Comma Dot Comma

We just got back from a six-day trip to lovely Costa Rica, and, as we shuffled through the lines at the airport, kept wishing we had another 15 days. We’ve never been to Hawaii but Costa Rica seems like it could be considered a poor man’s Hawaii. It’s got the beaches, the reefs, the forests, the volcanoes, the mountains, and the canyons. I’d recommend a visit there to anyone who loves the outdoors. A more lyrical post on our adventures later. For now, some “glad I did/wish I’d done differently” moments to help others who may be planning a trip.

1. Don’t rely on a printed tour book. The tourist industry is growing so quickly in Costa Rica that our 2005 edition was already out of date. Hotels had changed ownership or gone downhill, restaurants had disappeared, and some of the fees were wildly inaccurate. Start with the book to choose the areas you want to visit, and then use internet forums and travel sites to get up-to-date recommendations.

2. Budget the exit tax into your travel plans. At the airport, we had to pay $52 in order to exit the country.

3. If you don’t have a lot of time, rent a 4×4 and drive yourself. Despite the narrow,winding, hilly roads, we were glad to have the additional time and freedom a car provided. We calculated what the expense would have been if we relied on buses, shuttles, and taxis for six days, and the car cost came out slightly lower.

4. Be careful with your credit card. Although we paid for our trip with traveler’s checks and cash, we had to reserve all of our hotel rooms ahead of time with our credit card information. Someone used it to order $700 worth of goods online. Fortunately, our credit card company didn’t authorize the purchases and canceled the card. Next time, we will use a separate, low-limit credit card to reserve rooms and reduce risk.

5. If you stay in touristy areas, you can pay for everything in dollars and get away with not knowing Spanish. Of course, this convenience comes at tourist prices.

6. Leave the restaurants behind sometimes to eat yummy gallo (stir fried beans and rice) at a busy soda (lunch counter) frequented by locals. Also, order the fresh fruit or juice smoothies, available everywhere for a dollar or two.

7. Use the in-room safes. All the places we stayed had lock boxes, and we figured they were there for good reason. All of our valuables stayed safe and sound, and it felt excellent not to have to traipse around with our entire trip budget in our pockets.

8. Enjoy the origami. Most places, we were greeted with towels, sheets, napkins, and even toilet paper folded into fanciful shapes like swans and flowers. A treat!

9. Bring a compass or good sense of direction. Though streets and highways are numbered on maps, they are not named or numbered in real life. We never got really lost (it’s a small country), but we did have to do a lot of guesswork.

Let’s say there’s a small town somewhere in the Midwest, with a parade of homemade floats and the reigning princess of the region, the lovely and kind Miss Okra. All the townspeople line up along the route to see her pass by on her okra throne, fashioned in just seven hours by her three brothers, who used a nail gun, a chicken wire and plywood frame, and seventeen hundred and nine fresh okras.

Miss Okra loves to throw out candy to the crowd as she passes by. She has buckets and buckets of it at her feet, more than enough for everyone, and she waves with one hand and tosses with the other. People love to catch the candy, though some get more than others, based on where they are sitting or how good their hand-eye coordination is or how large a person is in front of them or if they happen to be sitting in a pause between throws. I myself catch a milky way dark, my favorite kind, and I feel a rush of excitement and gratitude. I doubt that Miss Okra picked out that flavor just for me and aimed it directly my way, but that doesn’t diminish my pleasure one bit.

Some of the people by the road have ten pieces, and others have none. Though some of us are disappointed, none of us feels that Miss Okra, in her lovely green dress and ceramic okra-shaped earrings, was unfair. She was giving steadily all down the block. It is up to us to share our own bounty with the little ones and to use our authority to influence those who have, by luck, ability, wiles, passion, or force, acquired more than they need and are reluctant to share it.

It’s a different story when Miss Okra descends from her now slightly squished and oozy chair to personally choose candy for each member of the crowd. For some people she grinds the candy under her heel first; others she refuses altogether, and even takes their water bottles away. Still others find their open palms heaped with candies as she dumps scoop after scoop into them. What kind of an Okra princess is this? She is passing out just as much candy as before, and the distribution is about the same, but now the ordinary townspeople who had thought of her as kind find they don’t much like her, nor her fancy earrings, nor her way of doing things. People down the route who catch wind of what is happening get up and leave, candy or no candy; they want no part in it.

Miss Okra’s handlers leap out of the backs of police cars and surround her. The handlers are dressed as giant okras. They publicly apologize for having engineered this stunt. Miss Okra climbs back up on the float and beams at the crowd, foil candy wrappers glistening in her gloved hand. The ordinary townspeople do the wave.