Vacation Before Vacation Part 2 - Where It Really Goes Off the Rails

 Picking up again almost exactly a week ago. All photos from the Museo de Oro Precolombino.

 

Thoughts on San Jose and homelessness: During our recent vacation we spent two days/two nights in San Jose. Now we don't go there very often. During the best of times it's a good five hour drive, much of it through road construction and bumper to bumper traffic. Many streets are one way, the street numbering makes zero sense, and it is a vast sprawling city that makes both Google Maps and Apple Maps give up the ghost! Most of the time when we go it's because we're seeing a specialist at the hospital. It's just too nerve-wracking any other way. 

 

When we're in San Jose we don't get to see the tourist things at all! During Jim's medical trials last year and this year I started attempting to book us into a hotel near the hospital yet overlooking Calle Central, not far from the Central Market, Theatro Nacional, Museo de Oro, etc, etc, so at least we could sit on the balcony and see the sights, or explore some of these places. We've done short walks along Calle Central but not a museum day. We decided this time to take a museum and shopping day along Calle Central.

 

 

This time was an incredibly different experience because of the crowds of the homeless everywhere along this main pedestrian thoroughfare. I'd wondered why some of the area hotels moved their front desks up a few floors lately, but I saw why. Jim and I were approached again and again and again, and not even in the "nice" ways of "Hey buddy do you have any spare change!".

 

We talked with a young man early out that morning who asked for food, saying he hadn't eaten in a long time. We took him to a nearby McDonalds for a few extra value meals, and talked to him awhile. He'd had addiction challenges and family drama (don't we all?). He was articulate, seemed rather genuine, but one never knows how real folks are with you sometimes. He wanted money for a hotel, but we didn't give him money. Any time you give money you have to assume that there's a strong possibility that it will end up purchasing the illicit substance of choice. 

 

 

We saw the same young man later not far from where he'd approached us, hustling to get a few dollars together to get a hotel room with a shower. But this young Tico man, Joel, wasn't the problem. I don't mind being approached to help someone down and out every now and then, but San Jose was like someone turned on a tap of the homeless. It just kept flowing out. You literally were surrounded by people trying to get you to give them money or food. The food beggars were a new one on me. We stopped to get sandwiches and fruit for dinner and Jim was carrying his own sandwich in his hand. Huge mistake as it immediately caught the eye of someone who started begging for the sandwich, and when Jim said no the man kept trying to grab it right from Jim's hand. He brazenly tried to steal it over and over. 

 

We weren't even safe from this in the hotel dining room, which being Costa Rica was open air and abutted the street. The next morning I was approached no fewer than three times to buy someone food. While sitting in the dining room. The Cajun in me that wants to see everyone fed and with a roof over their heads was pretty heartbroken, even as the gringo part was annoyed to be constantly battling a wave of folks trying to part me from my money. The Christian in me feels obligated to help, but is not sure that giving folks money is actually helpful or hurtful in the long run.

 

San Jose had never been like this before in the times we went, even the handful of times we stayed at this hotel. Once I got home and was able to do a little research it started to make more sense. It seems the city has its own brewing homelessness crisis perpetuated by, surprise, surprise, drugs, and very surprisingly, illegal immigration. The city is awash in migrants running from a cratered economy that has come out of the dictatorship of Nicholas Maduro and the tanking of oil prices in Venezuela. 

 

Here's why they're stuck in Costa Rica. Nicaragua, directly to the north of Costa Rica, is an ally of Venezuela and daring to try and cross Nicaragua leads to an almost certain arrest and deportation right back to Venezuela. These are people who experienced great risk trekking through the Darian Gap in Panama. They are running from extreme food shortages, violence, the shrinking of the GDP of over 75% and so many other things, only go get stuck in Costa Rica, a place with lax standards on illegal immigration and no actual plan or organization to help these people. Look, I'm not blaming Costa Rica, they don't have much of a social safety net in place for their own citizens either, even if they have single payer healthcare and free schooling. 

 

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that there is no easy solution to any of this, but I think we need to try, first by understanding the causes and then by attempting to help. What that looks like I don't quite know, but there must be a solution equitable to everyone.