Cost Rica Postmortem

Just a few final comments about the Costa Rica trip.

My 5 camera deal turned out to be too good to be true. Nobody's fault, especially given everything the technical people were dealing with, but I edned up paying US$300 for 2 cameras (plus my own). One of those cameras was on a dolly however, so I got some very sweet stuff on GM during his set with ACyM. Big thanks to Luciano and Fede from Papaya, and Julio Molina for pulling the camera crew together at the last minute!

The show on Sunday was shot with 6 cameras so I hope to get a tape of GM's stuff from that night. He did 2 songs with Malpais.

Ivan, GM, and Brent backstage at Papaya Fest

A lot of people asked me how I liked Costa Rica... Honestly, I spent almost the entire time in San Jose, and like all major cities in Central American it is probably not a good reflection on the country as a whole. Outside of the downtown core was very clean and pleasant, but downtown San Jose was a bit of a pit. I was expecting more old colonial buildings, but instead I was surprised to see that much of downtown is from the 1970's. It kind of reminded me of the parts of Vancouver that sprouted up during that city's 70's building boom. We stayed smack in the middle of downtown, in a decent area that was surrounded by pedestrian strolls and shops, but our hotel was full of whores and whoremongers. It got quite depressing to see ugly fat old gringos bringing in young chicas all day and all night. I started calling our hotel the "whore-tel". I was glad to get out of there!

I'm probably going to take a bit of a break from shooting with GM for a while. I need to do a few interviews with some people here in Belize, and I also need to get some stuff with GM at home and around Belize City. I will hopefully shoot that when my pal, and soundman, Doug Murray is in Belize late next month. But after that I may not shoot much until summer when GM goes to Canada for a few festivals. That trip is going to need some major finance, which I don't have yet!