I was very surprised at what I found down there. First, where my daughter has been living is truly in the middle of nowhere in the mid-mountains, tiny village and for me, reflection on my time in the DMZ, Dong Ha mountain to be exact. I wanted to see where my daughter was working and it is primitive by our standards. Dirt roads, rough ride and hot and humid.
But I have to say, this is where we could also see a remarkable country and people. It was a 3 hour ride from San Jose down to Mastatal which isn't even on most maps. Didn't even make Google Earth. And by our standards the people were poor. The houses are usually what appeared to be cement or block with corrugated metal roofs. But don't judge by that one.
The houses were clean, no junk or cars on blocks outside. The people were friendly and happy. Everyone, even in the middle of nowhere jungle towns were well dressed. We would see women walking with children along to us, dirty dusty dirt roads dressed very nicely, everyday of our trip.
I expected to feel unsafe and having to be protective of the grandkids the entire time. While San Jose is a city like any other and didn't feel so great, the rest of the country we visited was, in spite of the language difference, quite comfortable and safe. It is a beautiful and pleasant country, a proud people.
We spent a little time in San Jose, as little as possible. Then we went to the mountains, the cloud forest in Monteverde and Saint Elena. It is another, more difficult dirt road trek up to the 6000 plus foot range and absolutely gorgeous. The little towns were outstanding. The people were friendly beyond most towns here in the good ole US of A.
We rented a house from a German lady who has been in Costa Rica for a decade and she was a joy. She also had horses on a small ranch outside of town and we spent a day with her there. We ate in outstanding restaurants we'd never heard of and never had a bad meal. We tasted a little bit of their paradise and left impressed with a desire to return.
It was a great trip. We left our daughter behind. She is heading this weekend to spend a month in a Spanish school in Nicaragua ... which certainly isn't Costa Rica. We flew home, all eight of us and folks at the airport in San Jose were incredibly helpful in accommodating our three grandkids.
As an aside in all my travels for some weird reason I had never flown Frontier Airlines. But in an age of airline arrogance Frontier was impressive. Our end to end trip was very enjoyable on Frontier and I'll be quick to return. It was like flying years ago the way we were treated.
We landed back in the states in Denver, the airport to end all airports. I'm not sure if you could get a city airport further away from the city or more strung out. I guess they had space so they used it. I think their initial baggage handling problems are behind us but it didn't take long to know we were 'home'.
The US Customs people weren't as rude as the one's based in Toronto when you leave but they soon made us realize we weren't in the land of the happy anymore. Then, as we went to check in for our flights over to Salt Lake and we entered the turf of the Department of Homeland Security, our crack TSA troops - we knew, unfortunately we were back in these United States.
As we entered security the white haired, well over weight TSA agent sitting at his little stand there, with a major attitude was as bored an uninterested as could be. I walk up with my wife and granddaughter and hand him three passports and three tickets. Without looking up he says, "Separate them and place one ticket in each passport".
While that isn't a terrible big deal his attitude about it, never looking at me or even acknowledging me was a bit much. But you can't really say anything because the tin soldiers there will take any excuse to haul you off. He fumbled around and finally told us to pass. I guess we weren't terrorist after all.
The kicker came as we waited for the rest of our group. My oldest daughter comes up pissed off. She got the same bump of a TSA rep, had a three year old in her arms and a six year old at her side and he does the same exact thing to her. She told him she was holding a baby, as if he couldn't see but undaunted. he announced she must place one ticket in each pass port for him.
Well that pissed me off and I looked around and there was a little office cubicle with several TSA folks standing around in some sort of vigorous conversation so I walked over to join in. I stood there while they were talking for nearly five minutes, being ignored which was interesting that a civilian would be in the midst of their discussion on 'someone who said something out of line'.
I was getting irritated when up walks a TSA guy with an ear bud, looking very James Bond like with a nice TSA blazer on and very official looking. So I said to him, "What does a guy have to do around here to get attention? I've been standing her for five minutes." One of the crew discussing the 'problem person' turns and asks what I am talking about.
So I say, "Well man I couldn't help but hear you got someone who said something they shouldn't and I fully understand why they would do that if they were treated as rudely as we just were". With that James Bond takes my arm and ushers me away from everyone. He asks me to stand there while he goes and gets a complaint card. Says best way to complain is via email, it goes in the system he says. Hard to imagine how that will get noticed.
I left and the original three were still debating on what to do with the person who made the 'remark' and I could only think how I was treated entering Costa Rica and now returning to the states ... pretty sad stuff on the state of our government.
But Costa Rica is pretty cool and Homeland Security is out to lunch.
No comments:
Post a Comment