Mall shootings and free resorts

Next Friday (the 29th) I went out to the San Pedro Mall (in a suburb of San José) with this girl named Katie (pronounced Kah-tee) who works down the street from the Tico Times office in a little convenience store. She recommended we go see a movie at the mall when she got off work at 4:30. I had stories that were due so I told her 5.

This time difference is important because it´s a good thing we weren´t in the mall at 5 o´clock when we pulled up front in a taxi, because that´s when 10 shots rang out inside and all hell broke loose in front of us. People running in and out of the mall, falling down stairs; pedestrians running in herds around the corner; more shots going off; people locked out on the second and third floor balconies; mass hysteria.

The taxi driver let me use his cell phone to call the Tico Times, and they told me to start grabbing witnesses. So, suddenly, on my date..thing, I was interviewing witnesses who were inside when the shooting started. And speculation was there were anywhere from 2 to 3 guys, but only one of them was caught on the scene. Two cops dragged him out flailing and shouting. He was shirtless, fat and had a shaved head. He kept shouting in Spanish and English, the only English part being ¨You wanna fuck with me?!?!¨ I was interviewing people right next to the police van that they shoved him into, so I actually have him shouting it on my digital recorder. Traffic in front of the building was at a standstill with everyone trying to get a look, and the same went for traffic on the bridge across the street where people had parked their cars to walk out and get a bird´s eye view. I have pictures of all of it too, crazy stuff. And that was how I got my first news assignment for the Tico Times.

About an hour later, we were on our way to another mall, and we watched the only movie playing other than Shrek, Duro de Matar 4, also known as Die Hard 4.


I spent that Saturday and Sunday at this resort on the Pacific in Punta Leona, maybe 10 kilometers north of Jaco, this popular beachtown for gringos that I have dubbed ¨New Florida,¨ for its significant Latino population, overwhelming number of American restaurants, and array of hooker-hunting men who resemble Jimmy Buffet. I can´t stress enough that maybe 1 out of every 10 upper-middle class suburbanite (and richer, like company CEOs) you see in their 50s or 60s has probably come down to Central America for some afternoon delight with a side of VD. There are books on how these guys develop obsessions with this dirty lifestyle down south. There are so (so so so) many of them here, and they´re all here alone, and they´re all flanked by 18-year-old(?) prostitutes.

But I´m talking about Hotel Punta Leona, which is a resort that´s actually fairly balanced between Costa Rican and Latin American clients and North American ones. And it´s family friendly. I stayed there for free because it was the host to a press conference on the 17th annual Festival de Musica, which sets up shop in all these resorts across the country and brings in these classical music acts from all over North America and Europe. The (new) photography intern Allison and I also happened to be surrounded by journalists from every top media outlet in Costa Rica, and were (I´m getting used to this) the only Americans. I said before, it was all free, and I lived better in those 24 hours than I may have ever have ever erverner. The beach was clear and blue and beautiful. The press conference lasted for one hour, no one took notes, and we just drank expensive Spanish wine and I told Allison that at no other point in our lives will we be treated with this kind of respect for being journalists.

After that they bused us to another resort for dinner, called the Zephyr Palace, because it was like something from Indiana Jones on the outside with stone walls like the Incas built and huge red columns. It´s right on the top of a mountain bluff that just cuts off at the Pacific Ocean. We were so high up that some of the people we were with were able to identify cities that were an hour away up the coast or on the peninsula in front of us. The dinner included salad, sorbet, a main course that was fish topped by steak topped by shrimp and it was all SO GOOD, and then we had this chocolate mousse desert and I had one of those yuppy travel show moments when I took my first bite smiling and thinking about how awesome life is...because of fancy pudding.

Anyway, they continued to pour on the wine, and then amaretto, and then vodka, and then whiskey, and suddenly I was surrounded by a lot of extremely happy Tico journalists. On the van ride back to the resort we were staying at, the Ticos all burst out in these Costa Rican drinking songs that I´m going to have one of them write out for me before I leave. I made a lot of new friends, and I think my favorite is the ex-chileno now Tico journalist Patricio from Channel 13, who was more than up for talking and celebration as long as the night would last. As we sat around by the pool with some of the other late nighters, he sparked up this passionate talk about CAFTA* (*Costa Rica is the only country in Central America yet to approve the free trade agreement. The opposition was so great that it forced the decision out of the hands of Congress and into a public referendum to be held Oct. 7), and how the movement against it was the strongest the nation had seen since the formation of the second republic after the 1948 revolution* (Led by José Figueres, the father of Latin American democracy, whose wife at the time was named Henrietta, a young girl from Birmingham who is now an octagenarian woman living in Montgomery and in-law of the family I´m staying with). He talked about businesses exploiting the poor, how the future of the world in the face of these special interest forces was all in the hands of the youth (as the younger journalists sat there silent with eyes like those of deer in the headlights), and how if the public voted against CAFTA they would make the wheels start turning...

It was on that note that I, too opinionated to hold back my opinion on another country´s affairs (I try to stay out since it´s technically none of my business), suddenly was giving this political speech to everyone around the table how CAFTA failing in Costa Rica was not enough. That the world is changing every day and it´s all in the hands of a few people, and that these businesses will always find a way to get what they want, no matter what the human cost (It´s true and you´re crazy if you don´t believe that.) and one tiny nation cannot stand alone in the battle. I talked about how there needed to be a global movement to overcome them, and somewhere in the middle of that I realized that they were all really listening to me more than smiling at my broken Spanish, and taking me seriously and that got me even more caught up in it so I just kept going...and when I was done, I don´t know, the mood was something I´m still dwelling on. Serious but excited, hopeful but sad. Suddenly though we all connected on this very important level. Talking about global unity with people from other countries who agree with you does that, I guess.

Later that night it was confirmed to me (after flipping the channels and finding this movie for the umpteenth jillionth time) that whenever I miss home, something to remind me of it is never too far away. At any given time, you can find Forrest Gump playing on at least one Costa Rican channel. The other piece of him that follows Alabamians is when you introduce yourself to anyone, from anywhere. ¨Oh, you´re from Alabama? Sweet home!¨ Yeah, get used to it.