Excerpt from
TROPICAL IMMERSION: A YEAR IN COSTA RICA AND BEYOND
Walking down the sidewalk in Costa Rica has direct parallels to driving down the street. As I described when talking about driving in Mexico, walking, at least in San José, is an unspoken and even graceful game of chicken. It’s similar to walking down the street in New York, but there’s a different sense of personal space. While some pedestrians dawdle, most stride determinedly toward their destination, moving on and off the narrow sidewalk into the street and back again depending on where there’s an opening, how fast the oncoming foot traffic is, and whether or not there’s street space available.
In addition, Costa Rican sidewalks can be rough terrain. They are often in disrepair and look something like a concrete coral reef, or they have whimsical curving slanted sections or deep ovular indentations that hide water valve covers or stairs that are bigger than normal or smaller than normal, so they are pretty unpredictable. Having strong ankles helps. But it was sort of exciting because it kept me on my toes. The real danger, however, lay in the fact that the gutters are often a foot deep and a foot wide, and many sewer drain grates have gone astray. If one doesn’t look where one is going, one can really get hurt. The probability of doing so increases greatly at night.
San José’s air pollution makes it thoroughly uncomfortable to walk down the street and breathe at the same time. Costa Rica has emissions standards for its motor vehicles but it appears that no one pays any attention to them. Incredible amounts of dark smoke gush forth from San José’s motorcycles, automobiles, and especially its buses. At night, this visual and malodorous form of contamination wafts gracefully in front of cars’ headlights like an ominous blue-gray fog.
The new revisión técnica (safety check-up) of cars started on 15 July 2002 and it was very controversial. There was a lot of confusion about just what was going to be checked and how much people would have to pay and whether they were going to be able to use their cars if they failed inspection. And there was a lot of anger about the fact that the contracted company—Riteve—was a Spanish company, not a Costa Rican one. (Was the anger due to national pride or lack of argolla? [See glossary.]) There were big protests that resulted in impromptu roadblocks by protesters with riot cops and tear gas and everything.2 One day there was a big protest at the national courthouse, which is right across the street from where I taught English with UNED, and I could hardly conduct the class because it was so loud. At one roadblock at a community well outside the capital, there was a truck that was turned over and burned. At all the roadblocks people burned something and threw rocks.
But I think the new automobile revision regulations were a good thing, especially due to the fact that the emissions—and the air pollution—in Costa Rica were so deplorable.
In addition to San José’s air pollution, the noise pollution on its main streets is intense. Motorcycles sound like machine guns. Many cars also careen loudly down the avenues. But by far the worst noise offenders are the buses, which attack pedestrians with such an overwhelming barrage of sound that they traumatize one’s internal organs. This dismayed me for the first few weeks until I remembered the foam earplugs I’d brought! What a blessing they were. Whenever I hit the street, I had them somewhere on my person, and when the decibel levels rose too high, I’d just roll them up and pop them in. Of course I looked even more like a crazy gringo than usual, if not a Martian, especially when I used the fluorescent orange ones, but I didn’t care. I was happy in my peaceful, volume-modulated bubble. And it’s amazing how well you can hear when you’re wearing those things. You just have to learn not to shout all the time.
Now speaking of noise, there are other kinds of Costa Rican noises that both Isa and I find pleasant, reassuring, and even nurturing. The music of people’s speech is distinct and very colorful—not the words used, necessarily, but the lilting roller coaster of intonation and volume that characterize Costa Rican Spanish. It is fun to hear and a joy to be surrounded by, principally because it is so familiar and so much a part of both Isa’s and my identities. Especially Isa’s. In the States we hear Spanish of all sorts, but rarely Costa Rican. It’s one of those things that make us both feel at home.
The typical Costa Rican R, for example, is often aspirated instead of rolled, giving words like perro (dog) a breezy feel. Imagine when making an R sound that you move your tongue forward and exhale over it. It causes a subtle vibration and the flow of air produces a faint rasp that’s just short of a whistle. It’s the sound of air passing through rustling palm fronds as you sit in their shade drinking papaya juice. Overall, Costa Rican Spanish is both peppy and unruffled, with rounded edges. The native speaker playfully spars with the listener, softly jabbing and gently poking in a teasing, friendly way.
The music of Costa Rican speech was complemented by the fact that recorded music is everywhere, which for the most part makes being in the street, or on a bus, a lively experience. Many stores, principally downtown clothing stores, commonly have music blaring from speakers in their doorways. In addition, a good number have someone standing somewhere near the doorway, sometimes with a microphone and amplification, sometimes without, telling everybody what great merchandise there is inside: “Come on in! Have we got a deal for you!” though sometimes it’s just a recording.
Maybe 33% of the buses one takes have the radio on and so one bumps along to Latin rhythms including salsa, merengue, cumbia, bolero, vallenato, bachata, and, more annoyingly, romántica. Often pop music from the U.S. or, once in a while, rambunctious Brazilian music comes out of the bus’s speakers. Sometimes the music is terrible, but it makes for a much more celebratory experience than the quiet, monastery-like ambience offered on most buses in the U.S. No matter how great the music is, though, being ON a bus with a terrorizingly loud motor, of course, is as bad or worse than being passed on the street by one. One should keep one’s earplugs handy.
Aside from the noise, the city buses there are a trip! First, while they are highly regulated, there is no publicly funded transit. Private transport companies run all the bus routes. And there are a million different bus routes, each with its own bus. The system has no apparent logic to it, but once we figured it out, we could go anywhere.
In 2002, maybe 20% of buses there were still old school buses from the U.S. Of those, most had been painted happy color combinations like blue and white or purple and lavender. Some, though, were still orange and black and still said “Jefferson County School District” on the side or something similar. Other buses had been fabricated specifically for public transport and came from Brazil; the emergency instructions inside were in Portuguese.
Upon entering a city bus, one hands the driver one’s money. In 2002, fares in San José ranged from US$.17 to US$.33. But no matter the fare, it is never necessary to have the exact amount: drivers make change. Next to them, on top of the motor cover, they have a block of polyurethane foam that measures about 12x18 inches with all these different circles and slots cut into it. This is their cash box. There is one rectangular foam flap under which they put paper money. The cutout circles are about 2 inches in diameter and hold coins of a particular value. The slots hold combinations of coins that equal the most common amounts given in change. At stoplights, or even when the bus is in motion, drivers frequently busy themselves filling all the empty slots with the appropriate coin combinations.
When a driver is handed an amount greater than the fare, he (I never once saw a woman bus driver) just grabs coins from a slot and hands them to the passenger. If that amount of change isn’t quite enough, he assertively dips into one of the specific-value coin pods to make up the difference.
When one boards a city bus, it is important to be aware of the electronic bars that count the passengers who pass between them. These bars can be on either side of the stairs as you enter the bus or on either side of the aisle just behind the driver. Do not to stand between these bars! The drivers get upset with you because standing between the bars counts you over and over. And drivers probably get in trouble if their numbers do not match up with their cash box at the end of the day! Imagine getting paid peanuts to drive in the worst traffic imaginable for hours on end through pot-hole filled streets, having to give change to nearly every passenger that comes in and then having to worry about stupid gringos hanging out between the counter bars. So make sure to pass between those electronic counters and pay, or pay and just pass on through, but do not dilly dally!
Once inside the bus, one looks for a seat. Passengers who got on first commonly sit on the aisle seats, so sometimes when one gets on, every aisle seat on the bus is taken. In that case, one asks a seated rider permission to take the window seat. Of course he or she grants it. But to allow you to pass, the rider never gets up, oh no. Remaining seated, the rider inevitably turns in his or her seat so that his or her legs are in the aisle and compresses his or her body so that you can squeeze by.
Generally, the buses go FAST. Have you ever seen Mel Gibson’s first big international hit, Road Warrior? Remember the scenes in which he’s wildly racing across the post-apocalyptic Australian desert in a semi with all the leather wearing, Mohawk sporting crazies clambering around, trying to smash the windshield and kill him? Well it is a lot like that, only nobody hangs off the buses and it’s not in the desert but in a city full of buildings, people, and potholes. Drivers speed down hills and whip around corners. Sometimes, though not usually, drivers slow down only enough for athletic passengers to hop on or off while the bus is still in motion.
Most buses have some technology that permit passengers to signal the driver that they want to get off, such as a chord on the ceiling or periodically spaced buttons that trigger a buzzer or bell when pressed. But sometimes these things are out of reach, located seats away, or broken. Even if they work, it is not uncommon for a passenger to say, “¡Parada!” (Next Stop!) or, less frequently, give a quick whistle that can be heard above the motor. In an effort to discourage these practices, many buses sport a sign saying, “Los pájaros silvan, los monos gritan, usted, señor, use el timbre,”(Birds whistle. Monkeys yell. You, sir, use the bell).