ABSTRACT
The Miami to San José flight felt like a celestial bull fight with countless July thunderstorms rumbling over the Isthmus, which our small jet was trying deftly to avoid. Finally, the confrontation could be postponed no longer: we dived straight through the thick black cloud cover over Costa Rica’s Central Valley, the 1,200-metre high plateau in the middle of the country where the majority of its 3.5 million people reside. At the airport, we were greeted by Vicky Montero, a respected stage actress and cultural events organizer working for the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports. She drove us down to Puntarenas, the country’s third largest city and once the country’s proud port on the Pacific coast, where some three hours later we checked into a two-bedroom apartment with bunk beds: our home for the next four weeks. We would share it with cameraman Joaquin Salazar and sound recordist Francisco Esquivel Rodriguez, both employees of public television Channel 13. Many an evening, seated on the balcony, we would talk with them about Costa Rican culture, politics, and, of course, soccer against a dazzling backdrop of thunderbolts and lightning out over the Pacific. Never mind that the beach below us was littered with garbage, turds, and tree trunks, and that the region was suffering from a major dengue epidemic.
