Where We Traipse and Meander

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

I sometimes wonder what life would’ve been like for me had I stayed in one place and not viewing my last home from a rear view mirror. What would it be like to belong to a community; a place where everyone knew each another?

As a woman who has moved more than most, I often look at the life my sister led with envy. She had life-long friends, book clubs, and neighbors she knew well. I suppose I did some of that, stayed put while my kids were young, and I did try not to disrupt their lives like our mum and dad did ours. I still think eight grade schools in eight years is beyond too many.

But that aside, it’s more of a kinesthetic question, I think. Maybe there’s a German word for it like fitting in or acceptance or maybe more like that feeling you get knowing there’s a community behind you that you can call on if you need to, but knowing you probably won’t because you’re too private. Now that sounds more like a German word.

We watched an Icelandic TV series recently —Trapped—and it confirmed pretty much what I suspect is correct about my sentimental longings. The police officer in the series is investigating a series of crimes in a snow-bound coastal town. He is not from there. He enjoys a certain distance but enjoys the way people look after one another. They give him a ride when his car breaks down, direct him to a mechanic, loan him a bike while in the repair shop. All very cordial. But the people who live there find the town suffocating. They are fixated on how people pry, carry rumors, do not forget old grudges.

So I suspect my wish for something I’ve never had, is just a sentimental yearning…and there is a German word for that; the longing for a thing or things missed or incomplete in your life: Sehnsucht. The Portuguese call it saudade, which sounds softer to my ear. Romanians call it dor. It’s not surprising that societies that traveled extensively would have words for the homesickness we all feel from time to time.

It’s not a specific place or a thing that I miss, though, because if I travel back to places I think I’d love to stay forever, they have changed, or I have. No, it’s more of a general headset. As the poet, Ira Sadoff, put it so very well when speaking about one of his poems, “It turns out I wasn’t longing for the past but for a state of mind, the capacity to feel the full force of being alive.” Exactly.

I would post his wonderful poem, A Few Surprising Turns, here, but I don’t want to violate any copyrights. You can click on the link above or search for it on Poems.org. It’s worth it. Like most poets, Sadoff is able to capture in a few lines what took me several hundred to spit out here.

Boredom Abounds, But Is That Bad?

 

Photo by Thomas J Abercrombie (courtesy National Geo)

I’ve often marveled at my husband’s ability to find pleasure in the mundane. He finds projects around the house and property that need attention and applies himself to them without complaint. He is currently scraping, sanding, and repainting individual pickets on our veranda. On the other hand, I vocally suffer from what Dostoevsky referred to a “the bestial and indefinable affliction”: Boredom.

It wasn’t until I stumbled across an essay by Joseph Epstein, Duh, Bor-ing, originally in Commentary Magazine, and then again in Best American Essays 2012, that I contemplated what boredom is exactly, and why it is not such a bad thing.

Like Epstein, and probably most other tweens and teens, I was brought up short by my parents when I complained about being bored. Epstein’s father told him to beat his head against a wall and he’d soon quit feeling that way. My mother was equally sympathetic; she told me only boring people got bored and to get out of the house. It was a version of the children-are-starving-in-Africa answer to my complaints, brushed aside as being unimportant and predictable.

According to Epstein, some people are more prone to boredom than others, and I guess my husband and I are proof of the opposites attract theory of marriages. But even he is apt to be temporarily bored by a dull speech or a hour-long wait in the doctor’s office. We all have it from time to time. Even animals become bored. I think my little basenji, who loves to run on the beach, was bored to death when recuperating from a broken leg. When we finally took him for his first walk, his whole face lit up and we could see his inner dogginess ignite realizing there would be a life for him outside the confines of his kennel.

There is transitory boredom, ennui, weariness, apathy, and or dissatisfaction. This can also descend into longer term monotony and eventually clinical depression. But Epstein seems to say that every human being has uttered the teen phrase, I’m bored, at some point or another.

I found it interesting that Epstein suggests that boredom occurs more often when there are high levels of distraction—Facebook? Twitter? TV? He also notes that primitive cultures seldom complain of the affliction. And I have watched any number of people in this country work at drudge jobs that would drive me insane, but I have yet to hear one complain about it.

But neither Epstein nor my parents bothered to suggest to us the possible benefits of boredom.

It seems to me that boredom forces us to look closely at ourselves. It puts our existence into perspective and can steer us into a place of contemplation and reflection. If we can push past the frustration of sitting—without action—we can come out the other side with something to show for it. This is the challenge of meditation, of yoga, and of writing.

We writers lock ourselves in rooms and purposefully create this kind of environment, specifically to induce reflection and creativity. Inspiration. Sit long enough and thoughts will come and pages will be written.

I wonder what it would be like if parents told their children that their boredom was good for them and that it proved they were imaginative people. Would it change how we look at it?

Book Review is Live

My review of Liz Stephens’ stunning memoir The Days Are Gods is live over at The Internet Review of Books. I’ve written about this book before, so I was very pleased when IRB picked up the review.

It is definitely worth reading– the book (and the review).

21 Ways You Know You’ve Lived in Rural Costa Rica Longer than “A While”

 

This piece first appeared in The Costa Rican Times  August 19, 2013. It appears to have taken on a life of its own; so far it’s had 55 shares on the CRT website and who knows how many others after that. We write and send our babies out into the world where they either thrive or wither…

Courtesy_The Costa Rican Times

When people first come to Costa Rica to live permanently, typically they are in awe of everything they see. Soon, as most of us discover, life becomes simply a life of routines rather than a continual unfolding adventure. Here are 21 ways you know you’ve lived in the tropics long enough for it to become a way of life, not a vacation thrill.

1. You haven’t closed a window against the weather in over a year; in fact, you have lived in the open air for so long a closed window or door feels confining.

2. You never (ever) pick up a crumb off the table and eat it (even if you’re pretty sure you just dropped it). There is a 50/50 chance it could be a lizard turd.

3. Drinking water with ants floating in it is no longer disconcerting, you simply scoop them out with a spoon or just drink the water, depending on how many there are.

4. You wash all the clothes you plan to take on a trip abroad to avoid giving some fellow traveler a mold allergy attack.

5. You are unfazed by hot and steaming clothes when you unpack in any foreign city.

6. Moisturizers are redundant.

7. Sharing your house with lizards, anoles, ants, and spiders seems acceptable; in fact, lizard eggs in your dresser drawer is the new normal.

8. A Hummingbird trapped in the house is not a panic moment. It simply means you get a net and remove it.

9. You do not flinch when beetles and other crawly things (some the size of Volkswagens) park on your night table or dive bomb the light while you are reading. Instead you calmly capture them and remove them to the out of doors.

10. Rather than leap into the air when you feel something on your neck, you merely brush at it, and then look to see what it is.

11. You are philosophical when you put on your running shoe and discover a toad has taken up residence there.

12. Dressing up means putting on a clean tank top and your newest shorts.

13. Sandals are your dress shoes.

14. You recognize macaw and oropéndola calls rather than a robin’s or a nuthatch’s.

15. The horrific noise at the crack of dawn, the one tourists think is made by crocodiles, you recognize as howler monkeys calling to each other. They are your alarm clock.

16. You no longer stop in awe and snap photos when you see a sloth crossing the road, instead you stop to make sure no one runs over it.

17. “Eat locally” means rice and beans plus a stewed meat of some sort. You no longer ask for a menu.

18. You rinse the sand off before getting into the shower so you will not have to re-plumb the drains.

19. You no longer expect or rely on electricity 24/7. If it goes out while you are baking bread, you leave the loaf in the oven and hope latent heat will continue to cook it, or a casserole, or a roast, or a pie, or….

20. “High-speed” Internet simply means it is functioning.

21. You’re resigned to the fact that the only things you are able to view “streaming” are vines from trees and water off the roof.

And finally, when you tell someone, “Pura vida,” you recognize the layers of meaning behind this phrase–from irony to sincerity– and use it accordingly.

 

 

Cédula Renewal Wars

Last week my husband and I endeavored to renew our Costa Rican cédulas de residencia, the national ID card.

I called the Banco BCR hotline, BCRCITA (900-003-4639), for an appointment. Aside from the call costing 300 colones a minute, and being immediately put on hold because, “dear customer, all available operators are busy, please be waiting on the line,” the appointment maker was friendly and efficient.

Two years ago, we were in and out in fifteen minutes. This year, the appointment has been the only easy part.

We arrived in Limón 20 minutes early, a good thing because I did not know the Limón Banco BCR had moved. We found the new location, took a seat among the hordes, and listened to the overhead mechanical voice announce ficha numbers and to which booth the holder should report: Ah, setenta tres, posición cinco…. We did not need a ficha, and after about ten minutes a clerk called our name. She asked for our documents.

I have a rule of thumb in this country, known for its obscurantism. When dealing with bureaucrats, I never pull out all my documents at once. If I do, I find they will ask for the one I do not have. Best to present them one at a time hoping my papers exhaust their time, interest, or (insert your own word here).

I gave the clerk our old cédulas and our passports. She asked for proof of payment to CCSS (the Caja), the mandatory government health insurance company. I gave her a payment stub from June. She asked for the actual CCSS carnet, or voucher, which I handed over. I thought I saw her trying to peer over my file folder to see what cards I still held in this poker game, but it might have been my imagination. Then she asked for a letter from the bank ensuring we spend the requisite amount of money each month to qualify us as residents in good standing. I handed over the letter. She read thoughtfully. Then she looked up.

“Entonces, Señora, this letter shows your bank account is linked to your passport number and not your cédula.” There it was, the stickler. I argued my point. The account belongs to my husband and me. Anyone can clearly see that, passport or cédula, we are the same people. I was sent to another booth for consultation. It was there I was informed that a cédula is now required by the good people at immigration.

Our new clerk said we had to return to our bank in Puerto Viejo and a) have the account changed from our passport numbers to our cédulas and b) have our account verified as to our correct information. “The last time you did this was in 2008,” he said. I was aware of that regulation. Back in 2008 the Costa Rican Financial Regulatory Agency – SUGEF – demanded all banks under its supervision update their client account information to bring the accounts into compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism acts. We had complied, but I was unaware that it had to be updated every two years. I asked if he could do this while we waited.

This is when I discovered that Banco BCR branches have information only about their particular branch on their computers; the Limón branch cannot access accounts from Puerto Viejo, ni vice versa.

So it was back to Puerto Viejo for a chat with the clerk there. Indeed, she said I needed to verify our account and she could do that when we brought a receipt for the electricity, or the phone, with our physical address. Catch-22. In my quest for efficiency, I pay all our bills online and the receipts go to our apartado, post office box. “Well,” she said, “you can use the receipt for the property taxes from the municipality.” Later, at home, I checked. The address the municipality used is referenced by Hotel Suerre, which was torn down by the government several years ago.
I took the receipt into the bank the next day and waited for the same teller to be freed up (another rule of mine: always get the same clerk, otherwise who knows what other requirements may pop up). Our clerk was unfazed by the non-reference point in our address. “But your house is close by this, yes?” Yes. “Okay, then we will just use this and make a note of your actual address.” We could have done this any number of other ways, like me just stating our address, but, hey, she took it.

Then it was on to changing our account from the passport to the cédula number. Do not even ask, because there is no option for simply adding another piece of ID; it’s all or nothing. It would have been faster to close out the account and open a new one and it certainly would have saved trees. After a ream of paperwork and fourteen signatures, we were set. Only problem, they had to annul our credit card and close my online banking account (with saved information on at least ten accounts I regularly pay into). Just a month ago I laboriously matriculated to all those accounts, complete with special codes emailed to me by the bank (again, new regulations). Now all evaporated into thin air.

She promised to have our new credit card by the end of the week. At that point I will be able to start a new online banking account. I have made a new appointment with BCRCITA for our cédula renewal in Limón.

When I told our lawyer that we finally complied with all the requirements of the bank and immigration, she said, “Para hoy, Sarita, para hoy.” For today. For today. I take some comfort in that. It is good to remember it is not just expats who are inconvenienced and frustrated by these rule changes and regulations; Costa Ricans suffer the same fate. We are all in this labyrinthine system together.

Present Tense, Two Memoirs

Past exhibition-Spanierman Modern

I am a serial reader, so more often than not I have at least two books on my bedside table (or on my Kindle). This past week I finished reading two debut memoirs, Torre DeRoche‘s Love With A Chance of Drowning and Liz Stephens‘ The Days Are Gods.

These are vastly different, these two memoirs, one is an adventure story, the other a literary tour de force, but both had one thing in common: both authors chose to write largely in present tense.

This is not an easy trick. To keep the book moving forward and reflect back while staying in present tense requires a skilled writer. When I’ve used it my sentences tend to be stilted. “I come into the room and discover my husband dissecting a frog.” (Just an example.) Now that sentence is fine and pulls the reader right into the scene. Holy smokes… he’s doing what?  I can do it for short spurts, but eventually I end up writing something like, “I come into the room and found my husband dissecting a frog.” In other words, I want to move back to past tense.

I think, or I thought until I read these two books, that  present tense is difficult in memoir. The memoirist tends to write looking back at past events; we see the person who experienced those events long ago and offer up reflections based on who we are now.

I suppose it depends on what sort of memoir it is, though, because these two authors manage it well.

DeRoche (Love With A Chance of Drowning), writes a story of action, of things happening in the here and now. She struggles with a new life aboard a boat and deals with her extreme fear of water,  gets to know her new lover, his family,  as well as all the adventures a sailing life offers. Present tense works wonderfully well here, pulling the reader along for the trans-Pacific voyage. The reader feels as though they are in the boat (without tangling up the lines or tripping over Torre and Ivan).

Believe me, you are right there in their little 32-foot sailboat, Amazing Grace, as DeRoche writes:

 “There’s no doubt about it: we’re going to die. It’s night and the wind is vile. The waves are reaching as high as our radar antenna, which must be twenty feet from sea level. We’re staggering down each angry wave, and my stomach keeps bottoming out.

Amazing Grace isn’t so amazing right now, nor is she graceful. She’s tumbling like she’s hammered on salt water. Our life is in the hands of a drunken boat.

Boom! A wave collides with fiberglass. Who knew water could sound like a bomb explosion? These bombs are hitting every minute or two—a horrifying bang, followed by a sharp lurch sideways. My body rolls in my small bunk, and I’m thankful for the canvas lip that keeps me from flying sideways.

Boom! I wait, trembling, praying for her to come back upright. The angle seems too steep. What is our tipping point, anyway? How far can we keel over before we tumble and get swallowed by the jet- black ocean?

Boom! Another wave-bomb hits—a clean uppercut to a staggering drunk. We’re definitely going down. Somehow, she finds her way back upright but then overcompensates in the other direction.

Boom! A heavy crest comes down from above, washing the topsides with fire hose pressure.”

 

Stephens (The Days Are Gods), on the other hand, writes about a time when she and her actor-turned-welder husband move to Mormon country, Utah, where she completes her MFA but also searches for “home.” She creates a world where the reader resides inside the head of the writer. We know what she is feeling or thinking at any given moment as she feeds her goats, buries chickens killed by a neighbor’s dog, and tries to get to know her neighbors. But we are also experiencing her reflecting on those events from her current perspective as a writer. How Stephens does this is a real skill of construct and form.

 

 “Yes, I still feel the frisson of unexpectedness in moments, but it comes more and more slowly, less and less often-maybe when I’m standing in front of a morning class, realizing that I’ve already fed a dozen chickens in the dark of morning, when I’m just about still asleep, climbing two pipe fences at six months’ pregnant to dig layer feed out of the bag in the tack room, nudging aside my not-intelligent charges to set the metal feeder among them, weaving through drowsy horses to trudge back to the house. As much as I want to feel I belong, as I lose my sense of outsider resonance – shedding the irony I was after all trying to outrun – I feel sometimes as if my sounding is off, my bearings indistinct.”

 

As different as these two memoirs are, the immediacy and intimacy of present tense works so well in both cases. Both authors occasionally flip to past tense when writing back story and future or subjunctive when postulating, but the bulk of both works is present tense.

I feel lucky that I pickled them both up and read them at the same time.

Ants, and A Mild Case of Insanity

If I can get rid of ants, anyone can.

As those of you who read this blog know, we live in the jungle. I’ve often said our kitchen is one inch from nature; one inch is the thickness of our single-wall constructed house and our native hardwood flooring.

The One Inch precept has made me a fastidious housekeeper. Leave one blob of mayonnaise on the counter, and bugs will arrive to scarf it up. Leave the dishes unwashed overnight in the sink, in the morning they will be crawling with little crawly creepy things like cockroaches, or worse, ants.

I hate ants. I’ve examined my aversion to them, because I don’t hate nature in general; in fact, I am the one who will capture a bug in a glass jar and remove it to the out-of-doors rather than kill it. I have no animosity toward spiders, scorpions, or even wasps. But show me an ant, and I start obsessing about how to exterminate it. I think it is their unremitting self-determination I find so daunting. Frightening, really. That, and their violent relationship with other ants, which reminds me of us. Humans.

I recently heard about a scientist researching cancer, how he based his treatment to target it. Because cancer cells divide rapidly, and tend to hide within the normally dividing human cells, he focused on organisms that use swarm intelligence, and specifically  ones that never give up. Ant colonies. Place anything in their path and they will find an alternate route. They are the squirrels of the insect word.

Last year we had an ant outbreak that just about drove me insane. I scrubbed the counters within an inch of their lives, sprayed them with ammonia or Clean Green. All of which had the effectiveness of water. Ants scattered out over the my counter tops casually bumping noses and sending messages, no doubt about some delectable food find.  Every morning, when all I wanted was a peaceful cup of coffee, I did battle them for fifteen minutes or more. I eliminated bacon from our diet—not a bad thing, I suppose—because the grease attracted them in throngs. Bacon has also become outrageously expensive in Costa Rica, but that is for another post. Or, read my friend’s blog on the subject of increasing taxes on food and other items.

I moved the small compost container (with snap-on, air-tight lid) from the counter to the kitchen table. I quit using the countertop by the stove to prepare any food. And still ants ran roughshod over those work surfaces. I’d find them coming up the side of the counter. I sprayed. I applied poisons— I know, I know—between the counter and the wall. A few days would pass and there they were again like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I’m baaack! Heeeer’s Johnny! [Note: this has been edited due to mass cultural confusion, mixing up Poltergeist’s, They’re Baaack!–my original post– with Nicholson’s cry from The Shining. Just trying to be accurate here] Anyway…a thick stream of them coming up the side of the stove, panning out like river deltas, covering my counter. When I began thinking of things like flame throwers to kill them, I knew I needed a permanent fix.

I went to my trusty Macbook and googled ants + eradicate + traps. Countless sites (here, here, and if you prefer video, here) referred to a mixture of boric acid and sugar. It was purported to work, but I was despondent because I’d tried that a couple of years before and it didn’t work for me. However, I realized, I had made a liquid mixture, as recommended. Hmmmm, maybe if the mixture is dry the ants will track the boric acid to their nest and infect the whole mess of them.

What the hell, I thought, I’ll try it. So I mixed the boric acid and powdered sugar in a 50/50 dry mix and made cocaine-like lines along the back splash of my countertop. It took a day, but I noticed the ants began to focus on the bait. In fact, within two days they attacked it like addicts, snorting up my little lines of white powder. They ate so ravenously I had to replace the thin lines almost every day. I said to my husband, “Well, if this is a far as we get, I’m happy to have them away from my space.” I was able to prepare food on the same countertop; the ants stayed with the bait at the back of the counter, eating and tromping around in the mix. They trailed back up the back splash, through a crack, and disappeared behind the counter.

I left them alone.

The method is not fast, but it has been impressively effective. Within two months I had little to no ants. And because the mixture was up on the countertop, I did not have to worry about the dogs getting into it. This is something to remember: boric acid is poisonous to children and pets, so if you use it, keep it away from them. You can do that by putting the mix in a jar and punching holes in the lid, but my outbreak (and mental wellbeing) required the ants find the bait post-haste. It would have taken too long for them to find it inside a jar.

How does it work? According to Debbie Hadley in her About.com article, How to Make and Use Homemade Ant Baits,

 “Boric acid works primarily as a stomach toxin on ants. The worker ants will carry the bait food, loaded with boric acid, back to the nest. There, the ants in the colony will ingest it and die. The boric acid seems to interfere with their metabolism, although scientists aren’t exactly sure how it does so. Sodium borate salts affect an insect’s exoskeleton, causing the insect to desiccate.”

I don’t know about that, but I know it works. Hadley and others recommend the liquid mixture, but, as I said,  it did not work for me. The dry mix is easy to control, and, once the ants focused on it, I increased the amount of boric acid in the mix. Eventually it was a 3:1 mix, more or less (this is not rocket science), and the ants never stopped going for it. They loved it. I removed the bait when they appeared to be gone. When I saw another small outbreak–probably a new hatch– I replaced the bait. Four months later, none. Zero. Zip.

Hoo-ah!

We haven’t had an ant problem now for about a year, but I can never get lax in my housekeeping. The other day I left some chicken scraps on the counter after making a chicken sandwich with mayonnaise (always a magnet). When I came back after lunch there were about ten ants orbiting the countertop. I squished them with my thumb and then sprayed the counter and the back splash with vinegar, which also works; I’ve written about its excellent properties before.

No more ants…. for now. But I am always aware that they lurk a mere inch from my kitchen.

 

More resources:

13 natural remedies for the ant invasion  by Kimi Harris

How to Stop an Ant Invasion WikiHow

Getting Rid of Ants  The Frugal Life

 

 

Semana Santa, Crime Sprees, US Embassy Warnings, and a Grateful Expat

Yes, it that time again; Semana Santa, Holy Week, in which seemingly all the Central Valley descends on the two coasts of the country. The hotels are full, bars and restaurants are over flowing with customers, and we are staying in for the week. Yesterday there was a steady stream of traffic in front of our house. Where years ago a car might pass once a day, now there is a four-wheeled river.

If you pave it, they will come. I ventured out for some supplies this morning but made sure I did it before seven in the morning, long before the revelers got up to ease their aching heads from the night before.

Of course all this is a boon for business, and it is happening in spite of a US Embassy warning issued just last week advising North Americans to avoid the Caribbean due to recent crime spree. There have been a string of violent hotel invasions over the past several months as well as a drug bust in Manzanillo on March 12.

In that incident a high-speed panga with four (FOUR) 300 horse motors—that’s 1200 horsepower, folks, and a whole lot of speed—carrying about two tons of cocaine was run aground in Manzanillo by the Coast Guard. Four men fled into the jungle and faded into the local population. The white stuff was captured but not the men. But all that said, the Pacific side of the country fares no better; there were several similar drug busts on the Pacific in the past few months. All in all Costa Rica has captured about 20 tons of cocaine this year alone… on both coasts, all headed north to a guaranteed market.

It has always been the assumption of the people on the Caribe that Pacific investors and hotel cartels put out bad publicity about the Caribbean around the holidays. That might have been true in the past, but this time the Caribe has things it needs to address. And I see the government and the police have formulated a plan to fight crime. The idea is to allow people a toll free number (1176) to call and anonymously report crime or suspicious activities. I hope it works.

The only issue I see is that people here are afraid to report because they do not trust their police or the government and they fear retaliation from the criminals themselves. Healthy concerns.

For now, though, it’s nice to see the cars full of people from San Jose coming to the Caribbean to celebrate Easter, and I hope they have a good time. (And as always I hope they clean up their trash when they go.) The small inconvenience to me is slight in comparison to the success of businesses here. May they prosper and give legitimate employment to all the young people who need work to live a life without crime.

Happy Easter. Feliz Santo Domingo. Have a good time, everyone. Play safely and even if it means my house shakes with the bass beat of a local bar, so be it.

On a side note: I still do not understand fireworks on Good Friday, the day it is believed that Christ was crucified, but I’m Buddhist not a Catholic. Just saying.

Film Reel Rolling Backward

A celluloid life

is easier

Splice and mend

cut out the mistakes

Erase the grief

 

The year I spent fucking my way across Europe

Sam & Dave spilled out over pirate airwaves

off the Isle of Man

 

Possibly that

could be discarded

Culls for the cutting room floor.

 

I was Mustang Sally

doing desperado sex,

on-the-run-no-questions-asked sex.

unprotected sex

In a time of free love

 

What I needed

most

was comfort

Relief from the pain

 

Cut and splice

his death

so shattering it could have been my own

So young

 

But we cannot roll back the film

We go on

All those mistakes

make us who we are

 

[Scintilla Project prompt, day 10: 1. Sometimes we wish we could hit the rewind button. Talk about an experience that you would do over if you could. If you would like to sign up for this storytelling fortnight, click here, or on the icon in the right menu. It’s Scintilla. It pushes your boundaries.]

Lost Without Translation

Costa Rica News – ”Stop the car!” I yelled at my husband. “Maybe that guy knows where the place is.”This is an all too familiar cry when we are driving anywhere in the Central Valley. We are both excellent drivers, but the bulk of the driving has fallen to him. I invariably ride shotgun, acting as navigator, and that involves asking for directions more often than not.

The man I spotted had what I look for when making inquiries. He was older, trimming a big red bougainvillea that overflowed from his yard into the street, so I assumed he lived there. And he appeared to own a car. One was parked in his drive, anyway. This last item is almost essential, because, with luck, the directions he gives will be for a driver and not a pedestrian. I’ve gotten those, and we’ve run into one-way streets, alleys, and dead ends. I have used taxi drivers parked by the side of the road. They are great. And on more than one occasion I’ve actually taken the taxi and had my husband follow in the car to find the correct address.

On this particular day we were trying to locate a wrecking yard in San José, Auto Repuestos Hermanos Copher. The address on their website said—no kidding: in San José, La Uruca, Barrio Corazon de Jesus, 800 meters north (road to Heredia) at the intersection of Pozuelo.

This is not an anomaly; this *is* the approved address system of Costa Rica. If you are a local, you probably know right where these places are, but if you are an expat or a visitor, good luck. It’s a bit like directions the old farmer gives when you’re lost in rural America. “Go up this road until you come to the Burns’ place, turn north, and continue on… oh, maybe a mile or two until you get to the corner where that old oak was hit by lightening back in ’96.”

It’s hopeless. Even if you do follow the directions to a T, you often discover the hypothetical tree is no longer there. For instance, there are addresses that mention the Coca-Cola Building in downtown San José. Coca-Cola moved to another location—across town—years ago, and the building is now a flea market, but many businesses close by still refer to it in their address (From the Coca-Cola building 50 m north and 25 m east, between avenida…). That sort of thing. And the 50 meters north or 25 meters east address makes having a compass in the car indispensable.

We were familiar with Uruca, a section of town known for its traffic jams and the Office of Immigration. I had no idea where Barrio Corozon de Jesus was. I searched desperately on our old, and not very detailed, roadmap as we inched along in traffic.”Road to Heredia,” it said. Okay, I found Heredia on the map. Dot to dot. It must be the road we’d seen at the bottom of Uruca, at the huge intersection that was often a free-for-all of cars and trucks. We needed to turn right at that point, but what in hell was “Pozuelo?” I beavered through my trusty Spanish-English dictionary. No entries.

“We are going to have to turn right pretty soon,” I said. “You need to get over in the far lane.” Easier said than done. Costa Ricans, like the rest of us, are polite face to face but can be rude and pushy behind the wheel. As we edged across two lanes of traffic and a chorus of horns, I became vaguely aware of the smell of sugar baking, something buttery.

I was checking our map when we drove straight past the turnoff. A couple of blocks later we looked for a place to turn around. That is when I saw the man trimming his bougainvillea and yelled at my husband to stop.

I showed this portly stranger the address, and he pointed to where we had come from. He said we needed to turn left for Heredia. “But what is this?” I pointed at the word Pozuelo. He gave a me quizzical look and pointed up and across the intersection. I looked up and saw the huge billboard-sized sign: POZUELO. Of course, Pozuelo, the bakery, the one that makes all those sugary cookies. I thanked him, feeling rightfully foolish, and said I was lucky it wasn’t a snake.

We took another stab at it, made the left turn and headed toward Heredia. 800 meters later, not counting overshoots, turnarounds, and the need for more directions, we found Auto Repuestos Hermanos Copher. They did not have the auto part we needed, but suggested another wrecking yard that might, Repuestos Pana: in San José, North Granadilla, Curridabat, University Latina, 4 kilometers east.