The REAL Costa Rica Blog

US Veterans in Costa Rica

I receive a fair number of inquiries from US veterans who are considering a move to Costa Rica. We also have a fair number of US vets living down here now. I do not have a handle as to exactly how many, but is has to be a few thousand or so with many more [...]

Stats ‘N Stuff – Who Reads The REAL Costa Rica?

Stats interest me. I don’t push advertising on the main web site or Blog, but I do put up a few ads to sort of cover some of the costs. It is always fun, though, to see just who visits The REAL Costa Rica during the month. The Real Costa Rica gets a bit less [...]

Bird Saves Dog – No Film at 11

One of the things about living in the tropics is that here we have animals, insects and reptiles that can hurt our pets… and people as well. This is not to say that this is not true in the US, but our threats are a bit different. I know friends who live in the Southwestern [...]

Easy Money!

For many years, the largest currency denomination in Costa Rica was the 10,000 colon bank note (billete). At today’s exchange rate, that is a bit over $18.00. Thus, carrying just the equivalent of $1,000 required you to carry FIFTY-FIVE 10,000 colon notes… quite a wad. That will soon change as the Costa Rica Central Bank, Banco Central [...]

ICE Pulls a Fast One and Tim Switches to 3G – Big Time!

OK… I give up! As many folks know, I have been a staunch proponent of the old TDMA cell phones for… well forever! They worked and worked well. Real workhorses. I hated the GSM phones and I still do. However, my wifey switched to the new 3G system a few weeks ago, and I was [...]

My Readers Write

Good day faithful readers. Here is another addition of “My Readers Write” Here you will find a few emails asking questions not covered in The REAL Costa Rica or this Blog…. or maybe they are but there is some other twist that I think might be of interest. As some of these were sent more [...]

Ley de tránsito – Results Day One

Typical of Costa Rica, news reports differ as to how went day one following implementation of the new ley de tránsito (traffic laws). One English language online stated that more than 300 fines were handed out in San José alone. This was kinda amazing as the transit officers union stated in pretty clear terms that [...]

Cops Won’t Enforce New Transit Law

I have been waiting patiently for many months for someone in the government of Costa Rica (ummm – that would be the diputados), to realize just how idiotic is the new ley de tránsito (traffic law) that goes into effect tomorrow, March 1, 2010. In fact I have re-written this post about 3 times, the [...]

The Road To Caldera

Click photo to enlarge. Dotted line is now completed The long awaited (30+ years) highway from San Jose to Caldera opened a couple of weeks ago. I had a hunch that anything that long in the making would draw the curious and traffic would be a disaster. Turns out that I called it, and the [...]

One Way Airline Tickets to Costa Rica

I was preparing another of those “My Readers Write” posts that I do every so often, and this topic came up… again. Maybe it is time to give it its own space as apparently it is not clear to some people. The question is always something like this: “I have heard I cannot fly to [...]