Las direcciones

San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, is like other Latin American cities but it also has its uniqueness. It has lots of traffic and all kinds of people going to work, to school, and so on. The one thing that is very interesting and also hard to manage is the way people give directions. Costa Rica uses the metric system, which is fine, but people use it to give an address or talk about a point of reference without using anything else. At the beginning, it was hard to understand and to move from one point to another by just listening to a local give directions. They will say, for instance, “walk 10 meters to the right then 25 meters to the left you will find the place.” Someone giving directions to her house may say, “Get off at the bus stop to the cemetery, go 25 meters to the right, then 100 meters to the left until you find my house.” Do not ask for the names of streets. That simply does not happen. They may tell you if you walk east all numbers are even if you walk west all numbers are odd. San Jose is a wonderful adventure.