First Impressions

You know, San Jose really is a beautiful city.  I wish I could have spent more time there, especially because I missed out on the museum and a few cheesy things like that.  The first thing I noticed was the trash people just throw on the ground everywhere...Here in the states we have gotten better about being more conscientious about putting trash in it's place, but in San Jose (and most of Central America as I will learn) it's common practice that when you are done with something you just throw it on the ground, out the bus window, or whatever.

 I always read how most Latin American cities have cities centers and parks, which I supposed isn't that much different than American cities.  However, unlike the empty parks that you usually drive past everyday in the states, people actually spend time in these parks.  Maybe it's because they are so much more beautiful, but I think  Tico's have a totally different appreciation for time.  Time has more value there than back here in the states.  I know it's confusing because here in America "time is money," and people are always a little late to everything in Central America-- but it's just a different kind of value.  Tico's value taking time to enjoy the beautiful things around you or the people that surround you.  The more time you spend noticing the beauty in everything around you, the habit will rub off on you too. 



After spending the night in San Jose, I started the long bus ride to Bocas Town and Bocas del Toro.  The most interesting part about this part of the journey was my first encounter with a Central American border.  You literally get dropped off in front of la oficina de migracion, get your exit stamp and pay a fee if it exists, walk to the other side of the border and then stand in line again to get an entrance stamp to the country your entering.  The particular border that I crossed on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica had an awesome and really old bridge that you had to cross to get into Panama.  I'm not gonna lie, I was happy I had tetanus shots within the last decade and I was a little scared that I would fall through the bridge since it was over a century old. 

Another thing, I forgot about the history of fruit companies taking over Central America.  It's tragic really, and you can definitely see the effects of Central America's past that are very obvious even today.  One thing you will always see throughout CA is BANANAS!!  They are absolutely everywhere, and right when I crossed into the border area in between Panama and Costa Rica traffic actually stops to allow for a conveyor machine to carry a line of banana bunches from one side of the plantation to the other for processing.  I was impressed in that I half expected to see a line a people carrying the bananas, but I was more impressed by the swing invention one of the plantation workers used to get around.  It was a swing that was suspended on a cable and the worker would use a pole to push against the ground and therefor push the swing forward.  I know it sounds like American laziness, but these plantations were friggin huge!

(name for native Costa Rican's)