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Thieves at the bank? Outside the bank, inside the bank, behind the counter….? where were the thieves? Where was the expat when this happened? Somehow I get the impression of an elderly gentleman dressed as a tourist walking up the streets in a bad area of San Jose carrying a fist full of greenbacks in plain sight on his way to a bank.
I am starting to take all the impressions of increased crime in Costa Rica with a grain of salt. Personal experience and conversations with people I know and whose opinions I trust tell me that crime is not as much of an issue as one might be led to believe. Petty theft may be everywhere….leave your jewelry an cash on a car seat at a public park and you might lose it. Hire a maid to clean up after you and then leave jewlery and cash on a table…and she will CLEAN UP after you leave the house.
This is a well covered subject on this message board and I am not wishing to start it up again here. My bank is Banco de Costa Rica. The security guard at the door at the Naranjo branch passes the metal detector over me, has me open and display the contents of whatever is in my carry bag and has me remove my hat while I am there. I cannot imagine what else any bank could do for security and this is in a country town, not a big city.
That is what I suspected…And yet it still surprises me when such things happen. I suppose it has a lot to do with our expectations and perceptions of the world. I live in Miami right now. This IS a big place…big and impersonal.We humans tend to stay on well traveled paths and there are fewer of those in CR so it makes sense we might bump into each other once in a while.
I have developed a strong affection for San Ramon and the area even though I haven;t spent that much time there yet so when I see any article about this one little corner of paradise, I am excited to read about it. It feels like home to me, or at least to the 12 year old me of 45 years ago who grew up in a small U.S. midwestern town…San Ramon has that feel to it.
I wasn’t aware you offered that service in San Ramon. Come to think of it, the guy I purchased from just mentioned to me on my last visit that he knows you. I sometimes forget how relatively small Costa Rica is.
As usual, I find a timely article on this site. The value of a view is another one of them. I chose property with all considerations weighed and balanced out. I have a pretty valley along the Rio Grande to view. While privacy was high on my list of priorities, some concession was made for the conveniences to be found with a small town or city near by. I chose land in a farming community.
I am sandwiched between a couple of small farms which means there will be times while I am sitting on my porch that I may see Marcotulio passing by 50 meters away on his tractor. This is a small concession to total privacy for the advantage of being just off a well maintained asphalt road only minutes from Palmares and San Ramon. There is no ocean view or the absolute privacy of an large tract of land on the Osa Peninsula, but it is comfortable and still quite gorgeous. A balance to fit my age and my needs. For anyone who has watched the quiet morning mists slowly coming over the mountain tops and sift through the trees, an ocean view many kilometers off cannot compare.
To each his own but sometimes the best plan is no plan. I just returned back to Miami this evening from another short stay in the Central Valley and the best part of this trip was a two hour hike by myself on the spur of the moment down into a valley. Most of the hike was climbing down and back up. At the bottom of the valley, near the Sandero river I came across the waterfall I was told I would find. It was spectacular and perhaps 100 feet high or more but the absolute icing on the cake was finding myself alone in what seemed the middle of a tropical forest when I had not planned to be there earlier that morning. A few short minutes of looking straight up into the morning sun peeking through the canopy with just the sounds of birds and rushing water is now the most vivid memory I have of 5 days in Costa Rica. Let the place happen to you.
Scott, I hope you are joking about US citizens requiring permission to retire outside the US. I dont think that is going to happen in my life time.
Make sure to take some car sickness medication along with you…kids, and sometime even adults, get motion sickness with all the ups and downs and turn arounds on the roller coaster ride that is any Costa Rican road. I am not joking. We had to stop several times for my 13 year old to get out and throw up before we stopped at a farmacia for some pills. And along the way, we saw another stopped car with a kid doing his thing on the side of the road.
I am still paying around $200 for single coverage through my U.S. employer. That is a 30% increase from last month. $2000 a month! I dont understand why it would be so much for someone else.
I shudder to think what the cumulative effects are going to be in about 10 years time when a good portion of the boomers begin to have the serious health problems associated with age after lifetimes of stressful jobs. The rates will skyrocket even further after a few years of payouts on claims…or worse…perhaps there simply will not be any healthcare insurance available. Are you all ready for socialized medicine in the United States….It is always fun to talk about the differences between cultures. The bottom line, though, is that people are pretty much the same everywhere when you get down to the brass tacks of what it takes to form and maintain relationships. The world has been shrinking at an ever increasing pace throwing people from disparate cultures together more frequently and war and conflict don’t seem to be more prevalent because of it. I have lived with the Cubans here in Miami for 25 years now and honestly can’t see a lick of difference that matters between them and the Ticos I have met recently. Their language ties their cultures closer to each other than to ours, but we all still get along. I don’t see any problem here. Do any of you?
Regards picking up the check; so far, my Tico acquaintances have always done so and have not let me. I guess it all depends on with WHICH Ticos you hang.yeah, that part about not being able to expect a Tico to keep a real friendship with a Gringo is one hell of a generalization and while there may be general tendencies in every culture to have a bias, one to one relationships tend to over ride the general cultural differences.
Look how many marriages there are between individuals of different cultures. I have such a marriage with a Puerto Rican and I will never believe that true relationships between people from different cultures are not possible.actually cameras DO work elsewhere. Also, if people believe they are on camera, they are more likely to behave themselves, whether there is actually a camera in the casing or not.
Rebecca, you still haven’t answered my question as to what danger these cameras may pose to your liberties. What liberty is being violated with a camera in a public thoroughfare?
Behave in a civil manner in public and you have no reason to feel threatened by a camera.
Secrecy in the public arena is for malevolent intent. We see it in the Bush government’s obsession with hiding things from public view.Come on guys..let’s not turn into Libertarian Luddites over security cameras on public streets. Either we are going to live like the social creatures we are, or we run to the mountains armed to the teeth and live as SOME pioneers did 150 years ago.
Whenever you are on populated public streets, you are already in the public eye. Technology is just carrying that information to another location and recording it. A police state is not defined by its technology, rather it is defined by its laws and how they are applied to the citizens.
Can you come up with a reasonably probable danger to your personal freedoms that would result from Costa Rican police having access to security camera inormation about street activity?
Edited on Oct 19, 2007 06:02
About half of the phrases are also used by Cubans and Puerto Ricans as well, although “JODER” in particular is considered a vulgar expression…una mala palabra..
Honestly, Diego, I see no problem at all with the cameras on PUBLIC STREETS. The rights to privacy and free speech have always had limitations. But those limitations ONLY come to bear in the PUBLIC ARENA. Nobody has a constitutional right to misbehave in public.
Associations with other individuals IN PUBLIC should not be secretive. The danger comes when government uses public information such as association with others to persecute individuals. However, as long as all civil liberties remain intact, publicly gathered information is useless as a means to persecute.
The same holds true for speech. Let Bush read all the emails he wishes. Then pounce with extreme force if and when that information is misused. If you have secrets you wish to preserve, keep them out of the public arena. The more light that shines there, the better. I WANT Big Brother in some places. I do NOT want him in other places. The streets of San Jose need a presence from what I am reading.
If you are so concerned about maintaining personal liberties on public streets, why not also do away with street lamps and busy body police?
