Sitting in the Shade

Some of the hotel guests

Most of you back home probably do not want to hear this, but it is hot here in Costa Rica. Today, our first day in the country, we walked from our Hotel down to San Jose's “downtown”, about a 10 block walk.

So far, my impressions of Costa Rica is that it is a poor third world country, so things are not that fancy. Sidewalks are a constant challenge with uneven surfaces, loose paving stones and even large holes. Often when you have to step off the sidewalks to cross roads, you have to be cautious of drainage holes that could swallow small children. As well, there is no walk signals on most streets and the stop lights are difficult to see, so you have to be careful. On the way in, we passed through some very depressing neighbourhoods, one with ladies of the evening decorating each corner, but once we arrived at our hotel it was actually very good.

The Airline had lost my luggage so I was searching some of the essentials sitting who knows where in my nice teal luggage, toothbrush, underwear, socks . . . . So we spent the morning looking through the shops downtown. There were lots of choices but it made

Another door for my collection

for a tiring morning. After wandering through many shops looking for things, we decided to take a break and sit down for a rest. There was a lovely park and at first glance there were lots of places to sit on benches and cement walls. However when we went into the park, we discovered that all the empty spots were in the HOT sunshine. There were lots of trees and they provided lots of shade, but every spot with any shade was occupied. As we wandered around the city we found lots of parks and in every one it was the same. Local people had every shady spot taken. I started noticing that this was happening everywhere we looked. In one park, there was a nice circular fountain with lots of spots to sit, so long as you did not require shade. Every single spot that had any shade was full. We never did find a spot to sit.

Even the police horses look for shade

Sitting in the shade

No shade left.