A little more than a year after my first visit to Costa Rica, I´m back with a vengeance--but, alas, only for one week!
Some readers will recall that Costa Rica is the home of an uncle of one of my violin students. Uncle Marco was born in Costa Rica but raised in the U.S., so his American English is as fluent as his Spanish.
Marco met me at San Jose´s airport yesterday in the midst of a heavy, late afternoon downpour-- a reminder that Central America is still deep in the rainy season.
Rather than take two or more buses to Marco´s home during evening rush hour, we bargained hard with some friendly taxi drivers to bring the asking price from 15,000 or 20,000 colones ($30 or $40) down to a more reasonable $20. "Okay," our driver said, "make it 10,000 colones but don´t forget a couple dollars tip!"
The 20-some odd mile trip from the airport near Alajuela to Marco´s place in the El Porvenir neighborhood in Desamparados was unfortunately somewhat grueling and lengthy because of the traffic-choked roads, so as it turns out I ended up tipping the driver very well indeed. After all, he has a difficult job in the best of circumstances, but this guy was highly entertaining-- his English language skills were nearly as good as my fellow passenger´s! How do I describe the odd impression one feels listening to two Costa Ricans conversing idiomatically in English? If you can imagine it, then you might guess I was fascinated for the entire ride to Marco´s home.
Marco set me up in the "Led Zeppelin room", one of three bedrooms in his house, so called because it´s decorated with tour posters from the ´70s and ´80s of his all-time favorite rock´n´roll band. Guitarist Jimmy Page and frontman Robert Plant still look good onstage after all these years. . .
Marco shares his house with two dogs (an old bulldog named Buster and a smaller mongrel named Rat) and a versatile singing parrot. This morning I could´ve sworn the parrot friend was whistling the theme from the Andy Griffith Show--remember that whistling theme song of the show that featured Opie, Aunt Bea and Barney Fife?
And later I could´ve sworn it was whistling something that sounded an awful lot like the 1812 Overature...or was I only¨"hearing" things? Even if not, Marco´s parrot also speaks English fluently--or at least it speaks fluently the five or six phrases, including profanities, that I heard it utter today.
With only seven days on the ground, my mission here is pretty simple: get to Tortuguero, a remote national park and turtle refuge on the Caribbean coast, then get back to San Jose by next Thursday at the latest. Happily, Marco is able to take Monday off from his current job, so he can join me for a three day weekend which hopefully starts with an early bus departure tomorrow morning.
As in Nicaragua, the general feeling here in Costa Rica--at least for this visitor--is one of safety, security, and wider-spread prosperity compared to El Salvador or Honduras. No, it isn´t a rich country by any means, but it´s not without reason that this tiny nation bordering Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south is extremely popular with norteamericano tourists and expats alike. Not only is it reasonably safe, reasonably-priced and packed with beautiful attractions, but this jewel of country also is populated by some of the friendliest people I´ve encountered in the region. Marco´s easy-going hospitality and amiable demeanor is, fortunately, not an anomaly.
No comments:
Post a Comment