We made it home! and thoughts on CR

After traveling 1 1/2 days through 6 airports, we have made it back to Winona as of last night! I liked visiting Costa Rica, but I really liked getting on the plane to come home. I have been asked several times now if I would move there and the answer is no. I cannot place my finger on the reason why, but it is not what I expected. I don't surf, so that aspect holds no appeal. The beaches we were at were nice, but fairly dirty- a lot of plastic washes up on the beaches and the sand isn't the nice smooth sand that I like so much. We met a lot of interesting people, but they were mainly tourists. I did not get much sense about who Costa Ricans (Tico/Ticas) really are. That is probably the biggest disappointment. It really is a tourist destination even though we were there as tourists a lot of the cool aspects of Costa Rica are lost because of people like us. It is a very small country that has become inundated by tourists. I got some reprieve from that in San Jose where the tourists are outnumbered except in our hotel. San Jose is a busy, crazy city and quiet tranquility can be found in their beautiful parks, but not really anywhere else that I could see.
The country is beautiful. The forests and hills and beaches are so different than Minnesota. The vegitation is so lush. I love the tropics. The Pacuare River was so stunning (above the water). I want to go back to Central America some day, but probably to a country a little less discovered and developed. I plan to learn Spanish. That would have helped tremendously. Not so much in day to day living because even if people did not speak English very well or at all, there was always sign language. The fact that I could not communicate with the Ticos changed my view on the trip a great deal. It also brought home the fact that Americans really need to develop a more global view. There is no excuse that most people here are not fluent in more than 1 language.
I would like to close with a cool piece of information I learned on our last day in CR. I had no idea, but Costa Rica abolished their military Dec. 1, 1948. To me that is amazing. I contemplated on the plane ride home how that could ever happen in the US. Sadly, I could not visualize it.
The current president of Costa Rica is Oscar Arias. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. He is now using some of the money from that to run a number of programs in CR. One that I read in the paper while we were these is to reduce the number of semi-automatic weapons in the country. It is illegal for citizens to own guns. However, the police force uses them. Arias is concentrating on destroying these weapons as he (rightly) recognizes they are not necessary. Arias is quoted saying "Security is established by other means, such as creating professionalism in the police force, not with weapons that kill." Four destruction processes have been carried out since 2001. 1,560 guns were destoyed in 2004 and another 3,614 were destoyed in 2005. There has been a problem recently where people have been stealing them from police departments and probably selling them (one police officer was caught with seventeen), so destroying them is a very wise choice. Arias is urging other countries to do the same. I hope the US follows another country's lead for once. It would be a refreshing change...