Cortes Waterfall

I was talking with a guest in our restaurant at the school and he had a picture of a beautiful waterfalls on his computer. When I asked him where it was, he told me 21.2 kilometers from the school. ( obviously a military man in his former life). I could not believe it. I have been living here for six months and still don’t know about these things? The tourist infrastructure is non-existent. When I wrote the department of tourism a while back and asked them if they wanted me to officially blog for them, I did not even get an answer. That was after spending about an hour trying to get an e mail address. A headline in the Tico Times says:” Costa Rica, the new Florida.” I don’t think so. What people like about Florida so much is that it has all the amenities of Canada but not the potholes!

Anyway, back to the story.I drove south for exactly 21.2 kilometers and turned right as he said. There was simply a dirt road, no signs, no sounds, no flashing lights a la California. I drove exactly 500 meters up the road as he instructed, turned right as he told me and then a left another 300 meters up the road and got out of my car and followed a path to Shangra-la. Wouldn’t you think it would be prudent of the tourist authority to at least put up a few signs? What are they thinking? How about a little hut selling water at least? I certainly can’t figure it out. It was a great little spot as you can see from the pictures and no-one knows about this site!!!

Talking about potholes… Look at this. I was driving through Liberia with my Nissan Pathfinder, thank God, and fell into this pothole with the whole front of the car! If I had been driving a small rented car I would probably still be down this open sewer or in someone’s toilet. There was no sign, no cover , no nothing. As if on cue, about 10 guys came out from somewhere and literally lifted the car back on the road. I don’t know if they were expecting a tip but I was so thankful I got out I simply drove away after a few high fives! They also dig up and fix the potholes in the road all the time, especially when I am trying to get to school, but they do such a poor job of it that they are back the next week filling the same potholes. There must be some conspiracy to do it poorly.

School has been extremely busy for some reason. I thought after all the planning I would now be in retirement but parents keep asking questions, kids still are being kids and teachers need their constant reminders. As well, it keeps me off the streets, or in this case, out of the water! Have a nice week if you are reading this.

Finally- Hot Springs!

I finally found the Agua Calientes I was looking for last August when I first arrived and now I understand why it was full of Ticos. It would be absolutely impossible to find if I did not understand and could speak Spanish.(ok, a little Spanish). I remember in my first week-end in Costa Rica. I got into the car and headed south from Liberia to Bagaces. I started to follow some signs for some hot springs but remember getting so wound around and lost it was impossible to find. I did find some little mud hole, mind you, and I was so turned off by it I never attempted to travel again to any hot springs, except for the fabulous hot springs I found in Arenal by the name of Baldi which happened to be right on the main road which was the only reason I found it. Today, I did get wound around like the other time, with the road obviously going nowhere, or somewhere I guess, but nowhere I was interested in going, but this time I could ask and actually understand the answer and in no time flat I was at "Thermal Mania."

Since my area, and I guess all of Costa Rica, is essentially surrounded by volcanoes, or better put, in the midst of volcanoes, there has to be hot springs everywhere. The geothermal activity in these areas is fantastic. There are these huge pipes coming from somewhere in the volcano, I presume, spewing forth steam, which is then turned into electricity in the generating plants. I would love to know how much energy is created by the volcanoes and if Costa Rica depends on any outside source for power? They even had wind mills in the area I was in today.

The actual hot springs were great. This time, it only cost $10 for the day and I had access to about 6 pools of varying degrees of heat, a water slide, swim up bar and so on. Not quite as posh as Baldi, but very serviceable and well appointed. There is even cabins on site with their own thermal waters, even though I did not get a chance to look inside. However, I do know where I am going to take my next visitors ( or to put it another way) my first visitor. We will go to this area around Miravelles and choose one of the big three hot springs in the area to relax in.

Although my school only has 80 kids, it has enough after school activities to keep a school of a 1000 kids happy. I played soccer on Thursday, baseball on Friday and tried to stay away from Club Explosion so I did not lose an eye. Kids were blowing up things all over the place. Next week I am going to try my hand at the swim club and hopefully camera club. I keep taking pictures of flowers, especially the bird of paradise, but would love to be able to take some pictures of birds. Not sure if I have the patience!

The Road Less Traveled

Excuse me for not writing very much in the last month but without a computer and accoutrements, it was difficult. In addition, I was spending every waking hour planning for the school year which opened up last Monday. The boss and I have been spending our time writing the teacher and student manuals, talking about the strategic plan, timetabling, hiring teachers, organizing and reorganizing classes, buying materials, creating the evaluation software, preparing teaching workshops and so on. When you are the principal of a small school you have to do everything. In the past, I had no idea where the supplies came from. I just assumed they would be there!

Anyway, there is nothing more I can do. The ‘game’ is now in the hands of the teachers and I can sit back and watch it happen…sort of. The first day started off rather poorly mind you. We got a teacher all the way from Vietnam in 54 hours to start the school year with us and we could not even get him to school, a twenty minute bus ride! The bus went to get him, but since a teacher from last year was sick and they were on the same bus, the bus driver did not know what the new teacher looked liked. This is Costa Rica, of course, and people generally do not have phones so there I was at 8 am with two teachers missing. (school starts at 8 am.) Parents in Costa Rica infiltrate the school on the first day and take their kids to classes so there I was talking with parents and kids with no teacher to be found.

After I sorted out that problem, by personally getting the teacher, things started to go right and by Friday it actually appears as if things will go all right this year. Yesterday I even went with some students to el norte, just one hour from the school towards the border of Nicaragua. It was great. I travelled about thirty minutes north of Liberia, turned right on the first road and started driving east. After about fifteen minutes, the road, or anything resembling a road disappeared and I was travelling over potholes, huge rocks and through rivers, but did see great scenery which kept changing from pastoral farmland to hardwood trees, to ocean front vistas. I loved it as we made a circle from the east to the west and the whole thing probably took, in driving time, no more than two or three hours. Of course, no tourist ( of the legal kind) would ever travel these roads because the sexy spots in Costa Rica are the active volcanoes, the go go beaches like Coco or Jaco or even the other Hermosa but not where I went yesterday.

What I loved about it was the peacefulness of seeing cows grazing in the fields, real cowboys with real horses repairing fences and cutting crops and then seeing such change of scenery in minutes as we travelled from ‘Yafa” orange orchards for miles, it seemed, to volcanoes, beach vistas and old forest at Santa Rosa. There were lots of police checkpoints, probably stopping illegal immigration from Nicaragua but thankfully did not stop me because I did not have a passport with me which I think you are supposed to carry with you at all times. I am also sure they don’t do much of a job checking illegal immigrants either. After all, if they did, who would be working in Costa Rica?

Shopping in Costa Rica

I’m Back! Let me tell you how I acquired all of my new ‘stuff’. My boss knows a wholesale computer place in San Jose where we picked up my first computer. As you remember, it could sing and dance but had no internal microphone or web camera. I returned it and we were promised another one in a week. My boss made multiple phone calls and everything seemed to be in order. You see, the problem is not getting a computer, especially if you are willing to spend $200 more than you would in Canada, but rather getting an English keyboard. A Spanish keyboard would be absolutely impossible because keys are in different place and some commands are different. Anyway, we were assured that there was an English keyboard in stock and I was a happy camper.

The following week, yesterday, I believe, we went to San Jose to get my computer. At 9 am, even though we had been promised a computer days before, they told us to come back at three. At three sharp, we were sitting in the office waiting for the computer at the wholesalers and wouldn’t you know it. The computer was not there. After sitting staring at each other for 30 minutes, we decided to shake things up a bit and walk to the back room where they finally decided to get their act in gear and show us a computer, but as you can guess, it did not have the requisite microphones and so on. Fair enough, is this the only one you have I asked. Just then, another guy came by and said, in fact, here is another one. It had everything I wanted and then some, but guess what, it was too small for me but at that point, 4:30 I was willing to spend the money just to get out of there! My boss asked after about fifteen minutes of more useless chatter, are you sure there is not another one somewhere? Thirty minutes later she came back to tell us that low and behold, there was a model computer ( a Toshiba Satellite) that she would be willing to sell for $650. Hallelujah! I’ll take it, I said. She told us to come back in an hour when they would have Windows installed on it. Forget it, I told them, we will take it as is and just burn the software and I will install myself! Forty-five minutes later she returned to say they did not have any software and we could download from the Internet. ( wrong actually) but I agreed. At 5:30 I told the lady I would pay an extra $50 if she would just give me the computer within the next 15 minutes and I would pay immediately. She did not get the extra $50!!!!

You think that is bad? Let me tell you about the phone! We got a phone, not really a big deal, but not a small deal either. We went to an Office Depot type of place and you look at the phones but they will not let you take them to the cash register. You have to go to the cash register, wait in line for a bit till you are recognized and then they ask the guys to bring you the phone. That takes another fifteen minutes at least ( which is why there is always a line at the cash register!) Once you get it, you have to go over everything again and then, if you are lucky, they may let you buy it.

You think you are pretty smart, right, and that would be the end of the story, but how wrong you would be. Once you have a telephone, you then have to go to ICE, the national communications carrier to get a phone number. After waiting in line for three days in a row, we found out that there is about a three month waiting list to get a number. Luckily, they let me use my old number.

The story does not end. I bought the same camera as I bought in Toronto three years ago, a nifty little Cannon ( for about one third more than I paid three years ago) and walked out of the store on air…that is until I got home. It is kind of hard to take pictures without a chip to insert which they made no effort to sell me when I bought the new camera and if truth be told probably did not even know it needed one. We bought it in the same place as the phone?!??

Want to hear more? Didn’t think so. So, you want to visit Costa Rica?

Honestly, the moral of the story is that I should never never never lose anything again, especially not here. I do have to tell you though that when I go out to my beach in the morning the water is so clear you can see the sand at the bottom and all the fish in between, you never need a towel, the days are perfect at about 30 degrees and the stars are brighter at night then I have ever seen. As long as you do not ever have to buy anything, Costa Rica is great!