Some musings on the transport systems and other non-related stuff
First let me come with an erratum to the
musing of two weeks past. I have had the pleasure of meeting a man who works
with the mobile phone systems and with the high-speed connections in Costa
Rica. The meeting in itself needs some description, oh well, lean back and put
your feet up, here we go:
A week ago Anna and I were returning from a fruitful trip to the, in most respects not very charming capitol of Costa Rica and were waiting on the bus (do not worry, this will be covered later extensively) with some muzak on the bus intercom in this case Celine Dion.
I was discussing at great length with Anna, holding the position that she is wasting her great voice (Celine’s) on the crap she is producing. The man sitting next to me saw me look annoyed at the speakers and said in very good English, “not enough rock”. Off course before ten seconds had elapsed, we were discussing power metal and hearing titbits from the computer. Do not underestimate the power of the metal head! We are Legion, a bit like Scientology I guess:-) Well, this chap turned out to be an administrator for ICE, the telephone company amongst other things and he assured us that the connections were very fast, he had a 2 Mbit connection himself, but that because the fast connections are rather expensive, the internet café’s share the connections via microwave local nets. And yes, there is such a dish at the Internet pushers place.
So it is not the infrastructure in the ground that is the problem,
rather it is cost cutting measures from the provider’s side. Gentlepersons, in
other words, we have been tricked! Also he said that they have been pushing for
some time now for release of SIM’s and it would only be a matter of weeks. Good
news all around, now I only have to figure out how to bring him a Manticora CD
as thanks.
The transport system:
Costa Rica is a country where the transport
system is very good; it is possible to get just about everywhere on the bus and
extremely cheap as well. The trip from Guapiles where we live to San Jose, some
65 kilometres only costs 1,5 US$ or 8 kroner.
There are some small details however. The transport is completely reliant on the bus (and there are many!). Until 1991, Costa Rica had a functioning train system that linked the Pacific coast with the Caribbean coast through San Jose. Actually one could walk right out our home, turn left and walk the rails all the way to where Martin lives in a part of San Jose. It was damaged in an earthquake in ’91, and because the railroad was losing money, it wasn’t repaired. The result is that many of the former railroad bridges are now car bridges, the space between the rails have been filled with concrete, and the rail are being used for many odd purposes. This leaves the car and the bus. Cars are, aside from the fact that everybody drives like Schumacher, rather expensive, so it is on the bus most people travel.
Since
there are no real alternatives, the busses take on some characteristics of
their own. There are two VERY different kinds, city busses and intercity
busses. First the last; The intercity busses does not go until they are full
(preferably more than), even if the passengers have to wait for 40 minutes for
the last 2 remaining spots to be filled. We have tried that. Once the bus is
full, the driver tries his utmost in breaking the sound barrier in the mountain
passes to Guapiles, and woe to the person who is in the way; most car drivers
will probably admit that the bus is way bigger, and especially, it has a much
larger sounding horn. Once the bus has cleared the mountains, it stops at the
roadside (nobody gets of, this is the direct line…) and salesmen come aboard
the bus selling softdrinks, chips, candy, chips, fruit and chips. The Tico’s
eat a lot of that crap which is evident from their BMI, and so two minutes later,
the bus “crunches” on.
Ideally, the bus drive is only about 70
minutes, but often because of the roads bad state, the trip takes 90 minutes.
Not bad, but on top of that are the 40 minutes waiting for the bus, and
especially the complete lack of definite times for the bus fares which makes
for even more waiting time.
It could be much worse, I mean nobody are sitting
on the roof, and the suspension works pretty well on most of the busses. And we
take the trip some 2 times a week so I guess we must like it (or don’t have a
choice)!
For the city busses, the story is quite different. Picture a rundown old style American school bus, the type used in Speed, the put some more dents into it, take out the suspension, put extra seats in instead of the rear door, take out the diesel tank and use chopped up car tyres for fuel and voila, this is a city bus. The front window has the price for this particular bus written in white paint (none cost the same), one price regardless of distance usually around 2 kroner or 35 cent, as well as some of the places you are likely to know where are. The last bit is a bit cryptic; let me elaborate: In Costa Rica, you don’t have an address. Rather you have a description of where you live. For example, we live “towards Guapiles, 800 meter after the Yellow Bull River, right side, first house on the left”.
So the
busses have descriptions on the front window of some of the larger places they
encounter on the way. There are no set routes, so you just have to take a bus,
which has your landmark written on it and hope you aren’t going to have to jump
of too far from where you wanted to go. This is a huge problem if you don’t
know the city, how in the world are you to know that your destination lies at
Plaza del Sol? When you are used to it, I guess it works in a fashion. The best
thing about the city busses is that you never have to wait. At the major bus stops
there is a guy who does nothing but wait until he thinks the bus has had enough
passengers. Then he blows a whistle and the bus has to leave. Oh well, it’s
cheap, did I mention it was cheap????
The weather in reminiscent of Denmark at
this time, it has been raining for a week now, but it is still hot, we still
have Whiskey, we still have coffee and we are going to watch The Two Towers on
a 12-inch computer screen with one earplug each; I guess we’ll survive:-)
Take care everybody, stay tuned,
Jesper Metalhead soon to be Schumacker