Licensed to Thrill, or Kill, While Driving in San Jose

Today we went to get our Costa Rica drivers' licenses. This involves the following steps:

1. Call Jorge Calderon our taxi driver in time to get us to the 0800 bus from Atenas to San Jose.
2. Arrive in time to board bus.
3. Bus is kind of late into San Jose due to this and that.
4. Arrive in San Jose with about one half hour to have breakfast at the soda near Casa Canada that we always frequent. Gulp down breakfast and head over to our lawyer at Casa Canada.
5. Where we meet with our lawyer's assistant.
6. Who takes us to a Banco Costa Rica, to withdraw colones to pay for what comes up next.
7. Hail a taxi and go to the doctor's office.
8. Where we have blood drawn to determine our blood types, eye exam, blood pressure check and then on to the next step.
9. The drivers' license office - where we are put into a foreigner's line-up (well, you get to sit in chairs), which didn't seem to move very fast. Eventually we are all sent upstairs. In the meantime, we have been admiring the extremely high heels the Ticas wear as they traipse back and forth.
10. Once upstairs, you wait to be called to the Scary Lady's desk (in all fairness, it appears she had a really bad headache today).
11. I made Lance go ahead of me to see what I might expect. She looked at his passport and counted the months since we arrived here - so close to the 90 days when you have to get out of the country. We were under the wire but Lance got the wagging finger from Scary Lady.
12. Lance disappeared into the next office room. And I got called to the Scary Lady. No problem. Then I went into the next room.
13. Stamp, stamp, stamp documents - then we both leave with instructions to go to the bank and pay another fee.
14. Thank goodness for our lawyer's assistant - he was waiting for us, led us to the bank, we pay a fee at the special teller's office.
15. Back to the license office - present our bank fee paper - get our picture taken - wait outside - they call your name - pick up license with hideous photo of self.
16. That's it!!! We are both licensed to drive Heavy Vans, but not motorcycles or taxis.
17. Get taxi back to Casa Canada, meet with our lawyer, and pay him his fee. Shake hands, pick up our copies of Comprobante Requisitos (Certificate of Presentation) and we are good to go and we don't have to leave this country next week. It will probably take a year to get our pensionado status.
18. Take taxi back to Coca Cola bus station, board Atenas bus, arrive Atenas, get cab home.
19. Relax.
20. Best advice to other Canadians wanting to immigrate to Costa Rica: get a Costa Rica lawyer. You are wasting your time and money if you don't do this.

Bus to Escazu

Well, that was easy. Get the Atenas bus to San Jose, get off near Casa Canada, walk a few blocks to the Parque de San Francisco de Mata and wait for a bus that says Escazu Multiplaza. Ten or maybe fifteen minutes later, we were there.

The Multiplaza is huge and this is where I'll go when I want to get a fix of North American style shopping. We got there before it opened, so hung around until it did then had breakfast at one of the many food court type eateries.

I was looking for shorts and shoes but didn't find any on this trip - think I'll have to return on my own to clothes shop. It's not really fair to drag a husband around looking at clothes although Lance was very patient.

We did find a bookstore and I finally got a birding book, a great little cookbook with Costa Rican recipes and a super cool oven timer in the shape of a hamburger.

We didn't take the bus back to San Jose because we had to stop at Office Depot and Aerocasillas first so we hailed a taxi.  I'm so sorry we neglected to get our driver's card because he was great. His English was good because his ex-girlfriend was a Canadian from Ontario and he picked up some English from her, then took courses. Puts us to shame not having started more Spanish lessons yet.

He helped us with Spanish words, places to visit in his wonderful country, asked us about Canada - I love this type of interaction - and when he asked me what I thought of his country, I had only words of praise.

We were dropped off at the Coca Cola bus station and our bus was waiting to load. San Jose is so vibrant - I really like it. Couldn't live there, but love to visit. The guy who boards the bus to sell chips, pop and water recognizes us now and brings us two bottles of aqua.

It was pouring rain by the time we arrived in Atenas but Lance had warned me to bring an umbrella, so we were fine - except I was wearing flipflops so my feet were soaked. But the rain is warm, so who cares.