Dominical Dot Biz

The holy ground in front of the Tinamastes Church

I have incurred several thousand dollars worth of car repairs over the last year. If one were to link that line with the title of this post, they might get to thinking that these expenses are due to the potholes. Welll… maybe indirectly. Directly, I just paid about $500 to have my balljoints and stuff fixed underneath my Montero. The “indirect” way is the fact that I refuse to buy a new car here, since the place is so #$%$@ hard on cars. Consequently I have older cars (’94 & ‘95) for getting from my home in San Isidro to my work in Dominical, and out showing properties in the jungle, so the cars are 4 wheel drive. Older cars seem to need constant maintenance, so I may be re-thinking my whole approach to this topic. I have actually been without any car on occassion, despite the fact that I’ve got this “back-up” arrangement.

Anyway, you may have heard that the roads are BAD in Costa Rica. And well… its true. What happens here in Costa Rica when things get to this level of road degredation, is that the people who support their families by driving the roads of Costa Rica, take matters into their own hands. The do a thing called a “huelga” which translates out to “boycott”. To do a huelga, they simply block traffic by blocking some of the one lane bridges around the country. This is highly effective since it shuts the country down.

This remedy was recently applied in the Dominical area. The road between San Isidro and Dominical is horrendisimo. It is a truly teeth rattling ride. I’ll take a bad dirt road anyday, over a bad paved road. The potholes on the bad paved roads have sharp edges that can wreck your rims.

So they blocked the Baru bridge. This is the bridge that is down on the flats prior to getting to the coastal highway. It is one lane and was blocked by someone, presumably someone with heavy equipment, who dumped several loads of sand, dirt, and rock on both sides of the bridge. Now, I’m not accusing anybody, but there IS a heavy machinery place right there near the bridge… Anyway, the action was supported far and wide. Even by those sitting there stopped - wondering if the bridge was going to be open any time soon.

The huelga appears to have had a good effect. Some of the major, silly-bad, pothole areas of the road have now been fixed. This is both a blessing and a curse since what I do is, I get to driving normal over the repaired parts and get my speed up to where when I get to an unrepaired part of the road, I really slam into the next sneaky pothole.

So, the current status of the road is that it is partially repaired. The holy ground in front of the church in Tinamastes, is fixed. Also, that part that is in front of the new thatched restaurant and fruit stand about 12 minutes the Dominical side of San Isidro is also fixed, as well as a smattering of other areas.

Just don’t let you guard down when enjoying these parts yet

Costa Rica has become a haven for many people that desire to live outside of their own country and enjoy a quieter and slower life style. Not everyone who moves to Costa Rica is independently wealthy. A large number of those that relocate to here must look for some way to support themselves. So the question gets asked in typical Jerry Seinfeld tradition: “what is the deal with living and working in Costa Rica?”

There are some changes going on in laws pertaining to residency here in Costa Rica. These laws are directed at keeping those not worthy from working here. They in no way affect visitors and tourists to the country, as these are welcomed with open arms by Costa Rica.

A new law was approved last November that will now penalize the companies that employ illegal immigrants. This will be felt by a large number of expatriots that are living and working here. This is largely due to the fact that it has been relatively easy to do so up until now without getting the official documents necessary to do so legally.

What a bunch of those that live here have done, some for years, is to take advantage of a provision in the law that allows for leaving the country for 72 hours, then re-entering Costa Rica for another 3 months. That this practice is common is well illustrated by a recent experience I had when crossing over into Panama for a visit. There are a number of young men that help with the various tasks involved with getting oneself and a car across the border. They all mention that we, being gringos, are likely going to Panama for 3 days to renew our passports. They see it everyday. This is called “perpetual tourism”. The government frowns on this, but has found it difficult to regulate it.

This new law, which is really just a strengthening of exisiting laws, gives the governmental agencies the ability to raid businesses and review documents, both of workers, and also of the payrolls.

So, I think that we’ll be seeing a mad dash for the Immigration Office. Getting residency is not for the faint-of-heart.

I usually stay on the beach when I spend the night in Dominical. A friend has a cabina there that I use. Waking up to the sound of the waves is nice, and so is walking along the beach first thing in the morning as I head towards work, but the thing that makes this type of day-start so delightful, is the fact that I get to wake up in the time-warp that is Dominical.

Walking along the roads of Dominical at 6:30 A.M. is like stepping back to small-town USA. There is not a soul that doesn’t greet you. If you’ve been around awhile you’ll recognize people’s dogs. One gal was out on her front porch breaking into a ceramic piggy bank. She looked up and gave me a gorgeous Tica smile. I smiled back and called her a “ladrona” (feminine thief) to which she smiled more and said that it was OK since it was her sister’s.

Banana Bread Mike drives past and waves good morning, Brendan the real estate/construction guy is strolling to the beach to check out the waves with cup number one for the day: “mornin’ Ben”. Unknowns drive by and wave.

The country living Ticos have a greeting that they share that goes something like this “aOP!” - kinda rhymes with “soap” I’m not sure, but I think that it might come from the use of “adios”. When you are walking the opposite direction from someone, and as you pass you can say this, “adios”, which seems to be “hello” and “goodbye” in one. Sometimes you just hear “dios”, and sometime just “ose”, and so I theorize that maybe this “aOP!” is derivative somehow.

Anyway, I got a couple “aOP’s” this morning as well, and the whole thing just put me in a good mood. By the time I arrived at my office and said “Buenos dias” to Erick the cab driver, I had this stupid grin on my face from just the sheer joy of it all. So Erick, who can’t let an opportunity to greet and joke pass by without taking full advantage of it asked me, “por que tan cansado?”, or “why do you look so tired this AM?”. I just had to laugh. The daily ritual of starting the day is just oh-so pleasant.

We all have different reasons for moving here. As the years have gone by, I don’t know that I have been able to focus on the “why” of it all so much. But, as I walk through town first thing in the morning, I am reminded of a hope that I had in moving here. I had hoped that maybe it would slow things down a bit. I think about sitting around the wood stove at the general store in the heart of an early America town, getting caught up on the latest gossip, and neighbors that know each other and care what goes on, perhaps sometimes a little too much, but that’s the price you pay.

I’m as private as the next guy, maybe even a little more so than the average Joe, but I gotta say, I sure like knowing and being known as I walk along the road.

I found this to be kinda interesting. I had heard that being bi-lingual was extremely good for the brain… but video gaming??? Put the two together, both bi-lingual and video gaming, one becomes “unbeatable”. Hmmmm, time to break out the old Nintendo.

Slashdot | Videogaming Keeps the Brain From Aging: “Ant wrote to mention a Globe and Mail article stating that videogames keep the mind young and help in quick focusing on different tasks. ‘A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks. A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable.’”

I am sitting in an internet cafe here in Panama thinking about that fact that I am sitting in an internet cafe in Panama. Life sure does some changing when one leaves their homeland and goes somewhere else. Sounds rather exotic… “sitting in an internet cafe in Panama”. Well its not really. In fact, the thought of sitting in an internet cafe in the States, if they even still exist there, sounds quite a bit more exotic. The fellow a couple booths down from me has his computer speakers cranked up and is listening to some really raunchy Latin rap. I guess he figures that the rest of us here want to hear what he is listening to… NOT!

Oh, now someone else has decided to crank up their video game that they must be playing online. It sounds like a speed car shoot ‘em up kinda thing. Lovely environment to write in. Actually, it is this very environment that is stimulating the writing.

Internet cafe’s in Panama are in super high demand. I am sitting at booth #27. It’s 27 of 36. Sometimes there is a line here waiting for a computer. I don’t ever have to wait though, and I always get booth #27. The reason being that I bring my laptop with me. Booth #27 is a laptop hookup booth… well sort of. Its got a bare-wire connection for the network, and one beater desk that the keyboard tray falls out of when you pull it out. They’ve got me tucked back here in the corner where there isn’t a lot of air flow, so be glad that you are there reading in the comfort of your computer space and not here beside me where the act of typing makes me break a shirt-soaking sweat. Earlier on, I thought that I might find the nearest competing Internet cafe and see if they had a laptop terminal that was any more comfortable. Turns out, it is about 3 doors down on the same street, and features at least as many computers in it. I asked the fellow behind the desk where their laptop terminal was and so he escorted me into a glass walled room that had about 8 machines in it, separated from the rest. There were two young boys in there using computers, presumably surfing the web, one of whom asked me for money. Outside of this little glass cubicle were the majority of the computers, and they were all in use. What the purpose of this glass walled cubicle was is anybody’s guess. From the circumstantial evidence gathered during my brief visit there, I’d say that it was a highly specialized room for young beggar boys and Gringos with strange requests. My guide started dismantling one of the stations for the purpose of accommodating me and my machine. I interrupted the process and told him I’d just go down the street to booth #27, where they were already set up for laptops, warm though it may be.

There is a high contrast between Dominical and Panama. I think about the internet cafe above my office in the San Clemente commercial area in Dominical (we haven’t yet come up with a definite name for the restaurant and office complex there). There are about a dozen computers there, and they are, on occasion, full. There are also a bunch of laptop stations since so many patrons of the Internet café there have their own machines.

This hugely successful Panama internet cafe, that is open 24/7, has only one laptop hookup, and it is always available for me when I come in. During wake-time hours, the 36 machines are nearly always in use. The reason? I suspect it is due to the fact that most people here are poor, well at least poor by a North American standards. They don’t have a computer in their homes, and so needless to say, nobody has a laptop computer either. Interesting. This reminds me of a time back in the States, a time when just a few truly adventurous souls actually had computers in their homes.

I think that this is one of the aspects of living in Latin America that I find really appealing. It is a form of time travel. We are actually able to step back in time and re-live it, while being fully conscious of the fact that we lived this stage of the cycle once before. From within the mind-bending technological changes taking place in the U.S and other first world countries, we don’t take as much note of the changes. From without, they are more apparent, and sobering. We live in the future. To be sitting in Latin America at all, and able to post stuff to the web, so that others can read it elsewhere on the planet…

It is pushing the past further into the past, and is making these last vestiges of simplicity all the more cherished.

Getting through San Jose, that is the question.

The following are some instructions that I gave to my clients that wanted to get from their hotel at Dominical to the airport in San Jose.

From Dominical proper, go up to the coastal highway, head north, cross the bridge, pass the guard shack, and turn right. This is the road to San Isidro.
Drive thru San Isidro When you get to San Isidro, you will know it cuz there are a couple of one lane bridges. In between the two bridges there is a coffee processing plant, known as a “Beneficio”. You will wind through the barrio “El Hollon”, and you’ll get to a Y in the road. Well sort of a Y, it is actually a possible left turn that goes up a hill or you can stay on the road that you are on the veers off to the right there.

You have the following 2 options:

Option 1 bear right: you’ll go past a stinky settling pond on your right. Do not stop for a swim as this is sewage. To the left is a wood mill where they sell treated pine wood, and packages for pre-fab pine structures. Shortly thereafter you will get to a left jog in the road, and then a sort of dog-leg type thing… I don’t think that any of this will be confusing since the main road is clearly apparent. The road gets straight and flat. On the right side you will pass the soccer stadium. Go to the “No Hay Paso” sign and turn right, go 100 meters, which is as far as you can go, then turn left and go as far as you can go (about 300 meters) then go right again as far as you can go. This puts you at an intersection of the PanAmerican Highway. Hang a left there and drive over the Cerro de la Muerte (Pass of Death) to San Jose.

Option 2 bear left: you’ll go up a hill that tops out onto a rather cramped road that circumnavigates the center of town (the centro). If you want to drop down into town from here you can choose one of the roads going down to your right. If you stay on this upper road, and take it all the way to the end, you’ll be at the PanAmerican Highway where you can hang a left and go to San Jose.

The drive from this point to San Jose is about 2 1/2 - 3 hours. You go up, up, up, up, up. Then down, down, down. (San Jose is higher than San Isidro) After having gone down for awhile, the road will finally level off and be flat and straight for a ways, passing through what is obviously becoming civilization again. You will come to a right uphill jog with a stop sign that you actually have to observe. I think that it is one of the few in the country. This is the intersection for either going to Cartago (right) or going to San Jose (left). Go left. Now you know you are close (10-20 minutes). After the “T” intersection, you will drive for a ways, go up another little ridge, drop back down to another flat, and go to the end of road and turn right. Your on a city street, go up 300-400 meters (i.e. 2nd stop light—main flow of traffic) and turn left. Takes you past a Pricesmart, some malls, McDonalds, etc… then your at a turnabout, roundy round, glorietta thingy. Go around the thing and continue on straight and head towards Alujuela. Your now on the south side of the city. Now it gets confusing and this is about as helpful as I can be since I usually at this point start to wing it. Just throw yourself into the city. If you have a compass, you can head Northwest. Don’t worry if you are forced by one way streets to go south east or whatever. Just keep working it until you get to the highway that will take you to the airport. If you need to ask for help, and don’t speak Spanish, say this: “Donde esta el aeropuerto ‘eye-row-puerto’”. The Ticos are just all to happy to help.
If you get to the Alajuela exit, you have gone too far.