We returned from our (way too short) trip to Costa Rica on Saturday. But have had no phone or internet since returning, so I’ve been slow to get a blog post together (am stealing an unreliable unsecured wireless signal now).

In short, we loved Costa Rica and will return. Costa Rica was never on my short list of must-see places. I was interested but had heard too much good about it, I smelled a rat, I figured it was over-rated, I figured all those people who were ga-ga about Costa Rica were, you know, brainwashed or something.

Well they weren’t.

When people in Costa Rica ask if you like their country they always continue the question with “do you find Costa Rica to be clean?” We saw almost no litter in Costa Rica. And people there are intensely proud of this fact. Over and over we saw workers picking up garbage, or rather they were walking along looking for the rare piece of garbage to pick up. And everywhere we went we saw recycling bins and trucks loaded with materials to be recycled.

Costa Rica seems to have it’s garbage under control. And the sense of pride about this is palpable. You see poverty there, it’s a poor country. But the people I met were proud of what they do have. And they were proud of their land and their beautiful countryside.

There is a sweetness in Costa Rica that I have only felt in a few places. I’m not sure how to describe it except that I felt that people didn’t have their defenses up somehow. Perhaps this was an artifact of my being relaxed and on vacation, but I don’t think so; I’ve been on vacation in lots of places and never felt this kind of peace in the places I’ve been. I think it’s bigger and I think it’s connected to the fact that Costa Rica abolished it’s army more than 50 years ago. Most people in Costa Rica have grown up having never lived in a country with a military presence. They don’t have enemies and they don’t put up defenses. It’s truly a peaceful country.

That said, we did hear a local say that the Mexican mafia has a presence in Costa Rica and is trying to control the drug trade there. So obviously things in Costa Rica are as complex as anywhere else.

Still I think that the fact that this poor country doesn’t spend money on military must be great for the government’s budget. I can only imagine what good could be accomplished with all the money the US and Mexico spend on their militaries.

One thing I loved about Costa Rica was being in the mountains. I am not a flat-lander by nature and Cancun is difficult for me to live in partly because it’s flat here. We spent 3 days of our trip in the area near Arenal volcano and Fortuna. And the trip up there and back was on windy, hilly, mountainous roads. We loved every minute that we were on those roads. Around every corner was an “oh-my-god-view!” We filled the digital cameras with photos, then deleted as many pix as possible and then filled them again. We simply could not take enough photos.

Below are some photos for you, and I’ve got another batch to share another day. And I will write some more about Costa Rica soon. As they say in Costa Rice “pura vida.”

Inside the cathedral in San Ramon

Tire Toucan painted by the Artisan of the Zone: Erian

The view from our hotel room: Arenal Volcano

Orchids near our hotel

A Hanging Bridge

Dear Readers, I have been neglectful of you these past weeks. As you know September is my (crazy insane) busy month. And so I’ve been celebrating it’s busy-ness by working on Saturday nights, working on both Mexican and U.S. national holidays, sleeping 5 hours a night instead of 8, working some more and by not blogging.

But today it all stops. Today we pack the bags and find the passports and walk away from our lives. Today we fly to Costa Rica.

Since making the decision to take this trip we’ve been greeted with various reactions from others. Some people say “ooohh Costa REEEKaaa!” As if it were Mars, as if it were the most exotic place on the planet, as if it’s streets were paved in gold. Others say “[pause] oh, well, uh, have you BEEN there before? Well, it’s OK once but I wouldn’t go back.” (By the way, we have not been there before.)

But the best comment I’ve heard is “los Ticos no existen” (the “Ticos”, meaning the Costa Ricans, don’t exist).

Apparently some visitors to Costa Rica feel there’s something lacking in the culture there. Well, I live in Cancun, where it’s easier to find a plastic surgeon than a bookstore, so you don’t need to explain a lack of culture to me. And it’s true that Costa Rica doesn’t seem to be known for its music or art or food or for its cultural traditions.

But other visitors to Costa Rica think of it as an ecological wonderland. Costa Rica has coasts on both the Caribbean and the Pacific and it has volcanoes and mountains of over 12,000 feet (3900 meters). Costa Rica has only about 0.1% of the world’s landmass but it has about 5% of the world’s biodiversity. About 25% of Costa Rica is protected land. And Costa Rica has set a goal for itself to become the first developing country to become carbon neutral, a goal they hope to achieve by the year 2021.

In learning what I have about Costa Rica it looks to me like the Ticos do exist. It looks like they are busy setting lofty goals, passing forward-thinking laws and protecting their land. Maybe that’s why they are not known for making music and art, maybe they are busy doing other things?

Anyway, I won’t know if they actually exist until I get there. So I’ll let you know.

– NPR Story: Costa Rica Aims to Be a Carbon-Neutral Nation
– Wikipedia: Costa Rica

If I have cell phone coverage in Costa Rica (not holding my breath given how mountainous it is there) I will be sending text Tweets to my Twitter account so stayed turned:
– Twitter: RiverGirlCancun’s Tweets

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Alison Chase and I have released her web site. We’ve been working on it for over a year, a lot of energy has gone into it and it’s a nice feeling to finally have it out there.

Alison Chase is a choreographer and was co-founder of Pilobolus Dance Theatre. Alison’s new dance theater production company is called Apogee Arts. Apogee Arts’ mission is to “combine innovative choreography, dance training, performance and educational programs to create an experience that engages and informs audiences in unusual performance spaces.”

– Take a look at the web site here: Apogee Arts Dance Theater
– Look at the video sample of Alison’s choreography here: Alison Chase Video Sample

Enjoy!

Recently we had an experience with our Mexican bank (Bancomer) that just is so ridiculously stupid and asinine that I can’t make peace with it. What happened is that someone wrote a check to my husband from a bank in Canada.

Sounds like no big deal right? But the bank would not take the check when we tried to deposit it. My husband spent over an hour trying to convince the bank to take the money, he went to two bank locations and talked to several people in management. But no amount of talking would convince them that they wanted our money.

Because the check was from a foreign bank it was likely to take 4 weeks to clear. But in Mexico, I gather, once they accept a check as a deposited item they give you access to that money, even before the check has cleared.

The bank made it clear that if we kept more money in that account they might have been able to make an exception and take this tainted, evil foreign check. But because we think that Mexican banks SUCK and so barely use that account, we don’t qualify to PUT MONEY INTO IT! Good one! Brilliant!

Now in the U.S. I’ve experienced that in a similar situation my bank would do one of two things. They would let me have access to the money, before the foreign check cleared, because they look at my long banking history and see that I’ve never been overdrawn one single time, ever. Or they would simply show that deposit as PENDING and not let me have access to the money until the check cleared.

There’s something inescapably logical about simply not letting us have access to the money until the check clears. And we do not need that money now, so waiting 4 weeks for access to it would have been fine. But no, logic seems to escape Mexican bankers.

And so I called our bank in the States, and I asked them if there would be any trouble accepting this check. They said “no, the check should clear in less than two weeks, but we’ll give you immediate access to the money.” Now that’s more like it.

So then the only remaining problem was that we needed to get the check to our bank in the States, without using the Mexican postal system (which is even more useless than Mexican banks). Fortunately I’ve got a friend who has promised to courier the check into the U.S. Postal System for us, so I think we are good to go.

I just don’t understand why on earth it has to take this much work to simply put money into the bank? Imagine that we didn’t have that U.S. account, in that case we would simply be out of luck. No wonder Mexico has a cash-based economy.

In my humble opinion Mexico will not join the first world until it has banks that actually want people’s money.

About a million years ago (who me, exaggerate?) I owned a computer store. And I noticed that year after year the store’s busiest months would be September and January. You would think December would be busy for a retail store. But not for us, our primary clients were businesses and from what we saw businesses make decisions to spend gobs of money on computers in January and in September.

For the last (What year is it? Oh yeah.) 12 years I’ve been getting paid to make 1’s and 0’s look good in a web browser…and in that time I’ve noticed that my web design clients have the same “buying” pattern that my computer store clients had. My busiest months are always January and September.

It makes sense. People get done with the end of year holidays and think “I need to finally update that web site.” And they do the same at the end of their summer vacation. September is a time to get down to business.

But then when you live in Cancun September takes on another meaning. Here September jokingly gets called “Septihambre” which is a running together of the Spanish “Septiembre” (September) and the Spanish word for hunger which is “hambre.” The reason for Septihambre is that this is the slowest season here. The tourists do not come. The normally-full planes come with 10 or 20 or 30 passengers in them. The hotels are empty. The restaurants are empty. And so all those people here who live paycheck to paycheck and depend on tourism to keep them in the black end up suffering.

We get more crime in September here. People here are hesitant to travel in September because they figure their houses will be more likely to be broken into in September.

The other thing that happens in my house in September is that my husband’s job gets much more relaxed. Instead of needing to work 14 or more hours a day he is suddenly getting out early and is working many fewer hours. He is a bureaucrat so he gets paid the same whether he works a 24-hour shift (as occasionally happens) or a 6-hour shift. But what this really means is that he’s home a lot more in September, home bugging me (sometimes) and home distracting me (usually).

So while I’m running from one end of the day to the other, while I’m struggling to keep up with all the details of my business, while I’m rushing here and there, while I barely have time to eat or sleep or take a run, my husband is just hanging out.

Like right now…right now he’s here in the office hanging out in the hammock (along with the dog, who loves the hammock) blathering on to me about something or other. Good thing I’m not actually working right now.

In light of the fact that Hurricane Gustav is looking like it might effect Cancun my good friend Steve has just de-mothballed the Hurricane Cancun web site. I’ll be posting any hurricane-related posts on that site, so be sure to check it out.

The Democratic National Committee Convention (DNCC) started in the U.S. today. And being that I’m in Mexico and have essentially pathetic TV cable service (Can you say Cablemenos? Menos means less in Spanish.) I decided I wanted to watch the opening night speeches over the internet.

So first I dug around on Barack Obama’s (lovely) site looking for a link to a live video stream, but that was a fruitless search. Then I got with the program and made my way over to the DNCC’s site. I found the DNCC video stream link, but when I got to that page I was informed that I needed to install 2 plugins in order to view the live video (they were Microsoft’s Silverlight and the Move Media Player). Now I don’t live under too big a technological rock, but I had not heard of either of these programs before.

When I have a web design client who wants to deliver video on their web site I always tell them that we need to provide video in the formats that are commonly used. I tell my clients that it’s bad form and that it’s a usability obstacle to force your viewers to install a plugin in order to see content. If you want to reach the widest possible audience you deliver content that users can see without doing any extra work.

But why on earth would the Democrats do that? Why would they make it easy for us to view their video when they can complicate things by making us download not one, but two plugins?

Now it’s possible, maybe even likely, that this combination of plugins provides better quality video than other programs would. If that’s the case then I guess I’m happy to have installed them. But I’m still upset that I couldn’t just arrive on the site and see the video stream without doing the work of installing something first. And if these two plugins were widely used I’m certain that I would have encountered them by now, so now I’m annoyed that I may have just installed two plugins that might not get much use once the Convention ends.

Something about this feels typical of the Democratic Party. It’s an example of what we Democrats always seem to do wrong. We make things complicated when they should be simple. We make people work to hear our message when they shouldn’t need to.

That being said, I did enjoy watching the opening night speeches. And Michelle Obama’s speech made me a little misty…

This blog brings me many compliments (thank you all). But it also brings me some nasty comments and some extremely nasty personal emails.

Often my detractors have clearly not read more than one blog entry and so it’s easy for me to be dismissive of their viewpoints. If you disagree with me so strongly because of just one post, well, I’m sorry. I think that if you bother to read more than one post then you will see that I’m not that feeble-minded or that one-sided, or whatever it is that you think.

I’ve received two “I wish you were dead” emails since I’ve been writing this blog. And there have been countless more nasty comments that have come through. I allow comments to appear that disagree with me if they are in some way constructive. But comments that just call me names and accuse me of living here “because Mexican men will f*ck anything that moves” do not end up appearing on the site.

To my detractors I want to say this: Mexico is a developing country. It is a big, diverse, interesting, beautiful country. But it is a developing country. This means it’s not done yet deciding how it should treat its animals or its land or its people.

So when I bitch about Mexico being full of garbage or full of mis-treated, starving animals or full of people who should know better it’s because I care! OK? Got it? I care.

If you read my blog for more than one post you will see that I spend a lot of my time doing community work here and volunteering my time to make Mexico a better place. I do this because I care. Capiche?

And to those ex-pats who get miffed at me when I point out that this “paradise” you’ve moved to is less than perfect I say “Get out there and make Mexico a better place.” Mexico is not benefiting from you getting all ga-ga about it’s beaches and pretending that everything here is hunky-dory. So quit with the “See No Evil” routine and get out there and pick up some garbage and adopt a street dog and raise some consciousness with your own blog.

OK then.

Cancun has a hidden treasure, a secret little cache of culture tucked away in the hotel zone. The Museo de Arte Popular Mexicano (Mexican Folk Art Museum) is overflowing with excellent examples of Mexican folk art and crafts. Not to be missed.

If You Go
Museo de Arte Popular Mexicano (Mexican Folk Art Museum)
Location: El Embarcadero Marina – 2nd Floor (near the Pirate Ships)
Blvd. Kukulcan, Km 4.5, Zona Hotelera, Cancun
By Bus: Blue Line Stop #80, Green Line Stop #81
Tels: 998.849.4332 & 998.849.5583
Cost: Around $5 USD
Open: Weekdays 9am – 7pm & Weekends 11am – 7pm
Web Site: Museo de Arte Popular Mexicano

My 14 year old daughter has been visiting for the last two weeks. Since she’s been here she’s been busy writing short stories. She writes like someone far older…and far more twisted. One day I encouraged her to put up a blog with her stories on it and 20 minutes later she had published her first story.

You can check out her writing here at Auroraphobia’s Senseless Ranting. Auroraphobia is the “fear of the Northern Lights.” She actually has hemaphobia “fear of blood”, not auroraphobia, but you would never know it from her writing. [Her hemaphobia is attributable to seeing me almost bleed to death when she was about three, poor kid. I hope she gets over it.]

Aside from her visit I’ve been walking around with an unshakable sense that I’m doing something wrong, but don’t know what it is. I’ve felt this before, but never this clearly or for this long. The feeling comes and goes, but is altogether too prevalent for comfort.

One bright spot is that someone gave my husband two free plane tickets to Costa Rica. So we are going hiking in the rain forest sometime soon (I can’t wait to be in the mountains). Now we just need a pet sitter for 5 days. Anybody feel like house-sitting for our eight cats and one very cowed dog?

And finally, I have a game to share. It totally takes me back to my 9th grade Earth Sciences class wherein we spent the whole year calculating planetary orbits and making fun of our poor geeky brilliant teacher. I warn you though, it gets hard fast when you have to contend with more than one planet and orbiting moons. Makes you feel sorry for the sun. Play Orbitrunner. Hope you enjoy it.