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  Features

  InsideCostaRica

Sunday  23 February 03 

On Tuesday, since my passport was ‘missing-in-action’, (not to be found anywhere) and rather than taking the chance of getting stopped by the immigration authorities without my ‘papers’, and after going to a photo place, getting 4 convict-pictures, and then taking a cab out to the Embassy only to find out they closed at 11:30, I went shopping. 

Yesterday, my normal shopping day was spent at the American Embassy.

The pictures I was told were ‘Tico size’ and not applicable to American passport usage so for another one thousand colones they could accommodate me. Then I was handed some papers to fill out which turned out to be somewhat of a joke because I was given different ones when I got to the processing window. The nice lady explained that the equipment here that does the passports had broken down so now the paperwork goes to Miami. Instead of the normal replacement in two days the new passport will be here in about 3 weeks! Nothing gets done quickly here anyway!

The embassy experience was OK; I was escorted around the huge line of people looking for visas and such. The embassy takes cash only for payment, no credit cards. They will take our local currency but at a rate that allows them to recover the bank exchange rate costs. The ATM machines charge 4% for processing your credit cards. The whole place is about making money!

So, now I’m semi -legal and I can resume my mundane existence once again.

This is Kitchen ‘prep’ day this week instead of the usual day after shopping. My routine generally is to braise chicken to ‘almost-done’, browning it in my dry spice mixture first. I keep my Veggie stores in a basket style unit on one of the counters and use them as needed taking care to wash them at that time. The veggies last a long time here without refrigeration and because we are mostly bug free there is no problem at all.

This morning I am preparing for some company this weekend and making some fresh vegetable soup for a starter and prepping for a ‘one dish’ roasted chicken breast with potatoes and other fresh veggies so that my time is not spent making meals. It’s nice to be able to entertain without doing it from the kitchen!

The time is now 10:30, the meals are planned and processed to ‘almost done’ and will require nothing but a final broiler and micro finish. The ‘vino-blanco’ is chilled, the chips and cream cheese type stuff are readily available and I’m ready!

As you can see, I am now able to write my weekend columns and do my e-mail chores by noon. The afternoon will probably end up as a nice ride in the local hills or maybe 20 miles or so out by the Poas Volcano area to visit some friends. It will depend on the cloud cover I see creeping over the mountains to the southeast. It has not rained in weeks so it’s about time to be apprehensive.

If it does rain I have a Website to finish that will sell a small product a great profits, I hope!

The http://dosrios.us Website development business is different here in Costa Rica. First of all I’m a gringo and secondly I’m basically not well versed in Spanish language. Funny results to advertising attempts happen daily. I use a Spanish language flyer here in the local Internet Café. It points out that I will trade language tutoring for Website work. The tear-off business cards disappear at a phenomenal rate, the counter on the main site climbs daily and even though the ad says not to leave phone messages I receive lots of cell phone based messages in Spanish along with plenty of e-mails in Spanish. They all mention teaching me the language but all but one wants me to reciprocate with teaching them English.

The average local person does not see the need for a Website! They are not ones to sell anything to some person in another land; they only use the computer for e-mail communications.

Remember that over 90% of the populace has no telephone at home. If they have to call they use a payphone somewhere even though those machines are sparse in some areas. Most payphones here are calling card based and do not even have a coin slot. The calling process is relegated to simple usage and they are not subject to being broken into due to lack of cash payment. The gov’t owned and controlled business is very profitable so they refuse to make private phones easily obtained.

The Internet Café businesses are everywhere it seems and all of them are full of locals that learned to use e-mails because of the ease of use and more than that, the price is 1/3 of phone calls.

I see lots of them using an ‘Internet Phone’ which lets them call anywhere, anytime for the cost of café usage that is usually around 300 colones an hour. A long distance call to a relative in the states or Europe or wherever is about a dollar and hour! All that is needed is a program and a person on the other end being on-line with you. I wish I could hook my cell phone up to it!

Most of them have not learned the shopping or informational usage of the Internet and so I guess selling them on a new website is futile at this point. Most of them look at sites that let them download music for free but hardly bother with any other use. They have simple needs I guess!

I’ve taken up enough of your time, it’s now almost noon and it is starting to sprinkle out there so I guess I’ll go to the Internet Café myself for a while.

Bari

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