The Way It Was by Don Mateo

My first day ever in Costa Rica was in early October, 1990. We spent  the night in a nice 3-star hotel in San Jose. The price for the room was $50 USD. The first morning, at breakfast, there was a tremor that lasted a few seconds. Welcome to Costa Rica! The room shook gently and diners looked at one another uneasily. Then it stopped and we finished our breakfast.

San Jose was a humble city with only a handful of buildings over 10-stories high. The downtown was highlighted by the Aurola Holiday Inn and the Banco Nacional building. The US Embassy had only months earlier relocated to its present place in Rohrmoser. The old downtown embassy building still had security barriers along the sidewalk, stemming from an attempted bombing a few years earlier.

The corners of downtown San Jose were populated by money changers calling “Dolares, dolares" at passersby. They paid a few colons more on the dollar, though you had to be alert to the grifters and quick change artists among them. The exchange rate was around 100 to the dollar and the largest denomination was the 1000 colon note.

After a few days in San Jose we headed to the Pacific Coast. The bus ride from San Jose to Quepos went via Puriscal and took almost 7 hours. From Puriscal to Quepos the road was unpaved, and in some spots in the mountains barely passable. It was a relief to reach the coastal road, though the future Costanera/Pan American highway was rough and potholed.

We stayed a few nights in a basic cabina at the beach that cost about 10 dollars per night. I ate my first of many breakfasts of gallo pinto and eggs tortillas and hung out each day at the Manuel Antonio beach. I bought the La Nacion each morning and labored through articles, my Spanish-English dictionary close at hand. There was an ad for a farm near Quepos, so we hooked up with the local realtor and took a 12km drive that lasted about 45 minutes each way. When we got back to town, the realtor took us to his favorite cantina where I had my first ever ceviche.

The last night at the beach, there was a party at the disco and I I drank 40 colon Heinekins. The next day we caught the bus back to San Jose. While waiting for the bus we had a beer at a cantina across from the bus terminal. We played backgammon, drawing a number of curious spectators. Then it was a long haul back to San Jose, and on to the next step in my new life.