Gringos Perdido en San Jose

A brief note this morning - no pictures. We are off to Manuel Antonio - a national park with beautiful beaches (we are told). Yesterday (Monday) we got a rental car about noon and decided to try to find the Hipermas - a Wal-mart type store - in Escazu. Escazu is a suburb of San Jose that is said to have the largest collection of expats in Costa Rica. They have a Tony Roma's, a TGI Friday's, and shopping with an Norte Americano flavor. So, we went looking for a little taste of home. We did our shopping at the Multi Plaza - an American style mall where the ice cream at Haagen Das (spelling??) is labeled in English - and at Hipermas.

Then we went looking for an American style place to eat - saving Tony Roma's for a special occasion and TGIF's for a less special occasion. We got lost. Not just a little lost, but lost in a place where nothing was familiar and no one spoke English. Our Spanish was useless ' cause it was so limited. We could ask "where is" ("donde esta") but we couldn't understand the answer. We found that the practice of speaking slower and louder to someone who doesn't understand you is not only an American trait. We found a guy who paid more attention in his High School English class than we did in our Spanish classes because he was able to give us directions to the airport. We reasoned that if we could get to the airport we could find our way home or at least find someone who spoke English to give us directions. On the way to the airport we ran across something familiar - the route home - Route 27. We knew how to get home from there.

We were lost for 2 and one half hours and drove over 30 kilometers. It was dark and raining and the roads wind around the hills and mountains so that I lost sense of direction. I remembered the Kingston Trio and their song about Charlie on the MTA. I just knew we were doomed to travel the back roads of San Jose - maybe not forever but long enough to become fluent in Spanish. At my age that could be forever.

Wish us luck as we venture out this morning. We'll try to post pictures of Quepos and Manuel Antonio tonight. We're planning to be there through Thursday night.