On addresses and directions

Luckily for me, almost everything I need in Puerto Viejo is on one of two parallel streets or the short streets connecting these two main roads. The two consists of more than just these few blocks, but all the outlying areas are neighborhoods. I consider this a fortunate situation because of the unfortunate situation of addresses in Costa Rica. Or, maybe better put, the unfortunate situation of there not being addresses in Costa Rica. For those of you kind enough to send me mail (shameless plug) you’ll think this odd, as my address seems very normal. That is because it’s a post office box. Houses, businesses, schools, and well, most likely the post office containing my PO box don’t have addresses in the way we think of them.

We’ll start off with my host family’s address. I live at ‘the two-story yellow house across the street from the night high school in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui’ Yeah, no numbers, no street name, no zip code, no district, county, province, state, or parish code. That’s how addresses work here in Costa Rica. Even in the capital city, San Jose, a major building like the Peace Corps office’s address is ‘300 meters past the Fischel pharmacy on Calle Rohrmoser.’ San Jose is big enough that you do have to say the street, but still, no numbers, no zip code, none of that jazz. Admittedly, this may mean more to me than other people, not everyone places efficiency and organization as high on their value rankings as I do. I’m the type of person who’s ideal city would have all the streets named A-Z, then AA-ZZ, with the avenues crossing the streets and being numerical, with every ten streets being a major crossway. Oh, how I love cities on a grid.

Personal quirks aside, Costa Rica’s system is nonetheless about as contextual as it gets. If you don’t know where the night high school is, you’ll have to find that out before you can find my house. If you’re looking for the Peace Corps office, you have to search across the entire San Jose map for Calle Rohrmoser, then pray and hope you can find someone who knows where the pharmacy is, or you’re stuck driving slowly with one eye on the road and one eye looking for the pharmacy. Then doing your best to estimate 300 meters from there (much easier if you grew up anywhere except the ridiculous countries not using the metric system (the United States, Burma, Liberia). In smaller towns, addresses might not even exist-at least not until a family is forced to write one down

by the pesky Peace Corps trainee living in their house (as happened to my training host family). The thing is, El Rosario (my training community) is small enough that everyone knows everyone, and thus anyone visiting the town to see my family would merely have to ask where Xinia lives and would be directed to her house. I hope you noted that the last name isn’t even necessary. When the town is small enough that everyone can see either the church or school from anywhere in town, it actually works pretty well do just give all directions with reference to said landmarks.

Of course, this isn’t quite the same in San Jose. In is defense, San Jose does keep even and odd numbered streets and avenues separated, so if you’re given a corner (which you often are) you’ll know what quarter of the city you’re in. I fully recognize that a developing country like Costa Rica may not have the money to put up awesome green signs on every corner and traffic light, but it doesn’t mean the almost total lack of street signs in San Jose isn’t all sorts of frustrating. If the lack of street numbers of signs isn’t hard enough, I have noticed (because a Tico pointed it out to me) that in Puerto Viejo everyone always give directions as ‘por arriba’ (up that way). The problem is, there does not seem to be a collective (contextual) concept of which way is up. He showed me by asking two students which way they lived, they both answered ‘por arriba’ without indicating which way. When he asked them which way, the two students pointed in opposite directions. So, even though there’s only one main road-it doesn’t seem clear which way is up the road or which way is down.

But, as crazy and frustrating as it seems initially, it wouldn’t be fair to write off the Costa Rica system of addresses (which most likely is similar to systems across Central America). You may have noticed that addresses in Costa Rica are really just directions. Unless one is a local, this means that one can’t read street signs and numbers to find a house, he must ask directions. I used to be of the opinion that needing to ask for directions was only done by jokers that couldn’t read a map. But, traveling in places like South Korea and Thailand forced me to end my shame/fear of asking directions, because, even if there were maps, streets signs, and numbered buildings, my inability to read Korean or Thai made them useless. Plus, asking directions is one of the less creepy ways I’ve encountered to breaking the ice with that cutie pie sitting on the bench or in the café. I digress. The thing about directions in Costa Rica; is they force you to actually roll down the window or, preferably, stop your bike, and actually talk to someone. As a tropical country, there are people out on the porch all year long, so it’s a great opportunity to shake hands, exchange smiles, and use our unique talent of talking with another one of our 6.8 billion fellow species. Costa Ricans, are, generally friendly people (remember-generalizations are generally true). Life here is pretty laid back; so no one feels put upon when asked for directions. Often he’ll come back with a question about where I’m from, or what I’m doing here. Maybe even throw in a ‘very good’ or some other basic English he’d like to try out. I like this aspect of asking directions, it gives locals a sense of worth, of utility, and it gets people talking to each other, engaging with their fellow man. I’ve been impressed at the kindness and helpfulness of people when I’ve asked for directions, or merely confirmed I was going the right way. I’m not going to get into a debate about what caused what, but the way the Costa Ricans handle their address system is a great part of their society or the Costa Rican address systems beautifully reflects Costa Rican’s friendly, relaxed, and talkative nature.