me by making me miss my flight to Costa Rica, but then relented at the last minute. On the next plane I was sitting next to a former Vancouverite who now lives and works in Costa Rica. He seems interested in staying in touch so this might be a good first connection. At the airport in Costa Rica, 2 or three different cab drivers tried to convince me that my driver from the hotel where I am staying wouldn´t be showing up and that one of them should drive me the 25 km to San Jose instead. In Tico, or Costa Rican, style I hedged and delayed and said that if he didn´t show in ten or fifteen minutes I would go with one of them. They would not leave me alone and I kept putting them off with sweet little promises. Eventually my driver did show up, they backed off, and Bob´s yer uncle. My driver and I had a great conversation in Spanish all the way into San Jose. I have been in total Spanish immersion, it feels like, since I boarded the Mexicana jet in Vancouver, but I have been asking for this so I am getting it.
San Jose, on first impression, is quite a jumble, and a jungle. It´s largely quite gritty and grubby''most areas suggest Commercial Drive hybridizing with the corner of Main and Hastings, only way more vibrant and full of life. Dealing with traffic here is a blood sport. I just had a chap, but good meal at a vegetarian restaurant nearby. My hotel by the way is a dump, but a charming dump. My room is tiny, more like a closet with a a small window, with bare walls. But it´s clean. It is not at all hot here by the way. It´s been overcast today with a little rain. Very much like Vancouver in June. Well, I´m exhausted, I´m going to bed early tonight, once I´ve unpacked a bit.
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 se 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.
Aug 26, 2008
It was a longer hike than I thought it would be, and I had forgotten the way, since I haven''t been here in fourteen years, so I turned down the wrong road. It seemed peculiar because I was suddenly walking downhill, when I distinctly recalled that the road goes uphill to the cloud forest. But it was quiet, without traffic, and there were pastures with cattle, and woods on either side of the road, the odd house. I saw several Morpho butterflies. (see image below hummingbirds.) They are huge, with a wingspan like that of a medium size songbird. When the road came to a dead end I retraced the mile or so that I'd walked and found my way back onto the main road. As the road ascended higher the forest became thick, lush and tangled with many ferns and tree ferns, and the air was noticeably cooler and moister.After what must have been a good five miles or more of walking, including the detour, I found my way to the entrance of the cloud forest where there is also a hummingbird gallery. This is a gift shop and cafe with hummingbird feeders on the patio, and dozens of hummingbirds representing some seven different species. I will download some images to give you an idea.   ![]()
 The hummingbirds are incredibly fast, pugnatious and fearless. Often fighting with each other. Think of a classroom full of grade 8 boys. So, this is their soup kitchen and I was once again transfixed as I gazed at these iridescent wonders. I had lunch in the cafe, which has a view of the hummingbirds, then I went into the Cloud Forest. The entrance fee is $15 US. During my first visit here I was told by some of the local Quakers that they had to persuade the local Ticos to preserve the cloud forest as they wanted to continue clearing land for pasture. Eventually the idea stuck, and Costa Rica just may owe its industry of eco-tourism at least in part to their legacy. Monteverde, by the way, was settled by a group of American Quakers in the fifties, as they wanted to live in a country that didn't have a military. They were very present when I was here in the nineties but I don't seem to notice them now. Well, I have a few days to find out.
The Cloud Forest is huge. It began to rain, so I lifted my huge golf umbrella, which at times became a nuisance with the overhanging leaves and branches on the narrow trails. The tangle and abundance and sheer diversity of growth here cannot be described and I'm not going to try here. I eventually got lost as I took treacherous steps up, made up of concrete tiles, many of them coming loose in the mud. i must have spent almost two hours in there. Eventually I ran into a young couple from New York and we found our way out together. They seem very nice and it was an enjoyable conversation along the way, which incidentally, is one of the things I enjoy about travelling. I was sore all over (still am) and exhausted by the time I returned to the hummingbird cafe for another cold drink and a rest. Even though my ankle was starting to hurt I was going to try to walk all the way back to my hotel. About a mile or so later, a couple in a four whjeel drive stopped to give me a lift. It turned out to be the young man who owns the cafe I had just been sitting in with his family and his girlfriend, who was driving. It was a lovely show of kindness. I will probably take things a bit easier tomorrow, but I still plan to get out and around
So much for Costa Rica. I forgot to mention in my previous post that in 2007 I won an essay writing contest, second prize of $500 for the Pivot Legal Society about ideas for developing the Downtown Eastside in ways that include the low-income residents. I and the other winners also were interviewed on the radio and by journalists and I believe that my efforts have helped influence recent trends in low income housing in Vancouver. I will try to post this essay in the future.
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