THE BUREAUCRACY & ADDRESS IDIOSYNCRACIES

THE BUREAUCRACY

I’ve spent a fair amount of time this past week dealing with the logistics of being here. A couple examples: I went to ICE, the national Telephone/Electric Company, to get a Cell-phone number. All numbers, both cellular and landlines, are distributed by ICE. Since landlines can take many months to get, a cellular line is a better bet. However, they don’t have any lines available at the moment, so I got my name on a waiting list, and will “maybe” get a line in mid-May. After that, one goes out and buys a phone, brings it back to ICE and they install the number. (Jorge tells me that there will soon be 600,000 new numbers available, and a new plan to discourage cell-phone theft has recently come into being. If your cell-phone is stolen, you just report the theft to ICE and they immediately de-activate your number, making the cell-phone useless. ) The whole process was fairly typical and only involved a wait of an hour or so to get my turn with the service personnel.

I’ve had a more frustrating experience trying to open a bank account. There’s kind of a circular way of doing that. First of all, you have to have a place to live, and either a Residency Permit or a registered business corporation in Costa Rica. So, armed with my permit, my passport, my post office box number and my address, I went to the bank and waited about 45 minutes to get served, only to find out that I also needed a verification of income (I had my Social Security papers in my suitcase) and a municipal bill of some sort from the house I will be living in, not necessarily in my own name. So, two days later, armed with all the second batch of necessary papers, I went back and pulled a number for another wait. This time, I made it a little easier on myself by leaving the bank, having an ice cream cone in the central park, and doing a little shopping. I got back to the bank just as the number before mine came up on the screen. Sat down at the desk when it was my turn and proudly laid out all my papers. Ha! Not so fast. Turns out I needed proof that I was actually renting the place, either a copy of a rental contract, or a rent receipt plus a copy of the owner’s “cedula”, something like his proof of citizenship. Since I haven’t yet paid any rent, I of course don’t have any of that stuff. I’ll see the owners tomorrow and hopefully they will have a contract form I can sign and get a copy of, and maybe the third time will be the charm. This pattern of several return trips to satisfy bureaucratic requirements is typical of Costa Rican negotiations, and is one of the things that drives expats up the wall. At least I am doing all this in the town where I live. Sometimes government requirements can only be filled in the capitol, and each return trip may involve the better part of a day on the bus.

ADDRESSES

My Post Office box address is:

Corrine Anderson
Ap 319-4100
Alajuela Grecia 20301
Costa Rica

Home addresses are trickier. The houses are not numbered, the streets are for the most part not named except in the very center of town and even then there are no street signs. Directions are given by saying something like “100 meters south of the church and 200 meters east” with the number of meters somewhat relative. 100 meters usually means the distance from one side street to the next, whether the actual block is 30, 80 or 200 meters long. My house, for example, is located in San Isidro de Grecia (an outlying suburb) and since there is only one main road into San Isidro, the only other indicator is “150 meters east of the church.” I’ve seen it described as 200 meters east, and was told verbally it was 800 meters east. Out in the country the address can be described as “150 meters west of the lot where they load the sugarcane,” said lot only being used to load sugarcane a couple times a year. People often say, “Call me when you’re close and I’ll come and meet you.”

THE ONION FESTIVAL

Friday, April 24: THE ONION FESTIVAL

I’ve just received news that my shipped goods have arrived and will probably be delivered tomorrow. I’ll spend a couple days, I think, putting things in place but spending the nights back at my hotel – I hate to leave this swimming pool – and then move in on Monday. I’m still amazed at the record timing – I expected to be looking for weeks.

Last weekend I read in the paper about an Onion Festival being held in Santa Ana, a town not far from here, so I decided to check it out. “Not far” is a very relative term. All roads (and buses) go to San Jose, the capital, so any trip in a lateral direction involves one bus to SJ, a taxi ride to another bus station, and another bus to wherever one is going. Took me 3 hours to get there. This included a fairly long delay for road construction. There is no national bus line – every city has its own bus company, sometimes more than one, and they are all painted wonderful though different bright colors, and they all have their own bus stations in the capitol.

Once in Santa Ana, I headed down the street toward the noise and crowds, and found myself in a 2-block long strip of onion booths and food booths. I’ve never seen so many onions in one place. See foto. Making my way down the street I encountered, right in the middle of the crowd, a pair of oxen followed by a colorful cart, typical of Costa Rican folk art. There had apparently been a parade of oxcarts earlier, and this was the last one to be heading home. (I had read on the Festival description that there would be a Parade of “Boyeros” but I couldn’t find the word in my trusty dictionary). I will know the next time, and try to arrive in time to see them. I took a few pictures, tasted a few of the food offerings (they were different looking but remarkably similar in taste to USA “festival food.”) Explored around the town a little, but was anxious about returning home before dark – 6 pm promptly – so I hopped a bus back to San Jose and then another to Grecia. The return trip wasn’t quite so long.

I am getting used to the reality that any excursion out of Grecia, whether it be for shopping or pleasure, will involve a good portion of time in transport, often more than half the day. But since I am, without fail, an “event junkie”, I’ll probably spend a good many Sundays crossing the country to visit local Fiestas.

Is this your passport?

COSTA RICA – THE ADVENTURE



“Excuse me ma’am. Is this your passport?”

It all started rather ominously.
Sat. Mar. 20 to Wed. Mar. 24: After trying three times over a period of five days to get on a standby flight to Atlanta out of Seattle (drugging my poor kitty each time and hauling her off to the airport for a 4-hour stay in her tiny travel carrier), I gave in and bought a ticket to Atlanta. It was for a three-legged flight, United – Delta – Frontier, from Seattle to Portland to Denver to Atlanta. But alas, Sage could not go along because Frontier doesn’t allow animals in-cabin. So she got left behind for later fetching by my sister, Janet.

Thursday, Mar. 25: So far, so good. Got from Seattle to Portland without a hitch. A small accomplishment. However, once in Portland and ready for the next leg, snow in Denver caused me to get rebooked to a 6am flight from Portland to Atlanta on the next day. (the next day was Friday, Mar. 26, exactly 6 days after I had first started trying to get on a Delta flight as a standby passenger.) I decided to just hang out at the airport, too stingy to pay for a hotel room, and besides, I’ve never stayed overnight in an airport before. One more adventure.

I was sitting at one of the gates, killing time and reading, when a young man came up to me and said, “Is this your passport?” !!!!! Sure enough, it had fallen out of my pocket while I was sitting there and he had spotted it on the floor. (This seemed like the omen that counteracted everything else that had been happening all week. Surely I was meant to go to Costa Rica after all.)

At this point, I was thanking all the gods in heaven that I did not have my cat with me.
I found a section of waiting benches that did not have metal armrests between each seat, and by deftly fitting the ripples between each seat into my body curves, I managed to finally get to sleep for about four hours. I was only awakened at 4:30 am by the sound of people walking down the concourse to the first flight of the day. I had counted on that happening since I had to get to my gate by 5:30.

Friday: Arrived in Atlanta, all was well. Stayed only two days – my flight to Costa Rica was booked for Sunday and I had to take it because I had an appointment in Costa Rica on Monday at 9am concerning my residency permit. Then the next glitch came up. Rereading my instructions about the Residency permit, I discovered that I was supposed to make a couple payments for the Residency Permit at a Costa Rican bank, and bring the receipts with me. I figured that would be impossible before 9 am, and months of preparation would be lost. I called my lawyer who was dealing with the papers, he called his sister in Costa Rica, she sent him a fax later in the day saying the banks were open at 7:30 am, so I was saved once again.

After a pleasant flight to San Jose, Costa Rica, I arrived at the place I would be staying in Alajuela (a city close to the airport) and got the message that my residency lawyer had called. V.P. Joe Biden would be in San Jose on Monday morning, all the freeways would be closed off, and I needed to arrive at the Immigration office (which has a bank office) at 7 am to avoid traffic blockages. So, I did that. My lawyer’s sister was actually there at 7:30. She proceeded to take me through the bank lines and three different residency permit lines, and at 10:30 I was finished and had my Cedula de Pensionado. (Retirement permit). This means that I am legally here, not a citizen, and don’t need to leave the country every 90 days (you can turn around and come right back in after 24 hours) as those on tourist visas do. I also get special rates at museums and various tourist locations, usually less than half what the tourists pay. I can apply to be in their medical system, the CAJA, as well and get very inexpensive medical care, and free drugs.

During the first week I was here, I read about a craft fair happening in San Isidro de El General featuring artists (from all over the country) and members of CR’s indigenous tribes demonstrating their crafts as well. San Isidro is a three-hour bus ride ($4) from Alajuela, but I had nothing better to do so I made a hotel reservation and took off. The craft fair was very funky, based on my own experiences with craft fairs – almost nothing above the level of the most uninteresting church bazaars except for some pottery and masks made by some of the indigenous artists. I was disappointed, but hadn’t really expected a whole lot more – it just confirmed what I had suspected about the quality of crafts and the tastes of the Costa Ricans. I did have an interesting chat with the fair organizer. Apparently he takes this event all over the country, and next year it is going to have an “international” theme, and he said he could use some bilingual volunteers. I figure by next near I’ll be pretty competent, if not fluent.

San Isidro, however, was lovely. I began to entertain the notion of living there instead of my initial choice, Grecia. I had a taxi driver drive me around the town for about an hour ($20) and show me the various neighborhoods. I had been in contact with a gringa woman who lived in the area and did some volunteer work with a local indigenous tribe, the Boruca. www.borucacr.org. I imagined myself getting involved with their weaving projects, and doing some wonderful photography of the people and their spectacular and colorful masks. I was unable right then to make contact with this gringa woman, so went back to Alajuela to give it some thought. San Isidro is cheaper and safer than Grecia, being so far from the big city, but I have decided to stick with Grecia for the time being, the main reasons being that being three hours from the airport would be difficult in terms of having visitors, I already have a potential network of friends in Grecia through the people I have already met, and the distance of San Isidro from the capitol, which is where anything of cultural interest happens, would mean that I would probably never go there.

Tues. April 7: So, I am here in Grecia. Landed here on the Monday of Easter week, which is a time when EVERYBODY in Costa Rica takes a vacation, and all municipal offices and most stores are closed from Thursday through Sunday. I have rented a little 2-room apartment (kitchen and bedroom) in the Healthy Day Hotel ($300/mo), just 20 minutes walk from the downtown area, (uphill – good exercise). It has a lovely swimming pool which nobody uses in the morning, so I swim and exercise for about 40 min. after I have had my first cup of coffee. It is quite lovely. Just discovered, now that school is back in session, that the pool is filled with school-children in one-hour shifts from 7 am to 2 pm on Mondays and Fridays. Oh well, I will go for a walk or something instead. Or get up earlier and swim between 6 and 7.

Wed. April 8: My first potential nightmare. I left my debit card in an ATM machine after I had withdrawn enough money to pay for 1 month in advance at my hotel. Went home and paid the bill and went back downtown to withdraw more cash for spending money, and lo! I didn’t have my card. (I had a very vague memory of hearing a little “bing” as I left the little self-contained kiosk and thinking oh they make a little “bing” when you are leaving. Estupido. ) It was too late in the day to call the bank, and everything would be closed on Thurs. and Fri. I only had about $5 in cash on me so I walked back to the hotel, told the woman at the desk what had happened and she just immediately gave me $100 back out of my hotel payment. Much relief!

Got through the holiday weekend, not doing much of anything – reading, swimming, walking, figuring out what I could eat with only a refrigerator and a microwave. I have a stove but it is not yet hooked up to its gas tank, and I don’t have any pans yet anyway. I’ve found several different combinations to wrap up in warmed-up tortillas, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Discovered you can heat tortillas in a toaster as well as a microwave. Just have to watch ‘em. Note bene: Baloney in a warm tortilla is not a good combo.

Mon. April 13: Today I am going to a potluck lunch with 10 gringas who live in the Grecia area, a result of meeting a woman on the CostaRicaLiving yahoo group who lives here and wrote to me and said get in touch as soon as you arrive. My timing for once, just happens to be really good.

Tues. April 14: The potluck lunch was delightful, located in a beautiful house way up high in the hills above Grecia – a view to die for, which is not hard to find in this city located on the slopes of a mountain range. Met some very wonderful people and learned about all kinds of things to do – it would be very easy to find oneself being too busy. Hopefully, I will avoid that.

I have called a driver named Jorge, recommended by my friend Lair, who is a general concierge about town. I will tell him what I am looking for – three bedrooms, cable TV, high-speed internet, a yard, a view, under $400 – and he will start looking for me. Good places to rent never end up being listed anywhere – you have to find them by word of mouth. They tell me it may take 4-6 weeks to find something, and I may have to compromise a little on everything I want, but I am comfortable at the Healthy Day and am willing to wait. Jorge is a delight, and I am told, if I rent an unfurnished place, that he can also find me the best deals on used or cheap furniture. I only shipped a bed, two dressers, a work table and kitchen table and four plastic lawn chairs. He is already taking me to look at a place this afternoon.

Called the bank this morning about my debit card, and they called back about an hour later to say they had it and told me where I can pick it up in San Jose. This will involve a 40-min. bus ride, a taxi to the bank location and then reversing my tracks. I figure it will take about half a day at least. I am much relieved, as it is my only debit card and my only resource for cash withdrawals. I spent the weekend trying to maintain a very zen-like attitude about not worrying about things that were out of my control.

Just called Jorge to confirm our 3:30 appt. and he is in San Jose delivering a “very sick American” to the hospital. Our trip is postponed until tomorrow at 8am.

Wed. April 15: Went to San Jose and got my ATM card back. Not much of a hassle except for having to take one taxi out to the bank office and another back to the bus station to return to Grecia. Spent a little time in the Mercado, where I stopped in for ceviche at my favorite food stand. Also had lunch at the only Lebanese restaurant in the country – ordered Fattush with pollo (a salad with fried pieces of pita bread and chicken with a very lemony dressing), delicious. Will have to look it up on the internet and see if I can get a recipe.