Miscellaneous I

I am glad a man is not judged here in Costa Rica by the size of his water heater.   Just like in Belize, our hot water heater is no bigger than ten gallons but it isn’t a problem since we do very little with hot water.   There is no cold water here either unless you get it out of the refrigerator.  You really don’t take hot showers.  It is much more refreshing to use the tepid water right out of the tap.

The town is peppered with fire hydrants but there is no fire department and therefore no fire trucks.  If there is a fire, the trucks have to come from Santa Cruz which is about an hour away.

(I was going to make a snide comparison between this and back home but I will let the folks in Bella Vista draw their own comparisons.)

Some parts of town recycle but many people do not seem to be too serious about it.
Here they are recycling the various kinds of colored glass.

Here they are recycling..........other stuff.

The night sky here is fabulous.  It is a great place to watch the stars.  We have also seen the international space station go by on several occasions.

Keep in mind that the space station is two hundred and forty miles away traveling at seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour.  It is about the size of a football field and weighs about 450 tons.  I was able to get this picture from the roof of our condo just at sunset.

(It is a little hard to see but there are a couple Russians waving out the window.)
A friend of mine who knows a whole lot about this stuff says he is 100% sure this not the space station but a jet airplane.  Maybe so, but it makes a much better story if you think this is the actual space station.

We have also heard a number of languages being spoken here--Spanish, English, French, Italian, Russian, German, and a few we couldn’t figure out.  For such a small place it is truly international.

There is a Century21 office and when I looked in the window there appeared to be an empty desk—just saying.

There are no covers on the manholes on some of the streets.  Can you imagine this in the US?  It would be surrounded by flares, barricades, yellow cones,and law suits.

They also have some large “ravines” along some of the streets to accommodate the water during rainy season.  The US would have a fit over that too.

There are very few sidewalks except on the main street parallel to the beach.  This is the “sidewalk” behind our condo.

In town, other than the main street, you just walk in the road and---pedestrians do NOT have the right-of-way.

This is a city map.  There are no street names or house numbers.  All directions are given in terms of “on the road to….”,” or next to….”,” or around the corner from….”.

The police patrol the streets and the beach.  I have heard they don’t have much authority but their presence is a deterrent I’m sure.  One of their main functions on the beach is to make sure all of the bikinis are being worn properly.  They are very efficient and effective at this.  Makes me feel good!!!!!

More to come.