Jaco Beach – The Bad

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our visit to Jaco, while educational and bringing a certain balance to our view of Costa Rica, was not nearly as enjoyable as our January visit in Guanacaste Province. This final installment on the country will attempt to detail why.

I would have to say that the oppressive daily heat and humidity ranks as the number one reason that this visit was not an unmitigated pleasure. Unlike some, I am not content to lay around a pool for any length of time; my preference is for exploring my environment, preferably on foot. Because the weather became so hot and humid so quickly each day, our peregrinations were largely confined to the early mornings. Even when I did leave the town to visit Quepos and Manuel Antonio, the same problem presented itself.

Jaco Beach itself, in my view, is a tawdry tourist town, rather dirty, with a fair bit of garbage strewn about, and uneven, broken sidewalks, offering little opportunity to experience some of the more important aspects of Costa Rican culture. Businesses seemed to consist mainly of restaurants, bars, and surf shops. I suppose this might be considered heaven for some younger travelers.

Both on the highway and in town, I came to discover that Costa Ricans are incredibly bad drivers. For example, on the trip through the mountains en route to Jaco from the airport, I was appalled at the number of cars and trucks that would pass on blind curves. The fact that we didn’t see any accidents mystifies me. In town, there seemed to be no respect for stop signs. Pedestrians have to be extremely careful, lest they become an endangered species. On a related note, the large number of vehicles on the main drag made for a very noisy and smelly atmosphere.

Perhaps because it is an area that caters to the young tourist, drugs are sold pretty openly. One evening two young Costa Ricans asked me if I wanted cocaine, and one afternoon on the beach, only about 300 feet from the beach police station, someone rather insistently tried to sell me weed. The fact that the sales pitch was made in such close proximity to the station really called into question for me either the competence or the integrity of the local constabulary.

Probably the most unsettling aspect of our visit to Jaco occurred one afternoon when my wife went shopping at a nearby mall. Upon her return, she discovered that her change purse containing about $60 and her credit card was missing. Revisiting the store where she made her purchases and generally retracing her steps were all to no avail, and she ultimately concluded that it had been grabbed when she had to squeeze by a group of young men, one of whom distracted her. This was our first brush with Costa Rican theft, something that I have since learned is quite common. The people at the hotel were great in facilitating the cancellation of my wife’s credit card (perhaps the theft was a blessing in disguise? – just kidding!) and we were henceforth much more careful when we were out.

Finally, I didn’t like the fact that prostitution, although legal in Costa Rica, is practiced so openly. While that may sound like a moral judgment, it isn’t; as I mentioned before, I see prostitution as a waste of human potential, and potentially quite dangerous. One can argue all they want about the economic imperatives that probably drive many of these young women to pursue such a career, but I still see it as a kind of surrender of hope for a better future.

In closing, I would have to say that the country has had quite an impact on me. If things go according to plan, we hope to spend a month there next winter renting a place somewhere in the Central Valley to experience the daily rhythms of Costa Rican life. I continue to work on my Spanish, hoping that on our next visit I will be able to better communicate with people.

I would be very happy to hear from you if you have any comments on these posts.

More Reflections on Costa Rica

I began this series on Costa Rica by labeling it a land of contradictions, and while it may seem presumptuous of me, having spent only a total of three weeks in the country, to render any kind of assessment of it, here it is anyway. On the one hand, it has a reputation as an eco paradise, yet on the other, it reputedly uses more agricultural chemicals, many of which have long been banned in North America because of their toxicity, than any other country in Central America, and overdevelopment is leading to increasing amounts of raw sewage being dumped into the ocean. As well, recycling programs are in their infancy there. The Country has a 93% literacy rate and universal access to education, yet the majority of rural schools don’t even have libraries. In terms of international relations, Costa Rica has been called the Switzerland of Central America, owing to its abolition of a standing army in 1948, yet within the country, crime is on the increase, petty theft is rampant, and the police are underpaid and ineffectual. It has forward-looking social policy, devoting a significant amount of its GNP to the provision of medical care for all, yet at the same time prostitution, a waste of human potential and threat to health, is legal.

If you will indulge the English teacher in me (alive and well despite being retired for almost three years now!), Costa Rica seems like a metaphor for human nature, representing both the best and the worst, the most generous and the most selfish impulses that reside within us all, and while that observation may be applied to many countries, it is in Costa Rica that I feel it most acutely. It is a country that very much beckons to me as it strives to preserve its remaining natural heritage, waste not its financial resources on military expenditures but spend them constructively on its people through progressive social policies, and promote a way of life that stresses living in the moment and savoring the small yet priceless delights the world has to offer. Yet, as in human nature, there is the dark side, a side where greed, lust and general selfishness are also very much at work, a side that sees drugs becoming increasingly prevalent, overdevelopment at the expense of environmental degradation, and crimes of opportunity, now frequently augmented by violence, becoming more common, (security guards and barred entrances to houses abound) while the government is seemingly unable or unwilling to properly train and finance its police forces to stem this rising tide. As well, according to blogs and on-line Costa Rican newspapers I have read, the judiciary is strangely reluctant to mete out the kinds of punishments that are usually seen as deterrents in North America.

Many of these aspects of Costa Rican life became known to me during and subsequent to our second Costa Rican visit in March, a two-week stay at Jaco Beach, located in the province of Punterenas, which I will be writing about in upcoming posts.