I can’t remember what we had to pick up the first time we drove the two hours to the postal customs office, in Zapote. What I do remember is trying to find the agency. We’d learned the address: across from the Zapote Catholic Church. In Costa Rica, landmarks are used instead of street names. For example, the road in front of our house is nameless, so our address is: 500 meters west of the San Juan School.
“Simple,” we said. “We’ll just get off the highway at Zapote, and look for the church.” I don’t know how many churches we found, one steeple at a time, before we located the post office and custom’s agency. I know you’re wondering, “Why didn’t you just ask?” And that’s something I can do, though I can’t always understand the answer.
To enter the agency, we had to wait for a parking space in the tiny post office lot, then walk through a gate where two guards stood on duty, clipboards in hand. One of them checked our IDs and our official custom’s document. He recorded everything and waved us in.
We finally found the right door among a maze of offices, a cavernous space with counters numbered from one to four, and a bank of chairs in front of each one. We approached the first counter and waited in line. When I got to the front, the nice man checked my ID, wrote everything down, and said we should wait.
So we sat down in front of window number two and listened for our names to be called. In line number two, another man recorded my information, opened my package and determined what taxes were due. I owed less than one dollar, US.
When he’d finished, we sat some more, in front of line number three, to pay the tax. The clerk at line number recorded my information again before collecting the money. After we paid, we waited in line number four, to pick up the package, and, of course, have the information recorded by yet another clerk. Including driving and waiting, the trip to Zapote took about six hours.
The second time, over a year later, we’d forgotten where the place was, so we got off the highway in Zapote and asked a jogger, who jumped into the car with us, and guided us there. This guy was so sweet that he wanted to go in with us, and wait in the four lines, but he didn’t have his ID, and they wouldn’t let him.
The third time, yesterday, Jack said he knew how to get there. What he knew turned out to be the location of the church, and not the agency. We knew it had to be a few hundred meters from the church one way or another, and toured the town for about fifteen minutes, until we spied it.
We’re not going to have any more packages sent to us in Costa Rica, if we can help it, even though this time, the nice lady in line number three gave me a piece of candy.
