When I really began to move around to various parts of Costa Rica, especially the diverse barrios of its capital city, San Jose, I noticed a peculiar thing. At least it seemed peculiar to someone like me from a different culture. That is, that life here is lived, for the most part, outside. I say that sitting here in my rocker writing and looking out onto the streets of my neighborhood, Quizarco, in Santo Domingo, and I am thinking that it is not so, joe. But Quizarco is more upper-crust than what I am referring to and more resembles a typical U.S. middle class hood. I am talking about a huge middle class barrio like Desamparados or any small pueblo outside of the city. In these places people seem to be everywhere all the time. Don’t they ever go inside? Maybe it’s just a function of there being so many people packed into a small place. But that is not true because then why do you see the same phenomenon in the small pueblos in the mountains and along the coasts. I believe it has much to do with the fact that Costa Ricans are a voraciously social people. They love to mingle and gossip and party and sometimes fuss and fight and then make up (the one time that they will go back inside) and start the process all over again. Life here is just one big “telenovela” (Soap Opera). I guess living on the outside is a way to see what is going on with everyone else as well as a way to be seen yourself. You know, something like…..”mi amor look at who she is walking with today and the way she is dressed……what a little $%#@ she is!” It actually makes driving through a bustling barrio all the more interesting. If you observe closely you will see some pretty interesting things. Some will make you laugh, others will make you cry. Like the old lady wearing hot pants and trying desperately to attract her next amorous adventure, or the poor homeless kid begging for a couple coins to buy some bread (or possibly crack). The scenery is so far removed from what I knew in the southern U.S. I guess you see this in some parts of the big cities like New York or Chicago, but I don’t think it is quite on the same level, or for the same reasons. It certainly makes life more interesting and invigorating and possibly more rewarding than to always be shut in and wrapped up in your own little four-walled world. Breathing the same air and watching the same television programs over and over and over. Why not get out there and live a little……and maybe discover what that neighbor is up to now.
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