Turista Rica

Well I have had a week in Costa Rica now... and wow, what a difference to Venezuela. After spending 2 months in a country where I barely saw a westerner, to this place, where the gringos out number the locals on the buses. My opinion of Costa Rica isn't great unfortunately, which is why I'm heading for Nicaragua this afternoon.

Costa Rica (or Turista Rica as I've started to call it) has sold itself for tourism; for North American tourism. In some of the tourist hot spots its hard to imagine you are in Latin America at all - you can pay everywhere using US dollars (as well as the local currency of course), English is spoken everywhere, and the streets are full of 4 x 4 rental cars, American style fast food restaurants and hotels. A lot of the countryside is now covered in resort style hotels, and you can see countless more being constructed. On the coast, there's one word on everyone's lips; "real estate", as you see billboards advertising plots of land for sale everywhere. I guess this place has become for North Americans, what the Costa del Sol has become for the Brits, a cheap place to have a holiday home with great weather and beaches.

Costa Rica has really embraced tourism, which in a way is great for the economy of the country; they've made their country really accessible to the middle class tourist, who pop down for a week or two, hire a car, stay in nice hotels etc. They've skipped the whole 'backpacker' tourist thing, where everyone's on a budget, staying in cheap hostels and travelling on buses. But I feel this has come at a price. Its hard to see what the 'real' Costa Rica is like, and the locals don't always seem particularly welcome to the ignorant and often rude tourists that seem to come here. Which is another thing, the tourists that you constantly bump in to here, are not what you would call culturally aware, they are here for the cheap holiday in the sun and are really not interested in anything more. The locals seemed fed up and irritated with the tourists, I didn`t get a smile from any of the local people, especially those serving in restaurants etc. I was just another gringo...

And there is also the issue of sex tourism in Costa Rica; prostitution is legal here, which has of course attracted the wrong kind of tourist seeking the wrong kind of thing. When you arrive in the airport in San Josè you are constantly bombarded with billboards in English reminding you that it is illegal to have sex with under 18`s.

But Costa Rica does seem to be a naturally beautiful country, and I'm sure I could enjoy more if I tried and explored a bit more, maybe. Though its not the kind of place I'm looking for at the moment, so I don't want to waste anymore time here.