Barefoot to Costa Rica

I spent the last week in Costa Rica for my niece’s wedding. I guess destination weddings are getting pretty popular. With everybody living so far apart, you still need airfare and a hotel, so why not go to a resort somewhere?

And a beach wedding sure does encourage bare feet, doesn’t it?

In this blog entry I’m going to write about flying to and from Costa Rica, and my stay in the hotel.

I’ve always had trouble flying barefoot. It seems that I get spotted at the gate while they check my boarding pass, or the flight attendant sees my feet when I get on the plane. And then I get paranoid (or, I should say, get tired of the hassle) and self-censor.

This time I flew American Airlines, which does have a “barefoot clause” in their Conditions of Carriage.

American may refuse to transport you, or may remove you from your flight at any point, for one or several reasons, including but not limited to the following:

. . .

6. Your conduct is disorderly, abusive or violent, or you

. . .

are barefoot.

Of course, many people are barefoot when flying when they take off their shoes or flip-flops, as recommended by many travel sites. It’s that trip down the aisle that somehow seems to concern airline personnel.

I also get paranoid because these folks can make life very uncomfortable for us. It’s not like a store where you can try to argue the point, and if not successful, leave and just go somewhere else. In this case, they can kick you off and then you have the hassle of trying to get another flight.

I flew to Costa Rica via Miami, and it sure seemed as if I had a Miami-type crew (think accents). But that seemed to translate to a more relaxed attitude. My precautions were to wear long pants, and when I presented my boarding pass I held my carry-on right in front of me, which would block the agent’s vision looking down.

I had no problem getting on (or staying on). The same held true for the leg of my trip from Miami to Liberia, Costa Rica. If anything, that crew was even more relaxed.

I stayed at the RIU Guanacaste. Of course, it’s a resort, so I really didn’t expect I’d have to wear shoes. Their website, though, did mention their dress code for the restaurant.

Formal dress is required for dinner (main restaurant: T Shirts with sleeves for gentlemen; theme restaurants: long trousers and T Shirts with sleeves for gentlemen).

OK. Bare feet should be fine.

I should mention that they have five restaurants. Their main one, the “Liberia” is a buffet. They have another one next to their pool. And then they have three themed restaurants, an Asian one, and Italian one, and their Snobby one.

(Their Snobby one, “El Tukan”, was pretty fancy. The food was presented as art, as fine chefs do. They didn’t seem to have a problem with shorts, though, as my brother wore shorts there (and a “Da Bears” T-shirt) and was not challenged at all. The reason I call it “snobby” is that, no matter when you arrived, and no matter how empty the place was, there was always a 15-minute wait for a table.)

Bare feet were not fine.

On the first night a bunch of us went to the Italian restaurant. It was sit-down (no problem getting in), but had a salad and antipasto buffet. When I went back for seconds, I was challenged on my bare feet (I was wearing pants, so they weren’t all that obvious). But I talked to the guy, told him that I never wore shoes, and all of a sudden he just walked away.

So that worked.

I also had trouble in the Liberia for breakfast (and I was wearing shorts). The first time it happened, I again stated that I never wore shoes (“nunca jamás”), and said I’d be eating outside. I also noted that bare feet weren’t mentioned in the dress code. Again, the guy just suddenly walked away. So I got my food and went back out.

Here’s what the outside eating area looks like. (There’s also inside seating, but it was always much nicer to be outside.)

Outdoor Seating

The service (and indoor seating) is inside off to the right.

About this time I got to wondering if there was something about bare feet mentioned elsewhere, so I took a look at the hotel service guide in my room.

Atuendo

Atuendo

Le rogamos que acudan debidamenta vestidos al servicio de cena. No está permitada a los varones la entrada con camiseta sin mangas. Para su seguridad y por razones de higiene rogamos que porten zapatos en los restaurantes.

They also had an English version.

Dress

Dress

We kindly request that you dress appropriately for the supper service. Gentlemen may not enter in short sleeved shirts. For safety and hygiene reasons please wear shoes in the restaurants.

Hmmm. The shirt thing is a requirement; the shoe thing a request. Did that make a difference?

I should also add a few things. First, Costa Rica is heavily dependent on tourism. They work to treat tourists very nicely and it was clear that this was ingrained in all of the population. I was a bit surprised to see the shoe rule. As I said, the Costa Ricans were all very nice and pretty laid back. On the other hand, the RIU resorts are owned by a Spanish family (the Rius). So I suspect they may have been overlaying “civilization” onto their resort. But that was countered by their emphasis on tourism—I suspect the employees had had ingrained into them not to argue with the customers, so if the customer pushed back, the employees were to cede.

From then on, for breakfast I didn’t go totally barefoot. I used my barefoot sandals.

Nylon straps

They were easy enough to put in my pocket. I’d put them on outside, walk in to the buffet and get my food, walk out, sit down, and take them off. I was never challenged when wearing them.

By the way, I can somewhat see why they didn’t want bare soles touching their floors—the floors were filthy (this was true throughout the resort). Yes, they constantly were wiping them, sometimes a wet wipe and sometimes a dry wipe. There were a lot of employees doing that. But as far as I can tell, they never used soap. They picked up some dust, but other than that, they just swabbed the dirt around. The restaurants particularly had an odd, slimy feel to their floors.

I ate at El Tukan twice. No problem. There was no buffet, and when you walk in, you are following the waiter into the place, so he doesn’t have a chance to see your feet.

I did have one more problem at the Liberia. For dinner my last evening I ate there (all other evenings I’d been elsewhere). I wore long pants, but got stopped on my way in. The guy right at the door tried to give me the usual stuff about it being for my “security” (he really meant “safety”) but I said my usual, and included “nunca jamás” about three times. And he let me in. After I got my food and sat down (outdoors), one of the employees (who’d watched the whole thing) came over to fill my water glass . . . and gave me a high-five. I suspect he didn’t care much for the shoddery snobbery either.

I also what to mention how, as is so often the case, their excuses just don’t hold water. I supposedly needed shoes for “safety” and “hygiene”.

Here’s the entrance to the Liberia, and you can see the outside seating.

The Liberia Restaurant

Notice anything?

Yes, those are real glass wine glasses (and the regular glasses were also real glass). If they were really concerned about bare feet, nobody would be allowed barefoot there either. But as you can see in the first photo, it’s a major thoroughfare, including for people heading to the pool or the beach. It’s a rather selective concern for safety, don’t you think? Of course, it’s really just an unthinking excuse.

And when it comes to hygiene, I have to mention their fifth restaurant, the “Ocotal”, next to the pool. This is where I ate lunch every day.

The Ocotal Restaurant

(You can see the pool in the brightly-lit background.)

Of course there were barefoot people all over the place in there. Where’s their concern for hygiene? If barefoot are unhygienic that doesn’t magically go away just because there’s a pool 100 feet away.

Again, it’s just unthinkingly accepting myth.

When it came time to leave, I got my taxi and headed to the airport. (I had great fun talking with the driver, who had limited English, while I have limited Spanish—but we made it work between us. By the way, neither transfer, in either direction, said a thing about my bare feet.) At the airport, again no problem getting on the plane, but then I didn’t expect much—the agents were all Costa Rican. I even had no concern just past the entry where all our bags were searched (for what, I don’t know) but I was just standing there barefooted.

Going through customs in Miami was a major pain. It took an hour and a half from the long lines. Man I was glad I was barefoot. I had a nice conversation with one of the customs agents who was doing line control about how much more comfortable I was being barefoot (and he agreed). I got one more comment at the declaration station, where the agent there just wanted to know where my shoes were. “In the bag.” And he sympathized with my wanting to be comfortable. (I didn’t tell him I’d never put them on.)

Leaving Miami I did get a bit anxious—I’d made it this far without shoes. Would my last entry spoil it?

It didn’t.

I kind of hid my feet with my bag, and we had to give boarding passes twice, but they were more interested in getting us boarded.

So, I did the whole trip with nothing more than my barefoot sandals for a grand total of about 3 minutes. It was a bit disappointing that the resort “resorted” to propagating more barefoot myths. It meant I had to worry about it more than I should have while being pampered (the place was an all-inclusive so every time I sat down somebody was offering me a drink). It would have been nice to have been able to go to dinner without thinking about subterfuge.

But it all worked out in the end.