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I’ve had a few people tell me about how great it is to be living in Costa Rica, and how much cheaper it is to live here. Some people know from a little bit of experience, but others are making the assumption — it’s not Calgary, it’s not Canada, so it must be cheaper.

Funny thing about foreign countries: if you live in the right places, if you know how to blend in, you’ll do well. But if you’re a gringo, you aren’t going to get the free ride that you want.

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So you’ve been around a bit. You’ve been to Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, Hawaii. You’ve seen a lot, but are finding the same problem again and again and again — everyone else has already been there. They’ve done it, so every time you want to go somewhere, your friends are blasé about the whole thing.

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. There’s a small country near the equator that an exceedingly small number of people go to for tourism. Business, yes. One city as part of a cruise, maybe. But visit? Hardly.

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I remember when I was back in university. As part of my English degree, I was told that I had to take two languages. Literally, different languages, not just something that was culturally different (a couple of friends not in English got away with courses about the French language’s cultural impact, rather than having to learn French, for example).

At the time, I signed up for French. I figured I already knew enough that I could ace the course and not worry about it. The other language was harder. My advisor suggested Latin, mostly because the one instructor he said I should have had a simple rule: ace all the weekly tests, you get 100% and you don’t have to take the final. I liked that plan.

Sadly, the plan didn’t work exactly as planned. The French teacher was an absolute bitch.

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I’m in Panama. Been here since Tuesday afternoon. Been really, really busy. So far, the biggest problem I’ve had here (aside from the aforementioned busy-ness and subsequent inability to talk to my family), is that I’ve had Van Halen’s Panama stuck in my head pretty much since we left San Jose.

Damn you, David Lee Roth. Damn you!

So far, it’s a great place to visit (a post coming on this soon). But we’ve been steadily on the move.

Oy.

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You might be wondering: Gee, Geoff, where are all the posts you had for Costa Rica? Well, it’s not that I don’t want them up, it’s an issue of timing. I can’t really go into that right now, but let’s just say that this is the best way to have it for now.

But on the bright side, there is more stuff to come shortly. Our month o’ meetings continues as we head down to Panama [insert Van Halen here] tomorrow for a client kick-off. This should be fun.

First, though, let me recap our weekend just past.

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Last week was a rough one. It’s almost hard to believe we’ve only been here a week now. (A week ago right now, I was in the lobby of our hotel, chatting with Jason and Javier, waiting for our realtors to come and whisk us away to our condos.) Since then we’ve gotten our places, bought the things we need to make life reasonable (note: not “comfortable” — we’re still working on that), moved into a temporary office, got connected (still need cell phones), started working on new work, and had a surprising number of meetings given that there’s only four of us.

So when we got to the end of the week, we had pretty much declared ourselves “beat”. Had we been a lot more set up than we are now, we’d probably have just gone home to our respective places, kicked back, and relaxed. But it’s hard to do that when you have to flag down a cab. Which you can’t here, for some reason.

We rented a car instead.

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Okay, so a while back I was having kittens (pun intended) about bringing Asia into Costa Rica. Mostly because I simply could not seem to get a straight answer from anyone about the proper process. It was driving me batty.

So, to anyone bringing in their (small) dog or cat (this might also work for rabbits, but don’t expect success with gerbils or hamsters or any form of rodent; and it’s a one-way trip for all birds, you can’t take them out again) into Costa Rica, allow me to present the (current) process. It’s really easy.
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