This is the continuation of a series of posts on my blog to promote the e-book SO YOU WANT to LIVE in COSTA RICA – which is a Guide to… the Adventures, Trials and Tribulations of Settling in Paradise… This is a guide book that will give you the kind of insider’s knowledge that you might wish you had before you made your decision to move or not move to Costa Rica.
Every blog entry will start with the appendix because that way when you read whatever else I have posted it will 1. make sense (I hope) and 2. give you a point of reference in case you realize you need to read something that is “archived”. Because if you read every blog I enter you will have eventually read the whole e-book and won’t need to order it for $2.99 from Amazon or B&N. All you’ll be missing are the photos that show what you might expect if you choose to undertake the Adventures, Trials and Tribulations of Settling in Paradise.
As I said, I will start each blog with the appendix so that the reader can reference important elements of the book to archived blogs. The page numbers shown are the actual page they appear on in the book. Here is the Appendix – and these are all the nuggets and their corresponding page numbers:
Definition of “nugget” – 3, Doors & Windows – 7, Manufacturing – 11, Real Estate – 11, Shipping – 12,Maps, – 15, Corporations – 20, Traffic Cops – 23, Know basic Spanish – 30, Panama – 33, Roof Line – 42, Plumita Pacifica Web Address – 65, Getting the Best a Tico has to Offer – 84, Power Surges – 86, Liberia Airport – 88, Attitude – 104, Cellular Phones – 117, Newspapers – 18, Your Embassy – 137, Buying & Selling Cars – 154, Drive Slowly – 161, Arriving at the Airport – 168, Wages & Prices – 170, Undertows – 226, Life Ring – 230, Avoiding Customs Confiscations – 234, Driving Rules – 236, Walking in the City – 249, Purchasing Anything – 258, Buying Fresh Produce – 263, Bus Tickets – 272, to “Bribe” or not to “Bribe” – 313, Traffic ticket Prices – 315, Exiting the Country – 337
And just in case you’re interested… here’s the table of contents:
Introduction and Preliminary Comments – 3, My First Trip -15, Lost in Guanacaste – Playa Coyote – 20, Trust with a Child – 26, Lost in Panama – 29, Attorneys – 35, My Contractor – 38, My Security Guard – 61, My Toldo – 67, Getting a Land Line Phone and Internet – 76, A Cellular Phone – 115, A Country Doctor – 124, A Lesson Well Learned – 130, A Little Green Frog – 138, A Little Brown Frog and a Bat – 146, A “Murphy’s Law” Day – 153, Driving in the Rainy Season – 161, Drunk Drivers – 174, Fiesta del Toros – 185, Getting a Drivers License – 195, INS and a Minor Accident – 203, Lifeguards – 224, Passing through Customs – 232, Rules of the Road for Tico Driving – 236, San Jose – 241, Shopping and Making Tamales – 250, Taking the Bus – 272, Turtles in My Front Yard – 281, Untitled – 287, When it Rains it Pours (sometimes) – 294, She Found My Lot – 307, My First Traffic Ticket – 312, Ticket # 2 – 316, My Radar Detector – 318, Ticket # 3 (after a slow speed chase) – 324, A Christmas Parade – 338, Sex (the truth about ticos) – 343, Photo Album – 347, Appendix – 374
chapter 9 continued
Well, it is now October 1, 2008. This story started in December 2006. I have internet in my house finally!
Not DSL but something called RDSI. It’s similar to DSL in that you can be on line and use your phone at the same time but it’s not quite as fast. But it’s fast enough that I at least am not on the verge of going postal like I was yesterday.
Ok, here’s the “bring you up to speed” part.
I have had that paper with the big numbers on it posted in my window ever since the girl gave it to me. That was in September 2007. About six months ago I got so exhausted with the sixty minute drive down that horribly potholed dirt road to Santa Cruz to use the internet café that I finally gave in and got set up with RACSA dial-up service. Remember the entire trauma surrounding the unavailability of modems and other crap ICE and RACSA were causing? No one bothered to ask me what kind of computer I had. I’m using a laptop. Now, I’m no kind of a computer guru. How was I to know that all lap tops come with a modem inside that works with dial-up services and there’s no need to buy another?
Well, somehow I discovered that happy fact and after more struggles with RACSA finally got my computer set up with dial-up. But oh my god! I haven’t experienced frustration like that since I was a young man and thought life should be frustration free. It got so bad at times that there were literally pages of sites that I needed to use for business that when the lines were busy (I guess) would simply not load! RACSA claims that their dial up runs at 50kps. You can click on the RACSA icon to see what the actual speed is. I remember one time it was 26kps. It wasn’t just a matter of waaaaiiitting.
Things would actually freeze up and would not load. I would even get error messages from company’s like Google that would say something like “this is taking longer than…” and would make suggestions about how to correct the problem (yeah, like you can “correct” a government agency).
It got to the point where if I had to do anything more than check email, which could take over an hour, not because I had so many emails but because it took so long for the new page that loads with every click of the mouse, I would make the dreaded drive to Santa Cruz so I could use the internet café for the other sites I needed to use for business.
plumitapacifica2 
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