A Town Without Direction

Happy Birthday to Jonathan’s brother, Brian, whose birthday is today!
One interesting thing we’ve noticed about being in Costa Rica so far is that there are no street signs. You might think that this would be difficult only if you are driving a car.
Not true.
No signs means that as we are walking to find something (anything) (everything) – grocery store, restaurant, museum, library, etc – we have to memorize landmarks so that we can find our way back to our hotel / apartment. This is not as easy as it sounds when almost everything looks the same. Most of the time we end up counting blocks. It goes something like this:

Ok, go out the door and turn left.
Walk to the dead-end and turn right.
Take the first left after the railroad tracks and walk three blocks.
The library will be on the right.
Then go back to the railroad tracks and turn left.
Walk until you see a road that is at an angle and isn’t straight.
Turn right down this road.
Cross the river and wind around until you come to a major / busy road.
Turn right.
Walk down the busy road until you find what you’re looking for.
This is how we directed ourselves the other day. We wanted to see the library and go to the El Pueblo shopping center for groceries.
Well, we found the library just fine. We went inside to take a look (because you know me and libraries). The ground floor was just study areas. So, we went upstairs. As we’re walking along the shelves full of old and slightly smelly books, we hear someone “say” pssst. Sssssssttttt.
We turn around. Aparently the library is private and you can’t go a-wandering through it. You ask for a book that you looked up in the catalog (yes, long drawers of books listed on note-cards ala 1960s style).
Then you ask someone to get it for you.
After the psssting woman got our attention, she asked us to leave.
Wow. I’ve never been kicked out of a library before.
Anyway, our directions to the shopping center were correct. However, the shopping center wasn’t labeled with its name, and it turns out, it wasn’t a shopping center after all. We only realized this after we’d gone too far, realized that we’d gone too far, and turned around. Then on the way back we saw a cluster of restaurants and insurance agencies. One of them had the name “El Pueblo” in it.
Ahhhhh….we found the “shopping center”. It certainly wasn’t what we were looking for, so we turned back and went back to the hotel and did some minor exploring on the way back.
I love Google Maps…without you, I have no idea how we’d get anywhere in this town.

Related posts:

1. Hotel Angela – Bocas Town, Isla Colon, Bocas del Toro, Panama
2. Poas Volcano and La Paz Waterfall, take one
3. Quito, Ecuador: Day 2
4. Adventures with GPS in Costa Rica
5. The touristy side of San Jose, Costa Rica