el árbitro nos ha robado el partido

On Saturday, as it was Valentine's Day (el día del amor y la amistad), and as Colin is such a romantic, he took Zoë out for a date... to the football!

A word of warning, if you have absolutely no interest in football you can probably stop reading here!

Ideally we would have been able to go and see our local team C.S. Herediano (English) play in their own little stadium. But as there hasn't been a suitable home game available we decided to take a trip to Tibas, a town/suburb just north of San Jose where Heredianos were away to Saprissa (English). At least this way we would get to see our home team and also get to visit Costa Rica's largest stadium, Estadio Ricardo Saprissa (English), where Saprissa, and also currently the Costa Rican national team, play.

When you visit Costa Rica, and if you have any passing interest in football, you cannot fail to see or hear about the football team Saprissa. They are the Manchester United and Chelsea of Costa Rica. The richest and most successful team in the country and who it seems nearly every second person in the country supports as their "home" team. As you walk the streets of Heredia or San Jose, or in the malls and street markets you will always see at least one person in the purple of Saprissa. It is a shame that Saprissa are the Man U of Costa Rica, and therefore we can in no way bring ourselves to support them, because their purple and white strips are quite fetching it has to be said (although perhaps wearing a shirt with "Bimbo", Saprissa's sponsor, across the front isn't smart in the UK).

We are not quite sure what the appeal is in supporting a team than nearly everyone else also supports (or at least it would appear that way). Saprissa do have one other team in the country that they are large rivals with, and that is Liga Deportiva Alajuelense (English). However, and this might just be in the areas we have visited, even this team seem to only have half the support of Saprissa. In the sports shops in malls and in towns, the only football shirts on sale are Saprissa, LDA and the Costa Rican national strip. Walking around we do occasionally see people wearing foreign football tops, these are only ever Barcelona, Real Madrid, Man Utd, Chelsea or Arsenal, no one else.

On approach to the stadium there were plenty of opportunities to purchase (mostly) Saprissa and (some) Heredia merchandise from the various street vendors that had set up stalls on street corners. Zoë was particularly attracted to the spiked furry hats with tails, but managed to resist. There were also one or two touts selling tickets. At the stadium itself there were quite large queues formed at the boleteria, but there was one window selling tickets to the palco and platea which had a very small queue which we joined.

The stadium seats just over 23,000 people, so it was very similar in size to what we are used to with our own home stadium, Pittodrie, home of Aberdeen. However, Saprissa's stadium has two very large covered stands on the east and west sides (along the touchlines of the field) and two smaller uncovered stands on the north and south (along the goal lines).
As it was a special occasion we purchased two palco tickets. These were the most expensive seats available and were for the boxes that were half way up the east and west stands. They were 8000 colones each (which is about £18 for both - you would struggle to get one cheap seat ticket in Scotland for that). On this occasion the tickets were not for specific numbered seats, so upon checking with a steward were were informed we could sit wherever we wanted. The palcos were really just sections of this part of the stand that were partially separated by wooden sides to their neighbours. There was no glass front or soft seats here, although some of the palcos must have been private or corporate as they were locked and had televisions. Each of the boxes held about 40 seats, and we picked one that was empty at the time (about 25 minutes before kick-off). At kick-off time though, it and most of the other boxes filled up quite a bit with men, women and children all present. The stadium looked about half full (so again similar to Pittodrie!) but the attendance probably wasn't helped by the fact that the game was on television. The only area of the stadium that looked particularly active/rowdy was in the South end (the sol sur) where the Ultras and a brass band were located. This group of fans were continually jumping and seemed to be the only section that were singing any songs during the game.

That's not to say that our own section was completely quiet. In the front row of our palco was a male Saprissa fan who occasionally got quite animated and would allow us to hear some curses in Spanish. There were quite a lot of "hijo de puta" coming from him whenever a Saprissa forward missed another sitter.

It was also interesting to note that the few Heredia fans present were just dotted about all over the stadium, there was no one single area dedicated for them. Another difference was the fencing all around the pitch, something that hasn't been seen in the UK for a number of years. This did mean that no ball boys were situated around the field as the ball usually didn't make it over the fence when played out. The pitch at Saprissa is artifical turf and the ball did appear to bounce slightly more than on grass.

The game itself was quite entertaining, and the overall quality seemed very similar to that of an SPL game. As you would expect of a latin american country, the individual skill and technical ability was present, but it did seem that the players would often try to beat one man too many and then lose the ball too often. Crosses of the ball were often good and many of the goal chances came from these or fast counter-attacks. The goalkeepers, like many in Europe nowadays, preferred to punch the ball out rather than attempt to catch it.

Saprissa are currently rated 122 in the IFFHS World club rankings. As a comparison with Scottish teams, Glasgow Rangers and Celtic are 24 and 78 respectively and Aberdeen are currently rated 195.

Saprissa won the game 2-1, after Heredia had taken a 1-0 lead. Despite Saprissa dominating much of the game, they were helped by some dubious refereeing decisions including the award of a penalty and subsequent sending off of a Heredia player (Mauricio Solis). After this decision and the penalty it took about 5 minutes for the game to restart and the Heredia players to stop surrounding the dodgy ref. At the end of the game the ref was again surrounded (after he blew the final whistle while Heredia were about to take a corner) and we read later about the Heredia coach, Paulo Wanchope a name familiar to British football fans, complaining that his team had to play against 12 players (including the ref).

It took a long time for us to catch a bus back to Heredia as the queue was long and numerous full buses passed without stopping. But despite there being both Saprissa and Heredia fans in the queue everyone was in reasonably high spirits after a pretty good evening's entertainment.

Match photos from La Nacion.

At the movies (en Tres-D)

On Tuesday we treated ourselves to a day to the mall. It was our "anniversary" so we thought we would see a movie.

We arrived at the Paseo de las Flores at about 10:30am and a lot of the shops and food places were still shut, so we had a cup of tea and coffee and a very nice piece of chocolate cake each (a day off from healthy eating). After finishing these we had a little look in some of the shops before heading to the cinema at the end of the mall to buy our tickets. Many of the films here are shown in English but with Spanish subtitles, the exception to this is animated films which are most often dubbed into Spanish. We decided to see Coraline y la puerta secreta, in 3-D. This would be a challenge as it was dubbed, but we figured that at least we would be able to enjoy the 3-D. Because it was a 3-D film it was also a bit more expensive than the usual showings (3500 colones compared to 2200 colones). The coming attractions (all animations) were in 3-D, which was nice. The film itself was entertaining and the dialogue was nearly always easy enough for us to understand so following the story was never a problem. The 3-D was a nice extra and wasn't overdone.

After the film we had some lunch at the La Fabbrica Pizzeria (as we said, a day off from healthy eating), also at the mall. Zoë really enjoyed her pizza, while Colin thought his probably wasn't quite as good as that of our usual Italian restaurant (L'Antica Roma). Either way the pizzas were big and tasty.

On the way to the mall we noticed that all the bus stops have changed again in Central Heredia.... this time without advance warning in La Nacion. Perhaps this is what you miss out on when you don't have a TV!

All Change!

So, just as we were figuring out where in Heredia to catch what bus to get to where we want to go … they change all the bus stops (paradas de bus) as of this coming Saturday (27th December 2008)! OK, not all of them. But most of them.

Fortunately, we read La Nacion online (a good way to practice our Spanish), so this didn’t come as a complete shock. Today they published a useful little map of the changed bus stops. I also managed to locate a full list of the changes (which includes those that haven’t moved, and details of the relocation of paradas de taxi as well) on the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes (MOPT) website.

The main purpose of all these changes is to try to decrease the congestion and reduce pollution in the centre of Heredia. We haven’t been here all that long, but it is obvious that anything is worth a try.

Mini Festival de Las Flores

Yesterday evening we went to investigate was happening for the Mini Festival de Las Flores in Heredia. This festival was on from the 18th to the 21st but we didn’t have the opportunity to go until last night. We were amused to see many people (especially children) wearing woolly hats, scarves and gloves, because to us this was a lovely, warm, summer evening with long sleeves being optional!

We were treated to a performance by Chester the pasayo, and were pleased that we understood all of what he was saying (of course it was mainly aimed at the children). In the background of the pictures you can see La Basílica de la Inmaculada Concepción built in 1797 which, due to its squat, thick-walled design, has managed to withstand several earthquakes which destroyed other churches of this period. Chestercito waited until evening mass (misa) had finished prior to starting his show immediately as folk streamed out of the doors of the church.

After the pasayo, one of the organisers sat down and read some childrens stories:

Then it was time for a very nice firework display (fuegos artificiales – sorry, no pictures) and a live merengue band (not that we are experts in latin music, but the main singer of the band did mention merengue and he did seem to have a güira …).

Please note that the video clip below is so that you can hear a short clip of the music, the video itself is very dark and you won’t see a lot!

We enjoyed the fact that everyone was in good humour, singing along and really dancing to the band (even though this made it a little difficult to hold the camera steady to get good photos!) Those that didn’t want to dance made sure that those that did had plenty of space, and it was a really nice atmosphere. Zoë enjoyed it even though she usually avoids crowds whenever possible. She was also very happy when the band played a version of a Juanes song (La Camisa Negra) and she was able to join in with singing along!

As we left the parque central to go catch our bus back, we were reminded that this is most definitely not the UK as we walked past 3 police officers with guns standing unobtrusively at the edge of the park. And then on the way past the casino, we saw a guard with the biggest gun we have ever seen (apart from in the movies). One day we will take pictures, but coming from a country where guns are a rarity we are understandably a little unsure how folk with guns react when you take pictures of them!

Where we are.

Costa Rica, the Central American country (not to be confused with the island of Puerto Rico), is divided into 7 provinces (provincias), each of which is divided into a number of counties (cantones), and each of these into a number of districts (distritos).

Our home in Costa Rica is officially located in the district of Santa Lucia, in the county of Barva, in the province of Heredia (Santa Lucia de Barva de Heredia). However, for most practical reasons relating to our everyday life it is located in San Josecito de San Rafael de Heredia. The house was designed and built by our friends, Victoria & Peter. They have since moved to a new property close by, so this house is on the market – in the meantime, we took the option to rent it for 3 months as we were already familiar with both the house and the area having previously stayed with our friends here.

The house has a virtually unobstructed view across the central valley (meseta central or valle central) to the west, which affords us wonderful views of the sunset from both the roof terrace and big picture windows in the master bedroom. If this sounds grand … then, for us at least, it is. The house is bigger than the one we have in Aberdeen and certainly has better views!

Our home is a 25 minute walk from the centre of the city of Heredia (the capital of the province of Heredia). Or, more accurately stated, it is a 25 minute downhill walk to the centre of Heredia from the house. It takes longer to get back because it is all uphill – we usually wimp out and take the bus!

It is a 20 minute walk to the centre of the city of San Rafael (city by name, small town by UK standards). This is where we usually go to buy our groceries, either at the weekly farmers market (feria) or the Palí supermercado. We choose to shop here instead of Heredia because we can walk back without having to negotiate the killer hill*, but if we need to pick up a few bits while we are out and about in Heredia we’ll either go to the Mercado Central, Palí or Mas x Menos (another supermercado).

For items that are more difficult to come by, or “pequeños lujos” (little luxuries), we plan to go to the Automercado (which sells a lot of imported foods that you can’t buy elsewhere, at a price, of course) which is a 20 minute walk from the house. But so far, we haven’t had any little luxuries as with the current weak £ our budget is a little stretched.

And, naturally, the house is also within easy walking distance of the Taoist Tai Chi Society clubhouse … which is conveniently situated right next to yet another Palí! So, walk to Tai Chi, pick up a few necessities from Palí, get the bus back up the hill…

* The hill is actually the slope of Barva volcano. Fortunately this volcano has been dormant since 1492.

Zoë's Spanish Phrase of the Day

Mi papá montó en avestruz.

This was a phrase that came out of my mouth in my Spanish lesson today.... erm...