Aug 2010 Survey - Pemba, Mozambique

Pemba is on the coast of northern Mozambique. It is the gateway to the Quirimbas Archipelago, some dozen islands off of the mainland that are part of the Quirimbas National Park. The Quirimbas are like a postcard, with vibrant turquoise waters, mangroves, beautiful beaches… Tourism is still developing here, and the area has a feel of being off of the beaten path – which is its main appeal if you can afford to get here.

The puddle-jumper charter on the Ibo landing strip (Ibo Island in the Quirimbas Archipelago)

Pemba as seen from the air

Views during the charter flight from Pemba to Ibo

More views

I spent two nights in the Quirimbas Archipelago on Ibo, an island that was originally a Muslim trading post (later Portuguese) that got its wealth through the slave trade. The Christian Portuguese are no longer there, but their abandoned buildings-turned-ruins are in the process of being restored. The local Muslims live both in town and in villages on the edge. There’s no electricity on the island (well, there are power lines but no power) so the place is totally dark after the sun sets at 5:30 PM. Walking around at night, it was a pleasant reminder of how powerful and generous the moonlight is, something that you forget in cities.

Ibo dusk, boats on the beach at low tide

The main street on Ibo... plenty of ruins

My hotel, Cinco Portas, was one of the renovated houses with a beautiful garden area, all right on the water. What I loved about it was that there was very much a family feeling to it – you know, in those smaller backpacker places where everyone chats at the bar and has dinner together and the manager calls you by your first name and they only run the generator for a few hours in the morning and in the evening and your door doesn’t lock… it was a welcome change from the isolation of being one in a hundred in a city business hotel.

A crab cleaning out house at low-tide... at dusk, you would see hints of movements out of the corner of your eye as they scuttled along the beach.

The manager arranged outings so that all of the guests had the option of doing the same activities together. Unfortunately I only had one full day there so had to choose… go to a sandbar at low tide to snorkel or walk through the mangroves at low tide to a nearby island and take a dhow (boat with a big sail) back. I opted for the mangroves as I’ve always been fascinated by them ever since kayaking through one in Costa Rica in 2006… and how cool would it be to WALK through one?! I did snorkel in Pemba, and learned that I am a little too tense to be a good snorkeler… although this location peaked my interest in getting certified for diving… maybe… if I can relax…

Anyhow, the mangrove walk was beautiful. It’s sand, mud (that sucks in your Tevas), vegetation at low-tide… and at high-tide it’s submerged under 2-3 meters of water. We had a guide as there’s no way we would have found our way alone. A walking route was cut from Ibo to Quirimbas Island (yes, it’s confusing – the archipelago and national park are called Quirimbas, as is this particular island), and the route that we sailed back was through a canal that was dug by slaves back in the day.

Low tide...

... and high tide

These mangrove trees are the only ones that can survive in saltwater. The different species of trees deal with the salt in different ways: one sacrifices specific leaves, turning them yellow with all of the unwanted salt; another stores all of the unwanted salt evenly on the back of all of the leaves. The roots of the trees extend well beyond the main trunk so that it will have a 2-3 meter radius of roots sticking out of the ground. At low-tide these are exposed but at high-tide they disappear under the water. And the roots above ground twist and bend in beautiful arches – if this were a horror fantasy the trees would come alive and be multi-legged walking creatures.
After passing through the mangroves, we had to cross several channels to get to the island of Quirimbas. At one point the water was chest-high… and then you’d be across and skipping through shallow pools of water.

Roots reaching out beyond the tree

Local women collecting wood at low-tide

Our young guide pointed out various crabs, spider fish, a shrimp (that he then carried with him to cook for lunch, although he teased it an awful lot before changing his mind and leaving it in a tide pool). He picked a fight with a rather large crab, trying to show us its movements as it actually jumped out of the water to attack us. Our guide epitomized for me the fact that, yes, we are in a national park, but the idea of a national park protecting the flora and fauna was a lost concept on him. He did not see the wildlife as something to respect and protect but rather as a source of food and/or entertainment.

We spent the afternoon on Quirimba Island, basically walking around the village as we waited for our meal of fresh fish and coconut rice to be prepared. White people are still enough of a novelty that we attracted attention everywhere we went and little children would run after us shouting “Mzungu” (white person). Our dhow ride back to Ibo was calm and peaceful, although we later found out that it was riddled with corruption, as our guide’s “friend” charged us 200% of what the boat should have cost (and that was after we had negotiated it down). It was our little Ibo tourism soap opera as the whole story came out (and our money came back), involving deception and fights.

The village on Quirimbas Island

Back in Pemba, it was time to get to work. The town is a mix of paved, dirt and sand roads. It was a new location for us, so I had to go everywhere in person since I didn’t have phone numbers to call… and the landline/cell phone network was unreliable anyway. There are no chain stores, just smaller independent stores and the markets. I had my second big store manager encounter here. I had planned to stealth one of the favorite expat supermarkets but when I saw how small it was (imagine your living room with one set of densely-packed shelves in the middle) I realized I would have to ask for permission. I handed my business card to the guy at the door and asked for permission in Spanish/Portuguese. He didn’t really say yes, I didn’t wait around for him to specifically say no… When I was maybe five prices from finishing, the actual manager got really upset with me, telling me in Portuguese that I couldn’t just copy down prices. I, having nothing to lose and having reached the end of my survey tolerance, shot right back at him in Spanish that I actually had asked for permission and it wasn’t my fault that he wasn’t there to give it. He was calmer by the end of the conversation, but the encounter soured my mood.

Otherwise I really enjoyed Pemba – I met wonderful people on Ibo and in Pemba, in a way that you can’t meet them in cities. You know, interesting locations attract interesting people! Although my Mozambican experience was almost exactly book-ended by corrupt officials – the bribe I mentioned in Maputo and then an almost-bribe at the Pemba airport. The immigration officer stamped my passport and then asked for a 100 MZN (approx. 2 EUR) fee. As I reached for my wallet I asked if I could get a receipt (business expense!) at which point he shooed me away. Thank you Mozambique -- I love you, too!!

Aug 2010 Survey - Cape Town, South Africa

It's a shame that it's taken me so long to write about Cape Town because it was one of my favorite locations. It's a BEAUTIFUL area and I would love to go back and spend more time there. I scheduled in a Sunday and an additional down day and I filled them as much as the weather would allow!! I also enjoyed Cape Town on a personal level as I got to meet Hayley, the girlfriend of a friend in Brussels. She was preparing to move to Brussels in September (one month after I was there) so it was a kind of a pre-introduction to a new friendship :)

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, one of the main tourist areas in town

On the V&A Waterfront, statues of (from L to R): Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela

We did an afternoon drive out to Cape Point, with a stop to see the Boulder's Beach Penguin Colony. I love penguins ever since doing a school project on them in 5th grade. There are paths set up so that you can get very close to the penguins without disturbing them:

Hello Joe!

Hanging out on the beach...

The scenery along the drive was beautiful, and the colors and topography made me think of Chilean Patagonia for some reason. There is a national park that covers much of the National Park, and I would love to go back and explore it (in warmer weather!)

Driving through the National Park

From the lighthouse, looking out to Cape Point

Distances from the bottom of the continent...

Apart from Cape Point, the other two things that I really wanted to do in Cape Town were weather-dependent: take a tour of Robben Island and hike up Table Mountain. I certainly had the time work-wise in my calendar, but for several days it looked like the weather was not going to cooperate. My original ferry ticket to Robben Island was canceled due to wind and rain. I had the option of taking a refund or rescheduling: I held my breath and rescheduled for a morning ferry on my last full day in Cape Town, which turned out to be a gloriously sunny and wind-free day!!

It was only when I boarded the ferry to Robben Island that I remembered that I actually do get seasick... so a lot of concentration went into that ride, watching the horizon constantly shift with the approaching swells and being grateful that this was "good weather". For the ride back to Cape Town, I wanted to go to the upstairs viewing deck to (1) get a better view and (2) breathe in fresh air to avoid vomiting on my fellow passengers. Unfortunately, everyone else also wants to be on the outside decks and so they quickly fill to capacity. But I found out that if you linger by the stairs and exaggerate reason #2, then the deckhand will allow you up the stairs when no one else is looking.

The view of Cape Town, with Table Mountain, on the ferry coming back from Robben Island

The island itself isn't that impressive as there's not a whole lot to see. The ticket includes a tour of the island, passing the limestone quarry where Mandela and others worked, and then of course the prison facility.

Outside the prison walls

What made the tour really fascinating was that all of the guides are former prisoners, each with his own style of story-telling, personal memories, and reasons for being there. It was really fascinating to hear their experiences on Robben Island, and their role in challenging Apartheid. Robben Island is powerful; I left with unexpected optimism and hope.

After a quick lunch, I met Hayley and Debbie for an afternoon hike up Table Mountain. Debbie hikes it regularly and is familiar with the routes; Hayley had never hiked up before and it was something she wanted to do before moving. We accomplished our goal and enjoyed the views from above:

The view back towards Cape Point

These guys were hanging around the top of the mountain and happy to share your food

Our plan was to take the cable car down, which should have been a quick affair. However there was some kind of a power cut, which required them to use a generator. This meant that the cable car was moving at a slower pace, as was the line at the top of Table Mountain to get on to said cable car. We ended up waiting there for 2.5 hours, which on the up-side meant that we got to see the sunset from the top of Table Mountain. The downside was that it gets f*-ing cold after the sun goes down and we were not dressed appropriately. But this turned out to be one of those "I'm kind of glad this happened" travel moments as everyone was very accommodating about the delay. Staff brought around complimentary tea and coffee and ushered us into the indoor waiting areas once the sun went down. We ended up chatting with our neighbors in line and overall enjoyed it, apart from being cold.

The unexpected sunset over Cape Town

And so I leave you with pictures from the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. The grounds are beautiful to walk around, right at the foot of Table Mountain. I was there as most plants were on the verge of thinking about blooming and experimented with those that were already peeking out. I believe that these are fynbos, native to the Cape area:

Aug 2010 Survey - Maputo, Mozambique

This was my second time surveying Maputo, Mozambique. I went in thinking that my prior experience in Maputo would help and that I would be more efficient, already knowing the layout of the survey and the city… which totally turned out not to be the case. It almost seemed that my prior experience in Maputo burned me this time around, as I went in assuming one thing and wasn’t mentally prepared for how difficult it turned out to be. And not that it was super difficult… sometimes you just have those cities where everything overwhelms you. I would wake up in the morning and run the list through my head of all of the prices I had collected and how many remained and would just feel the anxiety rising. One morning I even called home in tears and had a long talk with my father, trying to keep everything in proportion. I felt like I had regressed to May 2009 when I had similar difficulties in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The main problem was that I got permission everywhere in August 2009, but now, in August 2010, permission was nowhere to be found. I told my first bold-faced flat-out survey LIE this time. Usually I try to be vague or avoid questions altogether so that I don’t have to actually lie. But when I asked for the manager at one of the smaller supermarkets, the rather pissy store clerk told me to call Mr. So-and-So. So I called him, and he told me to call Mr. Other So-and-So. So I called but no one answered. And I was standing there on my cell phone, wandering what to do because my driver had already left and I needed to get these prices… so I faked a conversation on the cell phone, turned to the store clerk and said, “Mr. Other So-and-So said it is OK” and walked right in. My hand was shaking for the first twenty minutes out of fear that the guy would actually walk in to the store and I would be caught in my lie! And then I realized that none of the staff cared enough to follow up on me and I relaxed.

Maputo as a location was more enjoyable this time around – I had several friendly Couch Surfing contacts and met people at the hotel. On my first night in town, I went to the fish market. This was something that I had wanted to do back in 2009 but never got around to, so I set it as a must for this survey. Basically you walk around the market and buy fresh fish and seafood from the various stalls then take it to one of the restaurants on the side and pay them to cook it for you – BYOF (Bring Your Own Food). The restaurants all frame this outdoor seating area with live music and vendors. It was one of my top five favorite meals on survey for taste and experience!

Weighing our purchase and showing us the red gills to prove its freshness.

Live, beautifully colored lobsters, waiting to be eaten... making me feel guilty... as did the barrels full of fidgeting prawns.

The tasty, edible result!

Although the evening had a frustrating ending as we hailed a taxi back to the hotel. The driver took us around the block to get back to the main road and – surprise surprise – we were stopped at a police road block. Well, two policemen, and they weren’t technically blocking the road, and it seemed to be a very selective road block as many other cars were never stopped. I had a photocopy of my passport (after my Namibia fiasco the original remains always under lock and key) but my friend had no ID on him. And you know, even if we both had our original passports on us, they still would have found some bogus reason to extract a bribe from us, which is how this episode ended. The whole thing pissed me off, especially as I suspect that our driver was in on it. It made me grateful that I was using the same driver from August 2009, Languito. He spoke good English and had already worked with us for two surveys. He was trustworthy and I never felt like he was trying to pull a quick one on me – unlike most of the other taxi drivers I had in Maputo and Pemba.

The only other touristy activity that I did in Maputo was a brief visit to the Museum of Natural History. And the only reason that I wanted to go was to see their collection of elephant fetuses. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a collection of fourteen fetuses that range from shortly after conception through to 22 months, when an elephant is ready to be born. How did they get 14 elephant fetuses? Well, during WWI the Colonial Government wanted to clear an area south of Maputo for agricultural use. They hired hunters to kill off the game, including 2000 elephants. And from the pregnant females in those 2000 elephants they found and preserved this collection of fetuses. The cleared land was never approved for agricultural use. Overall the museum had a very impressive collection -- tainted by the reminder that these were all once living animals.

The whole elephant fetus collection.

An elephant fetus at 9 months... when you and I would be pushing our way through the birth canal.

Looking down on a re-creation of a very active watering-hole.

On a more sobering note, there were protests and demonstrations in Maputo the first week in September 2010 -- one week after I left the country. People were protesting the fast-rising food / fuel / utilities costs. The Mozambican Metical has fallen about 30% over the last year, and when the majority of products are imported from neighboring countries, i.e. South Africa, the prices on the shelves go up and beyond the locals' budgets. Over a dozen protesters were killed.

Aug 2010 Survey - Durban, South Africa

My survey in Durban was brief, with no scheduled free-time. I stayed in Umhlanga, a suburb that is maybe 15 minutes outside of the city. It was super convenient for work, as I was across the street from the mall, but otherwise the area has that generic modern feel to it, meaning that it could have really been anywhere...

The one touristy outing that I did was to see the Moses Mabhida Stadium from the 2010 World Cup. It's a beautiful structure with a 100m-high arch that spans its length. You can take a funicular up the arch to get nice Durban-city views; you can also strap yourself in and swing off of the arch.

The Moses Mabhida Stadium

From the top of the arch, looking down into the stadium

I enjoyed watching the World Cup in Brussels, and so it was neat to be able to actually visit a stadium (especially after seeing the calabash in Joburg). I took a tour of the stadium, going to the VIP areas, the locker rooms, and of course, walking on the pitch itself (at which point, of course, my camera died)!

The VIP areas had some really nice artwork on display. Here we seem to be under water...

The locker room!

The color of the seats are supposed to represent Durban's beaches: blue for the water and orange/red for the sand and the sun. It's a beautiful affect when you see the whole stadium.

The team benches on the sidelines... thank you Blackberry camera!

Aug 2010 Survey - Johannesburg, South Africa

I guess I'm really not a blogger at heart as I don't seem to have the discipline for posting. So, kind of like cheating on your homework and falsifying the dates, I'm going to try to write these after the fact and we'll see how they turn out... once again, I'm fuzzy on the details so don't hold me down on accuracy!

My first city was Johannesburg (from now on referred to as Joburg out of affection and convenience). I arrived in town with my social schedule pretty much planned out as I had contacted Megan, a friend that I made three years ago at a travel conference in Cartagena, Colombia when I was with Elderhostel. She's from Joburg and still lives there. So I was quite relaxed as I started the trip, knowing that I had a friend in town. And I really enjoyed Joburg *because* of Megan, getting to know her better and realizing just how much we have in common. On Sunday, after going to the Lion Park and the Apartheid Museum (which I'll cover in a minute), we went to her family's place for dinner. Sitting in the living room with the heat on (August is the end of South Africa's winter) and a purring cat on my lap, I wished that Joburg was in the middle of my trip, as I knew that this was exactly the relaxing and cozy kind of evening I would need in a few weeks' time... and oh god was I right!

Anyhow, the work was easy enough -- surveying South Africa is like surveying Europe with regards to ease of information, consistency and accessibility, clarity, etc. I spent all of my working time in Sandton, north of central Johannesburg. Most of the businesses have migrated to the northern suburbs, making Sandton the new CBD (Central Business District). It's where the wealth is, and the nice hotels and homes and malls... it seemed like there was a (strip) mall every 3 or 4 blocks, I kid you not. We joked about counting them but forgot, or lost track, I'm not sure which... once you leave the Sandton Business District, it's just miles and miles of suburban sprawl. You can't live here without a car.

About 40 minutes outside of Joburg, there's a Lion Park/game reserve. For the Lion Park, it's basically a petting zoo with a lion cub enclosure, and then an area to feed the giraffes (they gently wrap their tongue around your hand and take the pellets with their fuzzy lips) and ostriches (they peck your open palm rather violently, coming down like a pointed sledgehammer and knocking half of the pellets out of your hand in the process).

Yummy.

For the lion cubs, it seems to be the luck of timing as to how old/big the cubs are as to what you are able to do in the enclosure. I've seen pictures of people holding the cubs, but in our case we were allowed 2 minutes in the enclosure of rather big sleeping cubs that I tentatively petted. The one cub who was awake was pacing and muttering and I kept a respectful distance.

In the lion's den... literally.

Don't you just wanna snuggle into that neck and play with those paws...?

The other section of the park is a drive-through enclosure. It was a mini-safari in Megan's compact car, with anti-smash & grab film on the windows. We saw zebras, and an antelope of sorts... shoot... I've forgotten the specific names. I want to say springbok but I'm not sure if that's accurate, or if I'm just thinking of the Clover butter 500gr that I priced in all 5 cities this survey. Anyhow, the main attraction was the lion enclosure. We drove through several sections (one pride per section) with the windows all closed and got the closest I've ever been to a lion. Like cows, you don't appreciate how big they actually are until you're next to them.

Lion and car.

A little mohawk and sniffing action.

After our brush with nature, we totally changed paces with a visit to the Apartheid Museum. They recommend that you budget 2 hours to visit. We were there for 3 and only got 60% of the way through, having to hustle through the last 40% as they were going to close. It's an impressive museum, just chock-a-block full of information -- photos, personal accounts, videos. It's a real living archive and a bit overwhelming. It's organized chronologically and I found the 80's decade the hardest. That's when I entered the world, blissfully ignorant. So to see video footage of the protests and violence and to think that I was living a sheltered childhood in Europe was disorienting. If it happened before my lifetime, there's not really anything I could do about it so we can leave it at that. But now that I'm on this earth, in theory I can play some kind of a role, be that of action or inaction. I am indirectly accountable... and if I apply that reasoning to today's events then there are so many events where I'm being extremely inactive. How will I respond to future museums that cover this decade?

But the funny thing is, despite the horrible-ness of Apartheid, South Africa has one of the most positive and hopeful vibes I've ever sensed in my travels. OK, in that statement we're ignoring Joburg's awful reputation for violence (car jackings, muggings, house robberies, where the potential for injury/death to the victim is high as the criminals do not value life) and we're forgetting that I only had a superficial mall-filled 2.5 weeks in the country... but the majority of the people that I spoke with were friendly and positive, be they black, white, colored, Indian... and that was the terminology that everyone around me was using. It was refreshing to be able to have a conversation about skin color and politics and not have to worry about political correctness the way you would in the USA. Because skin color is at the root of so many US tensions, but no one talks about it there, at least not directly and not without hub-bub. Maybe it was just because I was really interested in the topic and on a self-created condensed Apartheid tour, but I found people very open about race in a way that you would never find in the USA.

I was able to finish the survey early enough to take a half day tour into Soweto, as in SO (South) WE (Western) TO (Townships).

Indeed!

The townships were formed during Apartheid to keep the blacks separate but conveniently close enough to work in the cities or in the gold mines. Soweto was the heart of the black uprising against Apartheid and is where Mandela and Desmond Tutu had/have their homes -- two Nobel Peace Prize winners on the same block! Before visiting, I assumed that South African townships would be on a parallel with slums or Brazilian favelas, but I was totally wrong. Yes, there are appallingly poor sections with makeshift housing and no running water or electricity, but there are other perfectly middle-class areas that could be a suburban street in any town. And Soweto is massive -- it's a city within the city of Joburg. We only saw a portion of it.

Our tour focused on landmarks from the uprising, like Freedom Square where the ANC's Freedom Charter was first read out:

Different statues represent the different tenets of the charter. The flags are left-over from the World Cup.

We also visited the Hector Pieterson Memorial, commemorating Pieterson's death (he was just a child) in June 1976 during a student demonstration. Students were protesting the new requirement that all schooling be taught and tested in Afrikaans. The demonstration was a key point (or even the real start?) of the Uprising. Although many died, Hector's death is so prominent because of the photo that you can see displayed in the memorial. It circulated in the media at the time and showed the international community what was going on in South Africa under Apartheid. I felt a bit out of the loop, as I didn't recognize the image.

The Hector Pieterson Memorial

Aug 2010 Survey

(As I'm sure you've figured out by now) I didn't survey in May. My colleagues went out and wandered the supermarkets and I had a blissful quarter in Brussels, rewriting our training manual. It was a wonderful change of all paces (work and personal) and helped me to really dig into Brussels and feel more at home (after what, only 1.5 years being back???) and it's left me better rested and enthusiastic for surveying in August. And I think that I lucked out with my cities:

Johannesburg, South Africa (JULY 30 - AUG 04)
Cape Town, South Africa (AUG 04 - AUG 11)
Durban, South Africa (AUG 11 - AUG 15)
Maputo, Mozambique (AUG 15 - AUG 21)
Pemba, Mozambique (AUG 21 - AUG 28)

"But Mozambique!" all of the sharp readers out there cry, "Didn't you go to Maputo in Aug 09?" Good eye: there is double-dipping in this itinerary. And while I didn't love Maputo in 2009, I am excited to try it again. The work should be easier as I'll know what to expect: it'll be the first survey where I'm already familiar with the location and I'll be following my own survey from 2009, and I know that I do damn good work ;) Also, I'll be better prepared socially so that I can enjoy the city. Last time I just kind of peetered out... I'll try to avoid that this time around!!!

In the meantime, I will be watching the World Cup for research.

Feb 2010 Survey - San Jose, Costa Rica

This was my second time in Costa Rica and it was a drastically different experience from when I came here with Elderhostel in 2006. In 2006 I never set foot in the city due to delayed flights and a tight itinerary; I had a wonderful whirlwind tour of Costa Rica’s highlights as we hopped between different programming sites… this time around I stayed in the city suburbs the whole time, crashing through my threshold for survey tolerance. San Jose was the city that broke this surveyor’s back. It was the end and I was tired and basically just fed up and the wonderful first half of the survey felt a lifetime ago.

I didn’t plan any free time in San Jose as I thought it would be better to save that for destinations that were new to me, like Guatemala and Panama. So there wasn’t any additional pressure to finish the work early as I had no plans for any free time… which then meant that the work expanded to fill the time. I spent the whole survey in Escazu, one of the affluent suburbs, like a mini Americana. The hotel was walking distance from a massive, modern mall (well, walking the edge of a main road sans sidewalk). I spent most of my time in the mall, and an unexpected amount of time walking between mall and hotel as I kept forgetting really important things—like the survey book where I write down all of my prices, which I realized right as I walked into the supermarket; like any form of ID so that I could exchange money—in one day, I walked a total of four round-trips between the hotel and the mall, two of which were unnecessary.

The view from my hotel room... I never got a good sense of San Jose, being in the Escazu suburb the whole time...

I had accumulated exhaustion over the course of the survey, five weeks being the threshold at which I fall apart. I became increasingly irritable so that by the end I was muttering curses under my breath, usually something along the lines of “Where the F-’s the F-ing salt?!” (as that’s something that I frequently miss and have to search for… in my defense, they’re surprisingly small sections and blend in easily!) It helped me to combination focus and vent. As I stealthed some of the stores I would have fake phone conversations on my Blackberry to throw off any suspicious store staff—another opportunity to vent and release.

I think that this is the Plaza Espana, enjoyed during a brief outing into downtown San Jose to visit the Gold Museum.

The most exciting thing that happened in Costa Rica was a 4.4 earthquake on my last night. I was in the mall’s movie theatre watching “Precious” and maybe 30 minutes before the end there was a subtle shake that made you wonder if it was just in your head and then DAMN the whole room just RUMBLED so that I grabbed on to my seat. One woman cried out and about a dozen people walked out right then. I sat there waiting to see if more temblores were coming, being ready to copy those around me and make a dash (I’ve learned to imitate the crowd in unknown situations on survey and it’s a practice that’s served me well so far)… I was on the aisle in the last row, so easy exit, although I was torn because I wanted to see the whole film… but I didn’t want to be the idiot that got crushed by movie theatre rubble because she wanted to see the end of the film… Needless to say there were no aftershocks (that I noticed) and I saw the whole film. The experience was just unsettling, especially knowing the power and devastation of the recent Haitian and Chilean earthquakes. You take a stable environment for granted and it really throws your sense of security when the world around you moves unexpectedly and you have no control. It’s not like you can ask to get off the ride to safer ground.

So… Costa Rica went out with a bang, or a rumble. Thank goodness for sturdy construction!!