Food Chains

Although I do not plan to eat at any fast food places while I’m here, I do think it’s interesting to look at what chains are here, and how they are different than what we have in the USA.  For what it’s worth, I did not see ANY major chains while I was in the south, so obviously this doesn’t apply to that area.

First, convenience stores.  The most common store is a local chain called Musmanni.  They are like a convenience store, but with the bread of a panadería.  I like the combo!  I feel like you can find one of these on every other block.  The second most common convenience store is probably AM/PM.  Those are all over the place, too.  But I haven’t see any 7-11s.

As far as fast tood goes, I feel like there are all the major chains from the US, plus extra chicken stores that are either local or from somewhere else.  At least judging by the restaurants and food places I see around, they really love to eat chicken here.

There are a ton of fast-food style chicken places.

It’s like spam, spam, spam, and spam, but for chicken!

McDonalds is all over the place, and they all have a “postres” kiosk in the front of the store that sells ice cream cones and other desserts.  These are always really busy.  I would almost say that they sell more ice cream here than burgers and fries.

Burger King has a “Whopper Tico.”  Basically, they took a whopper and added some local things to it: salsa Lizano, natilla (something in between mayo and sour cream), beans, and crispy tortilla strips.

Wendy’s has the “Fut Box.”  This appears to be a regular fast food meal, plus a cup of rice and chili, served in a box with world cup flags (for a limited time, but I’m still seeing it around).

Many fast food places advertise that they serve gallo pinto for breakfast, or a “casado” for lunch- basically taking whatever they serve, such as chicken, and adding it to a plate of rice and beans to call it a casado.

And, of course, there are the pizza chains.  Papa John’s and Pizza Hut are the two most common ones, I think.

Finally, there are the little storefronts downtown that have a variety of greasy fried stuff for sale over the counter.

Definitely plenty of options to get your fried food fix at any time of day!

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Losing that “new” feeling

I feel like I am getting accustomed to being here and am losing that feeling I had of everything being new.  It’s not that I won’t always be a foreigner here, that is not going to change.  But I feel like I know more or less what to expect as I go through my daily routines.

This has advantages and disadvantages.  The advantages, of course, are that I’m not needing to go through my day on a constant state of high alert, watching and paying attention to every single thing just to get by.  That was mentally taxing and made for some silly mistakes!

When you are needing to pay strict attention to everything, sometimes you miss the obvious.  Your brain just can’t process everything at that level of intensity.  But there is so much to take in at the beginning that you do your best.  You have to watch out for big things like where you live and how to get back there, and little things like what a telephone sounds like when a call is going through compared to not connecting.  Big things like which way to look to see if traffic is coming your way, to little things like how to keep your coins and bills organized when you’re working with a new currency.

One of the first things I needed to do here was to buy shampoo and conditioner, because I had only brought enough to get me through the first couple of days.  At the time, I was proud of myself because I had figured out the location of a supermarket that I could get to on my own.  But when I walked in, I was instantly mesmerized by all of the different products that were there and how they were organized.  Both the similarities and the differences were fascinating.  I walked up and down the aisles checking out everything.

What it meant, though, was that I accidentally bought two bottles of shampoo instead of shampoo and conditioner!  It’s not that I didn’t know the word for each, they’re pretty much cognates.  I think it’s just that once I was finally doing a familiar task, like grabbing a product off the shelf (after quite a long time reading labels, comparing brands, and figuring out prices), my brain gave itself a little break and went into autopilot.  I grabbed the bottles that were side-by-side on the shelf, not even noticing that they were both identical.  Since I have heard that conditioner doesn’t help much here anyway because of the humidity (and the desire to get out of the shower as quickly as possible), I have just been going without conditioner.  But I have more shampoo than I need!

The early days were filled with those kind of mistakes.  Right before I left, I had listed to a This American Life podcast that had an old episode with David Sedaris, when he was living in Paris.  He said something like being a foreigner means suffering countless little humiliations as you go through your day.  It means altering what you do sometimes in favor of routes, products, or people that are easy, familiar, or nice.  This is exactly what I felt like at first, and I had to remind myself that it was totally normal.

Riding the bus had me in a constant state of high alert.  I had this borderline panicky feeling that I was being whisked off at high speeds to parts unknown.  This was made worse because I didn’t know what the different places were called, or where any one place was in relation to another.  Even if I asked somebody, I might get an answer that was full of locations that means nothing to me.  I had to remind myself all the time to relax, because even if I was on the wrong bus and heading in the wrong direction, I could always get back on a bus heading the other way, or at worst get in a cab and get back home that way.  But I studied, studied, studied all of the landmarks as they went by, and then went home and studied Google maps.

Compare that to yesterday.  I had to get out to Sabanilla, and then to Pavas, and I hadn’t been to either place before.  First of all, I counted it as a victory that I knew I needed to get to Sabanilla at all.  The student’s “cantón” was listed as Montes de Oca.  And even though I haven’t been there before, I knew enough to look at the “address” to find a more specific location.  In this case, the house was within a kilometer of the iglesia de Sabanilla.  And every little town has a catholic church and a park more or less at the center.  So I was heading towards the center of Sabanilla, clearly.  Google helped me out, because somebody had uploaded a picture of the church so that I would recognize it when I went by (we were likely to go past several different churches, and they don’t all have signs).

So I knew that I would need to get downtown and board a bus to Sabanilla.  I couldn’t see any Sabanilla stops on the map, but I knew it was close to San Pedro, and I was familiar with those buses.  Also, the local buses that are going to a similar part of town all tend to leave from the same general area.  So I went to the San Pedro bus stop.  I noticed that none of the buses on that block said Sabanilla, so I asked the bus monitor guy.  Sabanilla buses were around the corner – easy!

I am getting familiar enough with the area that I can watch for my own landmarks,  I recognized San Pedro, of course, and knew enough about scale that I had a sense of when we should be getting into Sabanilla.  Because of that, I hadn’t asked the driver anything when I got on the bus, and wasn’t needing to count on anybody to tell me when to get off.  I did have a minor feeling of panic that maybe the bus wouldn’t go past the church (which is utterly silly, since that would be the center of town), or that I had missed it somehow, but I was able to push that feeling aside fairly easily and trust that I knew what I was doing.

Sure enough, some of the businesses started having “Sabanilla” in their name, and after a few more minutes the church came into sight.  Then, the landmark that I had decided would be my cue to get off the bus.  I was there!  I did need to call the family to get directions from that point, but I think that’s par for the course when visiting anybody around here.

Getting to Pavas later was a similar experience.  I knew what direction it was from downtown, and figured that the buses would leave from the area of the Coca Cola bus terminal.  So I headed over there, and asked when I got close.  Again, I was a block away from the bus stop when I asked.  On the next block, there was a line of people at the bus stop.  I asked the woman in front of me, and it wasn’t a Pavas bus, but a Lomas bus.

I still don’t know where Lomas is, because I haven’t needed to, but I know that I’ve seen both bus lines in the same general area, and I also knew that the place I was going wasn’t that far away, so they probably split off after my destination.  With that knowledge, I was content to just get on the bus.  I could always get back off if I needed to.  But the woman wanted to check in.  I wasn’t trying to get to downtown Pavas, was I?  I described my destination by the closest landmark I knew, and she nodded.  As I had suspected, this bus would work just fine.

So, it’s not that I don’t need to do my homework as I am planning my trips for the day.  I still study the maps at home, just not as much, and I bring my notepad with little notes in it so that I have a reference when I need it when I’m out.  But once I am out and about, I don’t need that super high level of concentration to do what I need to do.  I am not as likely to sit down on a seat with gum stuck to it because I am so busy studying the dynamics of bus seating that I am paying attention to every little thing about the bus other than the condition of the seat.

That’s not to say I don’t miss my stop sometimes.  On Monday I went past my home bus stop by accident, and it’s not the first time I’ve done that.  When it’s dark and rainy and the windows fog up, sometimes it’s hard for me to tell the difference between the stop where I need to get off and the one right before it.  And getting off too soon means that I have to walk past a busy gas station with lots of cars turning in.  So I waited, and ended up going too far.  That’s a pain because I then have to walk back down and up a hill, and over a bridge to get to where I need to go.  But it’s also not the end of the world either.

Of course, now that I’ve said all of this out loud, I may be setting myself up for getting completely and hopelessly lost.  That’s the way things work, right?  Overconfidence can lead to trouble!  Today, I need to head to San Rafael de Arriba, and I am pretty sure that I know how to get there, even though I’ve never been.  We will see!

Photo of the Day, Part 3

Central park in Palmares, Alajuela

After finishing my half marathon.

Monteverde, day 1

Monteverde, day 2

One cool thing is that even the littlest urban park has some sort of play structure. This is in the corner of the park where I catch my bus downtown.

Lots and lots of statues are all over the city. I do like how the public art features people of a variety of shapes and sizes.

This would have been a fun place to play skee-ball, except that it’s not possible to play left handed, and games cost close to $1!

I got to see Cypress and her host sister!

My room in Sabalito. We got in really late, so I barely remembered to get a photo for the day at all. I tried to take one on the bus, but it didn’t really turn out.

Panama!

Coffee beans

Seana at the roller rink.

A flower from the rim of Volcano Irazú.

Life-sized lego guy at Avenidas Escazu.

I forgot my camera when we went out today, so you will have to make do with a picture that somebody took of me.

The Chicago Bulls are a great baseball team.

Roller Skating

This post isn’t really specific to Costa Rica other than some of the reflecting I’ve been doing while I’m down here, so if you’re looking for more travel-related stuff, you’ll have to wait for the next post.

But recently I have been reflecting on the journey that I’ve been on.  I knew that coming down here would be a challenge and would take me out of my comfort zone.  It would have been much easier, of course, to stay home.  But this opportunity was a chance for me to grow personally, to challenge myself, and to learn and experience new things.

In 2011, I was 100 pounds overweight.  I had carried the extra weight for almost all of my adult life, and for most of that time, I accepted it as just a part of who I was.  I was obese, I was sedentary, and that was that.

Thankfully, I got scared enough by my lack of energy and some potential health problems that were coming up to do something about it.  I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to take off the weight, but I was going to give it an honest effort.  And it worked!  August will mark 2 years of successful maintenance since I got to my goal.

One of the things that this accomplishment has given me is the chance to re-evaluate assumptions that I had made about myself over the years.  Since I was able to reach my weight loss goal by finding a plan and sticking to it, other things suddenly seemed within reach, too.  If there was something I really wanted, and I was willing to work for it, then suddenly everything seemed attainable.

I had never thought of myself as athletic before.  My sister was always the athletic one.  I was the good student.  But as I was losing the weight, I started to exercise, and eventually started running.  Now, that’s pretty much my primary hobby.  So I had to redefine my assumptions about myself to include somebody who would actually go out and exercise, for fun even.

So this week, my guide and I got invited to go roller skating.  It was actually a work party put on by one of the Costa Rican program coordinators.  Normally, I would think, no way, I don’t really know how to roller skate, and I am not very coordinated.

But then I started to ask myself, was that just an old-fashioned assumption that I made about myself?  Was it time to maybe put that one aside, and see if maybe roller skating was something that I could learn how to do?

If this were the movies, you might cut to the scene of triumph as I glided effortlessly around the rink.  Unfortunately, real life doesn’t always turn out like the movies.  I may be at a healthy weight, but that does not mean that I have developed any coordination.

What really happened was like this.  I put on my skates and did manage to make it from the bench to the rink.  Then, instead of heading to the rail to get the hang of things, I just sort of tried to go.  I might have made it a total of five whole feet before I fell- hard- onto my tailbone.  It instantly started hurting, and I had to sort of gather myself before I felt like getting back up again.  And it hurt badly enough that as soon as I felt a little bit better, I changed right back into my shoes and did not make another attempt at roller skating.

Now, because of what I have been through with my weight loss, I am sure that I could learn how to roller skate if that was something I really wanted to do.  But, honestly, I don’t think it is.  Instead, I am accepting the fact that even though some things have changed about me and about my life, I still do not have any more coordination or balance than I had before.  And, it’s OK to not be perfect, and to accept the fact that some things come more easily than others.

I watched the roller skating from the bench, which at least was always full of at least a couple of people resting or other benchwarmers.  Luckily, my tailbone seems to be feeling better, although it is still a tad stiff on one side.

Heading South

I got to travel to the rural southeastern part of the country this week, which is why I haven’t updated in a while.  Several of our students are staying with families down there, so I took the bus down with them, stayed a few days to make sure everybody was settled, and then took the bus back up by myself.  At the end of the month, I’ll repeat the process in reverse to get everyone back up to catch their flight home.

The bus ride itself was pretty uneventful.  This was my third multi-hour bus trip since I’ve been here, so I feel like I’ve gotten the hang of the little things, like how the tickets, bag checks, boarding, rest stops, etc. work.  It is a really nice feeling knowing what to expect, for the most part, even though I’ve never been to the area and haven’t ridden this bus line before.  This was my longest ride so far, at 6.5 hours, plus this time I was responsible for 6 exchange students.  In addition, we had two more Tico teens traveling with us.  I do have to admit that the kids did just great and didn’t need a lot of help from me.

We took the 4 PM bus, so it was pretty late by the time we got in.   Most of the students were picked up right at the stop by their families, but two of them would be staying in the next town over, so they stayed the night with the same family that was hosting me.

The next morning, we packed into the truck and headed up and over the mountain to bring the students to their new home for the month.  And by packed, I mean that there were 7 of us in the pickup truck, but luckily one was a little kid, and the truck did have a back seat!

This part of the country was so close to the border with Panama that we stopped by along the way.  Around here, the border is quiet enough that you might not even know that you were at a border if somebody didn’t point it out.  It was along a gravel road, and there was a gas station, a grocery store, and some construction that is supposedly going to have a few stores.   The road itself just sort of veers into Panama for a few meters.  If you want to actually go into Panama, there is a road that heads off in that direction, which is notable because it’s paved and looks well-maintained.

We got out to take pictures, and ended up walking around a bit.  That was neat because I spotted a post with the plaque that marked the border.  Compared to Costa Rica, Panama is known for having cheaper gasoline.  In addition, they use the US Dollar for currency, and apparently the exchange rate is currently favorable enough that you can save some money shopping and paying for your groceries with dollars.  Seafood in particular is cheaper in Panama, so the grocery store had quite a bit of that for sale.  The exchange rate isn’t as good as it was a few years ago, but it’s good enough to warrant some business growth in the area.

I ended up being in the area from Sunday night until early Wednesday.  I was able to visit quite a few families and a couple of schools while I was down there, and I have to say that everybody was so kind and welcoming.  I know I say that about all of the places I’ve been in Costa Rica, but it’s the honest truth!  Especially down here, it’s a part of the world where they haven’t lost the ability to just casually drop in on friends, relatives, or neighbors if you’re in the area.  In Costa Rica, you go to the gate and call out, “¡Upe!”, and maybe the person’s name, to let them know you’re there.  If you do drop by to visit somebody, you might even be invited in for a meal, or at the very least a refresco (which down here is a juice of some kind, not soda), before heading on your way.  Because I was visiting several families in the same day, I had to be careful to not end up eating two breakfasts and several extra refrescos at every stop!

On my first full day there, my family asked me if I wanted to go for a walk.  I said sure, but really had no idea what I was getting myself into!  I noticed that they were packing a backpack to bring with them, and then they headed off at a brisk pace while checking their watch, and both of those should have been clues.  Anyway, they basically took off heading straight up a mountainous road!  Luckily I’m in pretty good shape from running, because it was all I could do to keep up!

We walked for an hour and 45 minutes before we reached the turnaround point, a little town that was nearby (uphill and about 8 kilometers from where we had started).  We stopped by a local pulpería (corner market) to get some snacks to recharge.  I got a little package of coconut cajeta, which is a sweet made from milk and sugar.  Then, we headed back down the mountain, this time in the rain.  We did stop by to visit a student on our way back, and were offered dinner as well.

The next day, I should have known better, but honestly these mystery walks to parts unknown were fun.  That day, we walked for “only” about three and a half hours total, and I think the direction we headed might have been a tad less hilly.  Plus, this pulpería had coke zero and yemitas, which are guava-filled sandwich cookies.

Unfortunately, both days I wore my Chacos, because I didn’t pack any good walking shoes, and I’m weird about wearing my running shoes for anything other than running.  By the time we made it back home the second day, I had blisters on the tops of both feet from the straps!  Ouch!  Hopefully they heal up soon!  Not just for the sake of my feet, but because I need to be able to wear those sandals again!

The reason my hosts were walking so much is that they are preparing for a 250+ kilometer walk from their home to the Basilica in Cartago.  The walk is a yearly pilgrimage.  Over 2 million people are expected to walk to Cartago, arriving around August 2.  My hosts were planning about 9 days for their trip, which means that the walks we did were short compared to what they had ahead of them!  But these were sort of a trial run, which meant they were trying out all of their gear and supplies to make sure they had what they needed.

And what was needed turned out to be Crocs with maxi pads for insoles.  Apparently the pads are soft enough to provide some cushion, and absorbent enough to take care of sweat, plus you can change them out if they get nasty.  It’s not how I would do a long walk, but I was the one who ended up with blisters, so clearly I should not be the one to talk!  There was also some experimenting with gel heel pads, which I tried myself earlier this year when I was fighting plantar fasciitis, but those just wouldn’t stay put in the crocs-n-socks walking setup, so I don’t think they will be taking those.

One interesting thing to me was how “rural” means something a little bit different in Costa Rica than it does in the US.  In this area in Costa Rica, coffee production is the main source of revenue, and there is almost no tourism.  In addition to coffee, quite a few other crops grow well down there.  At the house where I stayed, they had 1-2 trees of a whole variety of fruits, not for sale, but just for their own consumption.

Here is downtown. The taxis down here are pickup trucks with covered beds, so that they can handle some of the rougher roads.

Cacao. The white part is edible, but tastes nothing like chocolate.

Cacao seeds, dried and ready to be toasted.

Coffee

This is anona, I think. Very tasty when ripe!

So, that’s definitely what you would call rural.  But when I think of a rural area in the US, I think of everything as being really spread out.  Here, the houses were still pretty close together.  Not right up against each other with one portón touching the next, like it is in the city, but pretty close.  And the town I was in had a very definite downtown, even if it was only 2 blocks long.  But what really makes the difference is that between the clusters of houses and businesses, that’s where the space is.  It was noticeable on our walks.  Even the small area we were in was composed of several different little mini-towns, (San Bosco, San Antonio, etc) but then it was all fields, or mountains with undeveloped land, in between. 

The town where the other two kids were staying was even more remote, but still, the houses were clustered together into neighborhoods.  It’s just that I didn’t really see a downtown at all in that town.  If I had to guess, I’d say that there was probably at least a minisuper and a soda (small restaurant serving traditional food) somewhere, but maybe not much else.  But I wasn’t really taking a running tally when I was out there, so I might very well have missed some stuff.

It’s also interesting to see which things from US culture have and have not found their way down there.  There was definitely a lot less English spoken in the area, mostly because there’s just not a need for it since there aren’t really any tourists.  Kids do study English at school, though, especially if they want to go into the tourist industry when they graduate.

Cable TV and US TV shows dubbed into Spanish were really common.  The teen in the house also liked to watch music videos, so I got to see a Franz Ferdinand video for the first time while I was down there.  It definitely felt like a juxtaposition!  The next few songs that came on were in Spanish, followed by a heavy metal show.

Out of all the families I visited, I don’t know that anybody owned a computer.  But just about everybody had smartphones with data plans.  So web sites that can be accessed on a mobile device were pretty well used and common.  We could be in the middle of nowhere on our walk, and the family would still be keeping track of an important Facebook post and the replies!  On the other hand, I was pretty much off the grid with my not-smart-phone, especially since coverage from my cell carrier was spotty.

I definitely had an opportunity to feel how lucky I was, not just for the kindness and hospitality of everybody that I met, but also for the little window into everyday life in rural Costa Rica.  My work here as a chaperone gives me the opportunity to go to some of these places that are far from the tried-and-true tourist areas, but it also gives me the chance to get to know some people and a little bit about their day to day lives.  What a wonderful experience this has been!

Various Notes

Here are a few things I’ve noticed that are probably not worthy of their own topic.

Striped Polo Shirts– Costa Ricans LOVE striped polo shirts.  Seriously.  If you are outside and there are more than 1-2 people around, all you have to do is think “striped polo”, look up, and I guarantee you that you will see at least one person wearing one!  Bonus points if it’s red, white, and blue!

Red, White, and Blue– Those are also the colors of the Costa Rican flag, and around here it is very common to see people wearing their nation’s colors with pride!  Even if they don’t have all of their colors on one item of clothing, you will see a lot of outfits put together to feature all of the colors.  For example, a guy out running today had on a blue cap, white shirt, and red shorts.  Part of this, I’m sure, is due to pride in La Sele’s world cup success, but I don’t think that’s all of it.

 

Statue in Parque Central

Clean floors/streets– This is another thing that seems very important to people down here.  I have never been at the gym and NOT had somebody mop around my treadmill while I was running.  When I did a long run at the gym, they mopped twice!  It’s not uncommon to see them mopping out the parking garage there, either.  I am wondering if part of it is the rain mixed with tile floors means that there is probably a lot of mud getting tracked in.  Also, clean streets seems to be a big priority for people.  Now, I’ve heard quite a few complaints about the littering, but honestly for a city this size, the streets are pretty clean.  There are crews out working to clean very regularly.  At the vegetable market, you do just throw your fruit rinds from the samples on the ground, which feels very weird.  But apparently somebody does come through and clean up afterwards.

Parks and vegetation are a slightly different story.  Because of the climate, things grow very quickly.  When I first got here, for example, Parque el Bosque (close to my house) was very overgrown, but I heard that it had been mowed recently.  They came about a week later, and it took weedwhackers to tackle the grass.  It was several days worth of work, and then I guess they had the day off or something, because the piles of what they cut just stuck around for a few more days.  But since then, they’ve been back to mow and prune a second time, and it’s looking nice.  Seeing municipal workers out pruning the vegetation or mowing/weedwhacking in parks is a very common sight.

Signs in parks asking people not to litter ask nicely and try to appeal to people’s sense of shared ownership and pride in their community and the environment.

Guachimán (pronounced almost like “watchy-man”)- Almost every business, and many neighborhoods, hire private security guards.  Sometimes they just stand near the entrance or “la caja” (cash register) and keep an eye out.  Sometimes they are near the door, and you need to talk to them and let them know what you want before you can come in.  Sometimes, the door is locked or closed behind a gate, and you need their permission just to get in.  In my neighborhood, the guard goes by several times a day on a bicycle with a whistle and a billy club.  I hear a rumor that he’s actually only the guard for the other side of the street, though!  

Street vendors– It’s very common, I think, in all parts of Latin America for people to go block to block selling various items.  They go by in car or on foot, either calling out or with a bullhorn saying what’s for sale, and sometimes talking about it’s high quality and/or low price.  Occasionally, it’s a recording on repeat.  It actually seems less common here than what I remember from Mexico.  In some neighborhoods where more people drive, I don’t think they come around at all.  But if you need to get around on foot or by bus, sometimes it’s worth the convenience of having the items come to you.

Our most regular vendor is the egg guy.  He comes by every morning in this car, playing a recording of his sales pitch.  There are other egg guys that sometimes come by later in the day.  We don’t buy eggs from him because he only sells cartons of 30, and we don’t use that many.

The veggie truck comes every Thursday afternoon.  The prices apparently aren’t the best, but if you buy your produce at the market over the weekend, you are likely to be out of stuff by Thursday and need a few things to get you through to the weekend.  You also just have to take your chances that he will have what you want.

I have also seen guys selling wooden furniture and blenders go by the house, and people coming door to door to ask for food and/or money.

Out and about, there are of course street vendors that have a specific spot where they sell.  Sometimes, they sell the same thing, for example the mango sellers by my bus stop.  Sometimes, though, they change with whatever is happening.  During a downpour, for example, all of the street vendors put away whatever else they had and started selling umbrellas.  During the world cup, there were lots of flags, posters, and jerseys for sale.  When I had to catch an early bus, I noticed that in the morning, it was mostly newspapers and empanadas for sale.

Lottery tickets are HUGE down here, and there are vendors out all over the place selling lottery tickets.  They seem to do a lot of business.  Many people join a group and buy together instead of buying individual tickets from the vendors.

The most common items that I see for sale, other than produce and lotería, are cell phone cards, fried chicharrones, plantains, and yuca, DVDs, socks, leggings, hair ties, bracelets (and supplies for making those loop band bracelets), arm warmers (?), and purses/wallets.

Toothbrushing– Costa Ricans also love clean teeth.  They brush after every single meal, and there are toothbrushing stations at schools.

“Suicide” shower head.

Hot water– Apparently, hot water is on the “sort of nice to have, but not essential” list.  Most houses that I have been in do not have hot water anywhere but the shower.  Water for the shower is heated by an electric shower head that often combines running water and bare wires right above your head.  Some houses don’t have hot water for the shower, either.  Even if they do, if the water heater breaks, don’t expect anybody to be in a hurry about getting it fixed.

Toilet paper– Most of the time, you do NOT flush toilet paper down here.  There will be a small garbage can by the toilet to put it in.  Again, that’s not uncommon for Latin America.  What does seem different is the way that it’s referred to here.  In other places, it’s said that you don’t flush your TP because the sewer infrastructure can’t handle it and you’ll clog the toilet.  Here, at least according to the signs that are up in every single bathroom, not flushing your TP seems to be a matter of respecting your environment and the waterways, and that it’s cleaner for TP to go in the garbage.  Same practice, different way of looking at it, I guess.  Maybe it’s just that clogging the toilet isn’t a good way to respect the environment. 😉

Flax and Chia seeds– You’ll be happy to know that chia seeds are just as trendy here as they are in the US.  Maybe more so, because of the tradition of having fruit smoothies and taking the healthful properties of foods very seriously.  However, nobody is nearly as crazy for chia as they are for linaza, or flax seeds.  They put them in everything.

I guess that’s it, for now.  I will probably be busy over the next few days, and will catch back up next week.

Ziplining

I had never gone ziplining before.  It has sort of been on my bucket list just because I was too heavy to be able to go for many years.  So if there was something that I couldn’t do because of my weight, I try to make sure to do it now as a sort of celebration.  It meant that I noticed the scale near the entrance where they put on your harness.  I reveled in the fact that nobody was going to ask me to step on it to make sure I wasn’t too heavy for the cable.

All of the pictures of ziplining that I have noticed are of smiling, happy people in gorgeous surroundings.  So I always sort of assumed that the point was a chance to get out into nature and see interesting things from a new angle (above), and that the cable was more of a means of transport from one area to another.

Boy, was I wrong!  The point of ziplining appears to be the adrenaline rush of being on the cable itself!  And, at least for me, I spent a whole lot of time concentrating on what I was doing, which didn’t leave a lot of room for pondering my surroundings.

The basic idea is this: you wear a harness that suspends you from a cable in a sitting position.  You wear gloves, and your dominant hand goes around the cable behind where you’re attached.  That keeps you from spinning while you’re moving, and you use it to brake at the end.  Your other hand holds the rope you’re suspended from, maybe for stability?

Then you GO!  It felt like I was moving way too fast along the cable, but clearly they have the angle set so that you’ll go the right speed most of the time.  The guy at the other end waves you on and signals when it’s time to brake.  I spent most of my time on the cable feeling like my hand was about to slide off, but did get the hang of it over time.  Luckily they start you with some shorter ones that are sort of “practice” before you hit the longer ones.

The place where I went also had two “superman” cables, where you are suspended from your back in a flying position.  This was nice- since you didn’t have to use your hands on the cable, I didn’t have to worry that I would screw something up, and could look around a bit more.  I did get a few videos from those, although I kept panicking and assuming the camera wasn’t recording and turning it off.  The first superman line was about a mile long, and took almost two minutes to complete!  The second one was about half that length.

Then, it was time for the “tarzan swing”.  For that one, you walk across a bridge to a platform, get attached to a rope, and then jump (or are pushed) off.  After a bit of freefall, the cable catches you, and you swing back and forth and eventually down to the ground.  A few members of our group didn’t do the Tarzan swing.  I reasoned that I had come this far, I might as well try it.  But at the end of the bridge, you do have second thoughts!  They opened the door, and I was falling through the air!  It was such a terrifying feeling.  Then the rope catches you, and that is a big thrill.  From there to the bottom, it’s a lot of fun, and you land very gently.

In the end, I’m glad I did it, but I don’t think I’ll do it again.  It’s just not my sort of thing.  The tarzan swing, on the other hand, was a ton of fun, and I would do something like that again if I get the chance.  But the ziplines, in the end, were about as nerve-racking as they were fun, at least for me.  Give me a roller coaster any day.

The platform for the Tarzan swing. They said it was about 40 meters high.

Here are the videos that I took:

Superman cable 1

Superman cable 2

Superman cable 3

Tarzan swing.  I couldn’t videotape myself (obviously), so this is a video of somebody who went after I did.

Monteverde

So it turns out that you can go all the way to Monteverde without ever setting foot inside the actual forest.  You also don’t need to know any Spanish, or even have any Costa Rican currency.

I knew something was up when I was at the soda by the bus station and there was a guy in there who was attempting to buy coffee using only English and paying with US dollars,  Then I walked over to the bus station, and it was Trustafarian central in there.  I don’t think that there were any Ticos waiting to get on the bus at all.  I’ve been talking to people around here about my plans to go to Monteverde, and while everyone agrees it’s a great place to go, nobody I’ve talked to who is from here has ever been there themselves.

So I was standing there feeling all superior to all of these rich backpacker kids from the US who didn’t seem to know or want to know about Costa Rica, they were just here to party.  But then I realized that it’s probably pretty hypocritical of me.  I mean, I am a tourist, too.  Just because I have a job to do when I’m here doesn’t make what I’m up to fundamentally different.  I mean, it shouldn’t be my place to judge, and they are bringing tourism dollars to the economy here, right?  But still, they were getting on my nerves.  How much of that was because the very act of going to Monteverde sort of lumped me in with them, at least for the next few days?

We got on the bus, and I dozed off for a bit.  When I woke up, we were at the same rest stop that we had stopped at on the way to Santa Cruz!  The bus driver announced that everyone needed to get off, and that we’d be stopped for 15 minutes.  One of the girls who doesn’t speak any Spanish is trying to ask the driver in English how long we’ll be stopped for.  He says, “quince minutos.”  She is asking in English if that means five minutes, and telling the driver all about needing to pee.  He just kept repeating “quince minutos.”

OK, I get that learning a language takes a long time, and that there are a lot of ways to get by when you’re traveling even if you don’t speak the language, but seriously, how much effort would it have taken to learn to count to 15 in Spanish before coming to a Spanish-speaking country?  That’s the attitude that was getting to me- the girl was acting like it was everybody else’s job to cater to HER, without her making any effort to figure things out for herself.

Also, it’s not like you’re going to be able to set your clock by a bus driver’s announcement of how many minutes we’d be there anyway.  It’s not like he was setting his stopwatch.  It’s good to keep an eye on the bus and on the driver, just in case.  Plus, you can figure out a lot by just watching the group and seeing what people do.  If they’re going through the line to get a full meal, chances are good that you’re not going to need to rush.  I know I said that there’s weren’t many Ticos on the bus, but that did start to change gradually, as we had picked up quite a few passengers at random stops along the way.

I had booked a package deal at a hostel that included two nights in a private room (with private bathroom), and two tours- a night walk through the forest, and a morning canopy tour, for $99 total.  The hostel turned out to be exactly what I was hoping for.  It was laid back and friendly, with some shared cooking, eating, and lounging space.  Wouldn’t you know it- the “quince” girl and her friend walked in a little bit after I had checked in.  But in this case, the private room saved me.  Most of the upstairs rooms had older couples and was a bit mellower.  For example, there was a couple from Italy staying next door to me.  And, unlike the US party kids, they were of course fluent in Italian, English, and one of them was also fluent in Spanish, the other had some conversational Spanish.

I spent the afternoon walking around trying to orient myself to town.  It was clear that I was in a tourist town.  Just walking around, I heard more English than Spanish spoken, and everything was priced in US dollars.  For example, the $99 hotel really was the price in dollars.  Since I only have Costa Rican colones at the moment, they had to convert their price from US dollars into Costa Rican colones to charge me.  It was like that all over town, except at the supermarkets.  Dollars seemed to be the “standard” currency.

In the evening, I had my night tour of the forest.  A lot of the “Monteverde” activities turn out to be run by private companies, and aren’t actually in the Monteverde forest reserve itself.  The companies have deals with all of the hotels so that you can book your tour (with pick up and drop off at your hotel) right at the hotel.  It sure is easier than walking around trying to figure out bus schedules and everything else, I must admit.  It also means you can get pretty good package deals when you combine your room with one or more tours.  But, I’m sure it also means that the hotels are getting kickbacks of some sort from the companies if they funnel more of their guests to one company or another.  And there are signs up all over the place warning you that you’ll get ripped off if you try to go anywhere else to book your tours.  Book here! (so we get the commission!)

But whatever.  I only have a couple of days, so I am going with the flow here.  The night walk and canopy tour that came with the hotel were both mentioned in my guidebook at had good ratings on trip advisor.  I felt like those were the two “main” things to do in Monteverde, and with the limited time I had, that it was a good choice.

So I wasn’t too surprised that the night walk took place at a privately owned facility that wasn’t in the official forest reserve.  And, after having walked around all day, I also wasn’t surprised that the guide was giving the tour in English.  Of the maybe 4 groups that were out at the same time we were, I think one of the groups had a Spanish tour, the rest were English.  But our guide knew many of the animal names in German, too, so he threw those in for the German couple in our group.  And at least I knew enough Spanish to be able to eavesdrop on what the guides were saying to each other on their walkie talkies.

My camera is just not able to take good photos in the forest after dark, but I will say that we got to see a ton of animals.  Most importantly- I saw a sloth!  Not up close, of course, but definitely a sloth, hanging on a branch, eating some leaves.  So that was really exciting for me, because I do think that they are really fascinating creatures.

The next morning was my canopy tour.  And here is where my naivety really showed.  I had thought that a “canopy tour” with ziplines would be a really good way to see the forest.  After all, most of the life in a cloud forest isn’t on the ground floor, it’s up in the treetops.  So naturally, in a canopy tour you’d use ziplines to travel from treetop to treetop, checking out all the cool things to be found in a forest, right?

Hah!  Apparently ziplining is all about the adrenaline rush and the thrill seeking.  The forest didn’t have a lot to do with it.  I’ll probably do a separate post to talk more about it, because it was fun, but also maybe something that I don’t need to do again now that I’ve tried it once.

So I was in the van on the way back from the canopy tour, and I realize that I have nothing else scheduled, only a half day left in town, and I still haven’t been inside the actual “Monteverde” forest!  I had fallen into the tourist trap instead!  I don’t know if I’ll ever have a chance to get back up this way, so I wanted to fix that!  The problem was, I didn’t know anything about the bus schedules or how to get up to the “real” forest.  My guidebook also mentioned that you DO want a tour guide, because otherwise you may just end up clomping through the forest without even knowing what you’re looking for or how to find it.

As much as I didn’t trust them, with time being limited, I decided to get the hotel desk to help me get to the forest.  I asked them about getting to the Monteverde reserve, and was told that I could get a bus at 1:00, return at 4:00, and would be able to hike around the forest on my own during that time, because there were no guides available.

Or, I could go to the Santa Elena Cloud Forest reserve.  For that one, there was a bus leaving in 5 minutes (at 10:30), and I could stay all day and come back at 4:00.  Plus, there was a 2.5 hour guided tour available.

Given that those were my only two options, I chose to go for the Santa Elena Cloud Forest.  It was still a forest reserve, not some fancy “OMG Awesome Extreme Adventurezzz!!!1” company, and the ecosystem would be the same.  Maybe I fell for a line at the hotel desk, but I did get to go out and into the forest.

My tour ended up being a private tour with the guide, because nobody else had signed up for it.  This also meant that even though it was supposed to be a group tour of the forest in English, that the guide was more than happy to do the tour in Spanish since I was the only person.  It also meant that we could cover more ground than the “usual” 2.5 hour tour, because we weren’t waiting for people who were unused to hiking up and down switchbacks or dealing with roots and mud.

But, it did sort of put me on the spot.  Usually in those sorts of situations, I will fade into the background and let other people from the group take the lead and do most of the talking.  But here it was just me, so I had to keep coming up with interesting stuff to say.  When really, it wasn’t like I was dead set on seeing any one particular thing.  I just wanted to enjoy the forest.  So, I alternated between asking questions about the forest and the things we saw, and sort of chit chatting with the guide.  He was from Liberia, Guanacaste, but after growing up in that more arid environment, was enthralled with the idea of a forest that could be “eternally green”.  He also was more interested in animals, particularly the mammals, rather than plants, although as a guide he did know what could be found in the area pretty well.

And it was gorgeous.  The air was one big white cloud, but it was cool enough that it felt soft and friendly, rather than muggy.  It was raining a sort of misty rain the whole time, but that’s what raincoats are for, right?  We did not see a lot of animals.  Daytime really isn’t the best time for most of the forest critters, anyway.  We did see several birds, although I don’t know birds well enough to even remember which ones!

Mostly, I was just impressed by the different kinds of plants and flowers that grew around there, compared to the forests in Oregon.  The one similarity is that both forests have a lot of ferns.  But in the cloud forest, there are giant ficus trees.  Moss grows all around the trees in all directions, because the sun’s rays don’t change with the seasons here.  There were long vines hanging from the trees, too.  Leaves are giant, and bright green.  There were also quite a few orchids, although not many of them are in bloom at this time of year.

By the entrance, they had an orchid garden where I did get to see a few orchids in bloom.

And that was it!  Time to head back to my hotel and get a little bit of downtime before getting up to catch that 6:30 AM bus back to town!

The bus ride back was mostly uneventful, BUT, the funny thing is that we were at the rest stop this time along with a “Tralapa” bus (which you might remember from an earlier post).  That bus left before us, but we passed them on the road a little while later!

Coming back into San Jose felt really good.  I’m getting familiar enough with the city that I do feel sort of grounded here.  I just feel like I have a better sense of the “flow” of downtown, of how to move through the crows, the cars, and the streets.  I’m also getting a sense of what routes I prefer when walking from one side of downtown to the other.  So, overall, the feeling is much more relaxed and comfortable than it had been in my first few days in the city.  Hooray!

The road to Monteverde

The road to Monteverde

The road to Monteverde

My room at the hostel

View from the hostel window looking down on to Santa Elena

The upstairs kitchen

My first try at cooking green plantains. Success!

Nice common areas!

More hostel view

Some kind of deadly viper

Here is the platform that I jumped off of. They said it was something like 40 meters high.

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

This leaf sort of reminded me of a giant Totoro leaf.

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

This little berry is apparently some kind of tomato relative.

What the postcards don’t show you is how tiny the frogs actually are.

And the orchids are tinier.

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

Santa Elena

This is called a “school millipede” because it looks like a school bus.

Santa Elena

The insects had chewed enough of the leaves to make a cool lattice effect.

Santa Elena

 

Food

Ticos seem to eat 4 times a day- breakfast, lunch, afternoon coffee, and dinner.

Breakfast– Costa Rica’s most well known dish, gallo pinto, is a traditional breakfast food.  The way “pinto” is made in my house is that some of the leftover beans from the previous day’s food are mashed slightly and cooked with oil, onion, and salsa Lizano (a local sauce similar to Worcestershire sauce).  Then, you add some of yesterday’s rice, and when it’s heated through, you have gallo pinto.  I hear there are regional differences.  For example, when I was in Guanacaste, they talked about how their pinto isn’t usually made with peppers or onions, that it’s mostly rice and beans.

Along with your gallo pinto, you might have some corn tortillas, an egg, some toast, or a slice of queso Turrialba (a local white squeaky cheese).  If you’re really lucky, you might have some fried maduros (ripe plantains) too.  

From what I hear, ticos like to eat a full meal for breakfast because it can be too hot to eat in the middle of the day.  So on really hot days, a good breakfast can get them through their day until it cools off a bit in the evening.

Lunch– This seems to vary a lot depending on people’s schedule.  Traditionally, I think lunch is a lighter meal because you are busy or it’s hot out.  However, it seems like my host mom tends to eat a fuller lunch and then a lighter dinner that might just be leftovers from lunch.  But I think that’s because she’s generally home during the day and has time to cook a full meal.  In the evening, there is often stuff going on, or people around, so there’s not as much time to cook.

The “traditional” Costa Rican lunch is the “casado” plate- the meal that a wife would pack up for her husband to take to work with him (the name means “married”).  It has rice and beans, a cabbage salad, your choice of meat, and fried plantains.  I hadn’t ordered one before because of the focus on the meat (you usually just ask for a casado at a “soda” (traditional food place) and name your meat, but at today’s soda, they had a vegetarian casado that came with some cooked squash instead of the meat.

Another traditional food that Costa Ricans might have for lunch and dinner would be a picadillo.  Basically, it’s whatever vegetables or meats you have cut up into really small pieces and sauteed.

It seems to me that foods are also traditionally served separately, except for when they are mixed into a salad or picadillo.  For example, when it’s not in gallo pinto, rice and beans are usually served separately, sometimes with the beans in “caldo”, a separate bowl, maybe with a hard boiled egg or boiled plantain.

Cafecito– If you’ve had lunch, and it’s any time before maybe 6:00, and a Costa Rican asks you if you want coffee, they aren’t actually asking if you want coffee.  They are asking you to sit with them and have something to eat.  It’s traditional to have a  cup or coffee, or maybe tea, but that’s optional.  My family seemed really confused the first afternoon when I turned down the coffee offer in the afternoon.  I didn’t realize that I was skipping a meal.  Also, if you’re not hungry, but you’re home, it’s a time to sit down together and catch up for a few minutes before going back to whatever you had been doing.

At my house, the food with the cafecito is generally something small, maybe some bread with hummus or cheese, or some crackers.  I will admit that I’ve been meeting my co-chaperone at a cafe in the afternoons quite often, so in that case we will enjoy something from the pastry counter. 🙂

Dinner: This tends to be later at night, and can even be right before bedtime.  Out in Guanacaste, the family ate dinner at 9 and was generally in bed by 10.  For those who eat a bigger lunch, dinner will be lighter.  Maybe a sandwich or some leftovers from lunch.  If you have a ligher lunch, or skipped it, then you’d have something more.  Pinto comes back, of course, along with meat of some kind or chicharrones, or a picadillo.

Snacks: There’s not a lot of snacking that I see, at least in my house.  People seem to eat at those scheduled times of the day, but not at other times, and there’s just not a lot of snack food around.  I have noticed that there are a lot of street vendors that sell fried chicharrones, plantains, yuca, or potatoes at the after-work bus stops, so that’s where the snacking seems to be done.  Another thing is that a lot of people get soft serve or something from a fast food place.  I will go into more details about that in a future post.

So far I have been really enjoying the food!  I do feel like eating more at scheduled mealtimes, especially if it’s whole foods, and not processed foods, and doing less mindless snacking has been good for me.  And luckily, I like rice and beans a whole lot.

Race Report- Correcaminos Media Maratón

Executive Summary: Official chip time 1:59: 39. 1,299/2,688 OA. 269/1,024 women. Time according to Garmin: 1:58:37.

Background: I am spending 8 weeks in Costa Rica this summer chaperoning high school exchange students, who are placed all over the country with different families. I saw this race online when I was planning the trip, and decided that it would be a great experience running a race in another country. I have been here 3 weeks so far, which was actually a nice amount of time for me to adjust to running here, with both higher elevation and humidity than I am used to back in Oregon (although neither is too extreme here in San Jose where I am staying).

I am also 4 weeks into training for my first full marathon, which is coming up in October. So although I had goals for this race, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my marathon training for the sake of a HM. I moved a few miles around this week (ending up 4 miles short), and swapped my Thursday marathon pace run for easy miles instead, but other than that I just stuck to my marathon plan and figured I’d just show up on race day and give it whatever I had.

That said, my PR is currently 1:55:02, and I feel like I’m in as good or better shape than when I set that last fall, so of course it was on my mind that I’d like to break that if possible. But I didn’t know anything about the course, so I really didn’t have too much riding on it.
A bigger deal was that I had a hard time this spring with the mental aspect of racing and keeping my focus once the going got tough. I was also dealing with what I think was plantar fasciitis for several months that finally seems to have gotten better, so I know that affected my running this past spring.

Pre-race: I went to the expo on Friday and talked to the 1:55 pacer. That was my first chance to find out about the course. He said that it was downhill for the first 10K, then there were rolling hills for the rest of the race. As a result, he planned to bank about a minute over the first 10K so that he could take it a bit slower up the hills.

Race morning was a challenge! I don’t have a car here, and live about halfway between the start line and the finish line. I could have taken a city bus to the finish line (two buses, actually), and then a shuttle to the start. Instead, I took the easy way out and decided to call a cab. I had gone down to the taxi stand the day before to figure out about how much it would cost, and got a quote of about $14. Totally worth it for the lack of hassle. But then I got back to my house, and my host family insisted that I was getting ripped off, and went to ask a neighbor who is a taxi driver what he would charge, and got a quote of about $10 and his phone number. Start time was 6:00, so I was hoping to leave about 4:30 to arrive at the start by 5:00.

I would also be carrying everything I needed with me, since I wasn’t sure if I could trust the bag check and didn’t necessarily want to deal with figuring it out in any case. So I brought cab fare, bus fare home, and a little extra cash, my ID, my phone, my keys, and since I was already packing everything else, two gels and two bottles of water on my fuel belt. They did have aid stations every 2.5k, but honestly I prefer to drink a sip at a time rather than trying to throw water at my head at an aid station.

When I got up, I called the neighbor cab guy, but he didn’t answer. So I ended up just calling the regular cab company, and got charged about $13. I told my host family $12 when the asked later, because I knew they would be on my case that I didn’t bitch at the guy for driving too slowly (to run up the meter). I knew that he was, and I knew why, but again, was sort of willing to accept that at 5 in the morning, especially since it meant that I would get to the race safely.

I got to the starting area, paid the cabbie, got lots of heavy coins as change (ugh!), and tried to orient myself. There weren’t any signs, but one of the shuttles had just come in, so I sort of merged myself into that group and found my way to the porta-potties. At least they had porta-potties! 10 whole bathrooms for 2700 runners. That might be generous for here, though, considering that public restrooms are few and far between.

TMI alert- This is the first race that I haven’t been so nervous that I’ve had to use the bathroom a hundred million times before the start. In fact, it was so early that I didn’t even have to go, although I tried anyway. When you don’t gotta go, you just don’t gotta go.
I ran about a mile to warm up. It was about 70 degrees with a dewpoint in the mid-60s, but it was overcast. It was supposed to rain a bit by the time I finished, which I was looking forward to a lot more than the heavy, about to rain feeling in the air! I passed a guy with a walker with a “21k ¡Sí Se Puede!” sign who was warming up.

Then I went back to the potty line for one last try. No dice. I popped two Imodium and headed for the start.
By now the race was starting and the starting chute was completely full. There were equally as many people milling about in the street behind there, or in the bathrooms, or wherever, because there were a lot more runners than there was room for at the start. There was supposed to be 4 seeded corrals, and then a 5th unseeded one behind that, but that hadn’t happened. Plus all of the pace groups seemed to be clustered really close together, so there was no way to get in at all.

I inched my way up the chute until I got completely stuck behind the 2:00 pace group. So that’s where I started. I saw the 1:55 group get to the start and take off like they had been shot out of a cannon, and that’s the last time I saw those guys today.

First 5K: Busy, busy busy. It was really crowded, so at first I just worked on finding a comfortable pace and getting past people as I could.
The thing about roads here in the San Jose area is that I don’t think anything is ever flat. One block might go up, and the next one back down. It’s not even that hilly, really, it’s just that they just put roads over whatever terrain happened to be there, I think, without leveling anything. You also have to be really careful on the pavement, and especially on the sidewalks, because there are all kinds of little variations and things to watch out for.

That said, the start was in Tres Rios, which is uphill from San Jose. But the starting line itself was downhill from the main road, so we started off running uphill until we turned on to the main road. Then, just like the pacer had said, it was downhill from there. There were what seemed like quite a few twists and turns along the way.

One side of the road was closed for the race, the other side open, and they did a good job of stopping traffic for the runners. I had to slow down once at an intersection, but never had to stop, which isn’t bad for running in congested downtown. Since there are so many city buses, though, the stopped traffic filled the air with diesel fumes.

I was doing pretty well getting past people, until I got up to the 2:00 pace group. There were a ton of people in the group, and I realized that if I waited for an opening, I might not find it until we crossed the finish line. So I gunned it, jumped the curb, and ran around the group in the gravel until I got past. Then it was smoother sailing! The 1:55 group was nowhere in sight.

I decided to just follow the pacer’s general plan myself. I wanted to hit the 10K mark around 54 minutes, so was aiming for a 27 minute 5K split. It was hard to rein in my pace on the downhills, though!

Water stations are different here. They give out little plastic baggies with water in them. You have to bite them open or pop them to get water out. And if somebody drops one, you could step on it and splash everybody around you! I skipped the water stations and just took a sip from my water every time I finished a mile. It’s humid enough here that I have been needing to drink when I run, and I have found it’s better to start sipping early than to get behind and try to catch up.

Mile 1: 8:40
Mile 2: 8:26
Mile 3: 8:38

I hit the 5K mat at about 26:30 on my watch, but my official chip time according to the race is 27:43. I think that they maybe had the race start time or something listed incorrectly. Probably somebody’s clock was wrong. For example, at my house there are 4 clocks, all of them show a different time, and none of them are correct. This also means that my automated “finish line photo” based on what time I crossed the finish is of completely different people.

Second 5K: Easy as pie. Mostly I was just cruising down the downhill, but trying not to run my entire race in the first half. There was a nasty little hill in mile 4, though. And, like I said, block to block you might get a surprise uphill before it went down again. I saw the first person drop to a walk going up that hill at the 4 mile marker.

I passed the “sí se puede” guy jogging with his walker around mile 4. There were a ton of people shouting out encouragement to him. I am wondering if he started with the wheelchairs.

Right before the 10k mat, I began to realize that I was NOT going to be able to make it to the finish before the poo monster caught me. This was a problem because there hadn’t been any toilets at the aid stations, and there really aren’t public bathrooms down here. The few stores that might have had them, like fast food, weren’t open on Sunday mornings anyway.

Mile 4: 8:37
Mile 5: 9:02 (the hill)
Mile 6: 8:42

I crossed the 10k mat at about 54:30 on my Garmin, so pretty close to plan.

Third 5k: The going gets tough
First things first. I spotted a panadería that was open, and ducked inside. I asked if they had a bathroom (most don’t I was prepared to beg), and they told me it was occupied. I was committed now, since I had stopped, and there wasn’t anywhere else around, so I just stood there. The guy repeated himself. It’s occupied. I played dumb and nodded again, but didn’t leave. Then the kid who had been in the bathroom came out, and they did let me go in the back and use the bathroom. I was so thankful!

I came out, and the 2:00 pace group had passed me again, and was a ways down the road. I moved my watch screen to show current pace so that I wouldn’t be tempted to sprint to catch up to where I felt like I should be. I closed ground on them, but could see that it would take me a while to catch them. Once I got to 7 miles, I moved it back to the “lap pace” screen.

I’m no longer really closing on the 2:00 group, and briefly considered quitting. I am not going to make 1:55 today, that’s for sure. I pushed that thought aside, and just kept going.

This is about where the uphill started, and it was tough. I didn’t know the course at all to know how steep or how far it would be. Was it just back uphill to the finish? Or was the top right around the corner? I didn’t know, and there were enough corners that it was hard to tell. Plus we were running through Curridabat and Zapote, two places that I have not visited since we got here.

There was one particular uphill that was really challenging. We turned on to some sort of pedestrian walkway, and it was “paved” with these little round rocks that were really hard to run on. Parts of it were concrete pavers instead, but those were sometimes over on the left, and sometimes over on the right. Then, somebody’s family jumped into the race to run for a bit with her. They were the zigzaggiest family that I have ever met, even with the bad footing. They were always right in my way, no matter what side I was on. I finally managed to get past them, and was so happy that I had.

Towards the end of this stretch is when I had sort of an epiphany. Racing doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t matter if I’m 3 minutes, or 5 minutes, or whatever off of a number that I pulled out of thin air when I was planning for today’s race (without knowing anything about the course). But it does matter if I am continuing to try my best and challenge myself the whole way through, rather than letting myself slow to a jog and not really trying just because I’m not going to PR.

I realized that this was a challenging course. Not challenging like some of the adventure trail races back in Oregon. Not challenging like some of the races that feature one or two killer hills. But challenging in a way that every little part has its own particular difficulty to overcome. The downhill at the start is easy, but also presents a pacing and effort challenge. You know you have to start ahead of pace, but judge how hard to push. Plus of course you have to do an inventory of quads, knees, and running form as you go.

The hills were just another part of the challenge. They were there on purpose, to push you to overcome them. Not with a PR, but by not admitting defeat. By meeting them head on and giving it all you have to give. Success today would not be measured by a number. Success today would be measured by pushing through. By holding tough and not taking the easy way out. And, I realized that I was up for the challenge.

Mile 7: 10:40 (with pit stop)
Mile 8: 8:54
Mile 9: 9:39 (OMG hill)

The 15K split time was ugly, and I knew it. But I had new determination and was going to do my best to make up ground, depending on what the course still had to throw at me.

The next challenge was the street surface as we got closer to downtown. I had to remind myself to keep a better eye on the pavement because it was more irregular than it had been out in the ‘burbs. But coming into downtown at last felt really good!

We came in from the east, and were running west towards the finish at Parque La Sabana, which is on the west end of downtown. I knew we had to do a loop of the park, which is big enough that the national stadium is inside of it, before the finish.

Finally the statue at the edge of the park came into sight! And the next challenge from the course- you can just about see the finish, and there is still a ways to go! I saw the 1:40 pace group heading in. They did have a bunch of drummers and people out shouting out encouragement. But one thing about Latin America is how direct everybody is about the way that they refer to people. For example, one of the spectators called out what would basically translate to “Good job, fat boy” to a guy behind me. And it was really meant to be a nice thing to say, to keep him going. I couldn’t help but turn around to see how “fat” you had to be to get called out that way while running much farther than the guy on the sidelines could probably run. “El gordito” was maybe 200 lbs, hardly the “fatty” that the comment would imply.

The fumes from all of the buses was really getting to me, but I pushed past it and kept going. I had slowly been reeling in the 2:00 group and finally got to the point where I needed to surge to charge past them, since they were a pretty big group still.

We turned the corner of the park, and I hit my stride! I was running faster than I had been since the early miles, and was feeling good again- finally! I suspected that I was probably on a gradual downhill, although to my eye it looked pretty flat. Still, I was feeling fresher and faster than I had been just a mile before. I was passing a lot of people, too. I started thinking that this was probably where my marathon training was paying off.

One of my water bottles fell off my belt. People called out to let me know, but I said don’t worry about it, let it go. It’s not that I was (that) worried about the 10 seconds or so it would take to stop and pick it up. It was that I finally had some good forward momentum and I just did not want to lose that feeling. The belt itself would have been worth going back for. The bottle? I decided it wasn’t.

But then a guy called out that he had my bottle. He had gone back for it, picked it up, and then surged up to catch up with me. I thanked him, and then he fell back off pace. He was willing to run faster for me, to give me my water bottle, than he was for his own self. And that was at mile 11 of a half marathon. I don’t remember anything about who he was, but he is awesome. And another example of just how nice everybody is down here.

Mile 10: 8:46
Mile 11: 9:06
Mile 12: 8:29

Now I realize that we were on a downhill going past the park, because we are around the other side, and are clearly on a slight uphill. But man is it tough! I push. It’s hard work, but I give it what I have left. I smile for the TV cameras and the big screen as we go past. I am still passing people. I’ve slowed down, but they’ve slowed more.

We are coming back around to the park entrance, and this time I will be on the other side of the divider and heading for the finish. I step on the gas. Everybody around me is out of gas, and I am running. I am happy. I am going to finish strong.

Mile 13: 9:35
Last 0.19: 8:00 pace

: I think I broke through the last bit of the mental barrier that I had about racing this spring. My time doesn’t matter. My ability to sustain race effort over time does, and that is what I am developing through training. I do think that this is the most challenging race course that I have run, and I am proud of how I did, considering. Could I have changed things up here and there, or maybe pushed harder on the uphills? Probably. But all in all, I think I ran a good race.

Here is the elevation map. I know it looks like it might be easy, just judging by the slope of the line, but I assure you that it isn’t! The race website goes on and on about the course designer, and I think I get it. This was designed to push you! And check out how much fun that last mile is.

I am also really happy to report that my knees and quads didn’t so much as make a peep of a complaint about all of those downhill pavement miles. I am really thankful for that.

Finally, as I was heading home, I saw that sí se puede dude had finished. His time was 2:55:35. Not bad for a guy who clearly struggles to walk unassisted!

I would definitely recommend this race to anybody who is headed down to the area. It’s not a lovely run along the beach like so many destination races are. And while I am sure we passed many interesting features in San Jose, I didn’t really notice them. But if you want a little push as a runner, to see what you can do, this could be just the thing.