Bobbi Johnson continues her stories from her early days in Nosara. This month, she writes of times she realized that in Costa Rica, some things take a little getting used to.
Mail and Visitors. For our first Christmas, in 1989, I received notification that I had two packages at the Aduana in Puntarenas. One from my aunt, who always sent almonds; the other was from my sister-in-law Wendy, who when I called said it was a joke gift that wasn’t worth driving down to get. So I blew both off. I found out later that my aunt had sent a gallon of pre-popped popcorn. Sure am glad I didn’t drive there for that.
A year later, Wendy and her husband were coming down for the holidays. Because they weren’t to arrive in San Jose until almost midnight, I told them to go the Hotel Alajuela and arranged for a driver to get them the next morning to bring them here. Then I decided that I should go wait for them. I went to Hotel Alajuela to find it yellow taped, because an earthquake a few weeks before had condemned the building. I went in and told the person at the desk my dilemma. Since I had stayed there so often, the hotel management said I could stay and wait for my family. I went to bed, having asked the desk person to let me know when Wendy arrived. I woke at about 2:00 am and went downstairs, where a different person at the desk knew nothing about anyone coming. He said a couple had arrived, but he wouldn’t let them in. I didn’t get much sleep after that. They ended up going to the Grand Hotel in San Jose and got in contact with the driver, whom I too had contacted. Even before there were cell phones or internet somehow it all came together and our reunited family drove to Nosara.
Wendy handed me the package she had mailed to us the previous year. It had been returned to her, unopened. It was a door knocker, since we finally had a door. I wonder what happened to the popcorn.
Official documents. In the early 1990s the CR government issued a blanket amnesty to all people in the country illegally to apply for their residency. We decided to take advantage of this opportunity because we did not have to prove income or investment and would receive a work permit. We got our police reports and birth certificates from the U.S. and were approved for temporary residency: cedula number one. We had an appointment in Nicoya to renew these but when we arrived at the office, we were informed that the office was now in Liberia and that it would take about three months for the records to get there.
It was easier for us to go to San Jose. There we were informed that we needed to make a deposit into a CR bank account to guarantee that we could be deported, if necessary. We said fine, give us the account number. Well, the account hadn’t been set up. We asked for our cedulas but were denied because we had not made the deposit! I think we finally deposited the money in Banco Nacional in Nicoya and then had to return to San Jose to get our new cedulas – cedula number two.
After five years I no longer had to renew every year, which I had done in Nicoya and later in Liberia. My “permanent” cedula expired in 2007, but immigration was so far behind that everyone got a “note” from the government saying that all was OK. Early in 2009 Banco de Costa Rica began offering a service to renew cedulas. I went there, paid my money, and was told to expect the new cedula in the mail within a month. At the Post Office a month later, Ronny told me there was no tracking info for the number I had. I called my attorney in San Jose and asked him to check on this. He called me from Immigration and said that I had to get there immediately because my cedula had expired in 2002! Seems that Liberia never told San Jose that I had renewed. I told him I wasn’t rushing in since I had had no problems entering or leaving the country since 2002. The next time I was in the capital it took only three hours at Immigration to get my new cedula, which had a new number — my third one.
Old phone. Image Source
When it was time to renew my driver’s license a friend and I drove to Liberia, but couldn’t get into the building because the cedula on my old license wasn’t the same as the one on my new cedula. This meant another trip to San Jose. I went to MOPT and waited in the line where the guard makes you hop to the next seat each time it is vacant, even if there is no one behind you. After two hours, I got to the desk, where the clerk told me that I had to go across town and get a certification that I was the same person. I asked the guard where to go and if I had to sit in the line again. He told me and said no wait was involved. I got in a cab and went across town to the office and waited while the woman behind the counter finished her nails and her phone call. I got what I needed and rushed back to MOPT. By then there was a different guard, but I finally got my new driver’s license.
Phone calls, Nosara-style. In about 1991 I started paying bills for owners who were not full-time residents. Because I had to go to Nicoya often, the task seemed pretty easy. Eventually this evolved in Nosara Home Rentals because people wanted to rent their vacation homes while not here. That wasn’t easy in the age before phones had come to Nosara. One had to wait in line for one of the five radio/public phones in town. I would go to the Gilded Iguana and wait in line, while having a beer, to make a call to confirm a reservation. The procedure was simple: you went to the phone, made your call, using a stop watch to record the time, and then paid for the call. All very civilized. Internet arrived in Nosara, at the Mini Super las Delicias and the Frog Pad, before home phones which arrived in late 1997 or 1998. And now we all have cell phones.