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I had a nasty experience with one of the small 4 by 4 (rent-a) companies in the past when trying to save a few bucks. I’d stick to either a private deal or the big companies even if it costs more.
I would check to make sure everything is grounded too. My guy didn’t ground anything when he wired it.
I realize this is off topic for this thread but I’m wondering if you could either say more about your bus trip here or start a new thread. It sounds like an adventure! Do you speak Spanish very well? 3 days for the entire trip? I would have thought 3 days to get through Mexico. How about at the borders? Was it smooth? Did you switch buses a lot?
I’ve been wanting to drive from Canada to Costa Rica so that I could see that part of the planet from a different perspective but I was put off by some of the risks. Would you say the bus was fairly safe?
Hope to hear more. Thanks.
Sounds like you know some things about this topic. How does one protect against regulation of current besides unplugging? Is there any equipment that can be installed?
Thanks
HI Aaron:
Thanks for the tip about your article. If it’s going to be on the Pivot website I’ll see it. If not I’d love to read it.
When I’m there I use a guy named Jeffery. His cell number is 888-1156. He works for the official airport cab company and sometimes drives me around in his father’s car. He speaks good English and is very safe driver. He’ll show up 15-20 minutes early and be waiting for you in the lobby. He’s a good man in my opinion, and I trust him.
Tell him Rick from Canada referred you if you decide to call him and you want to mention where you got his name.
Probably salt plays a big role but it’s also very humid there. I didn’t see a dehumidifier there so most likely not. But that humid air tasts salty so I imgine you’re right.
On the Caribbean coast my family has gone through 3 TV’s, 2 Satellite recievers, 1 electric cloths dryer, a stereo and 2 DVD players in 3 years. I loaned them some fairly expensive night vision equipment and it stopped working after a few months too. Papers and books don’t seem to last long there either – even when stored in ziplock bags.
There are turtle conservation projects in Parismina, Tortugero and Paquari. I’m not sure if I spelled these names right or not. I know about the one in Parismina and it’s a nice little village. You can stay in a so called hotel there for about $20 or $30 bucks a night. I’d suggest the new one built by a guy named Ross because the rooms are big and it’s fairly new. It used to cost $7.50 a night to volunteer. You have to go by boat to get to the village. There is a pretty good camping area in Parismina owned by a guy in the center of town. He has little sleeping huts there as well and the cost is next to nothing. I think about $5 or $7 a night. My daughter and son-in-law have a house on the beach there but they’re not living there right now. You may be able to camp for free on their land. There is an outbuilding with toilets and showers there and a small kitchen for outdoor bbqing.
The Paquari project is a lot less. I think they charge $15 a day including your food but it’s way out in the jungle so you’re kind of stuck there. Tortugero project I don’t know anything about.
They have guides take you out to patrol the beaches at night. Turtle eggs are brought back to the hatchery and the little turtles are released into the ocean.
There is also the sloth rescue center down near the boarder with Panama. I don’t know anything about it.
I know a lot about the Parismina project and I think if you search Parismina in Costa Rica you should find it. I’m here if you have any questions about that particular project. (I’m not involved with it.)
Maybe at least part of the cure is to legalize it and tax it. Take the profit out of the pockets of the criminals and put it to use fighting the problem. I get the feeling the last federal government was heading in that direction until getting their little Canadian fingers slapped by the DEA.
The money could go to better education for parents and kids. There are a lot less people smoking these days and I imagine that’s because of the tons of money spent over long period of time in this country on education and prevention. Imagine the money we’d have for health care, social programs, treatment centers and so on. Far less stabbings, shootings, murders, prostitution, break and enters etc. so the police can go more back to preventing crime instead of responding to it.
In Canada the government funds some growers for medical marijuana already. If you have cancer, HIV, arthritis etc. you can sign up and get a perscription. I say lets try it full on with cocaine and heroin. It can’t be worse than what we have now. But if it’s ever done, it should be done right and not like how it’s done now where we just dip one toe in the water and yell out to the world “look what we’re doing here.” “Aren’t we progressive?” We’re not. We’re not even close to making a dent and we’ve been at it for 9 years.
As part of the plan I think we need to have the courts get serious on those who choose to break the drug laws – whatever they are. It’s a joke around here. People smoke crack and shoot heroin on Hastings St. all day long. I recall seeing a documentary where they were interviewing a crack smoker on a busy street corner (Hastings and Main)with two cops right behind him but facing the other way. He takes a hoot off of the pipe just as they’re turning around and it was like a little joke to him as they asked him what he just did. He knows all they would do is step on his glass crack pipe and search him for more. As long as he’s not holding dealer amounts he’d walk away a free man. They knew what he’d just done and they walked away so they wouldn’t look like they didn’t care I guess. They can’t arrest him because there’s no penalty and sometimes the crown prosecutor won’t even take the charge!
I can’t speak out publicly where I live because part of my work/income comes from public money directly related to drugs, addiction and treatment. So it’s been really nice to be able to express myself here. Thanks for listening.
I live in Vancouver British Columbia Canada. In my view our weak drug laws and our whole plan to deal with the drug issue is to blame for the sharp increase in murders here. Down on the skids we have a government funded safe injection site were addicts can come in to a nice clean and warm clinic to shoot drugs. We even supply the gear and clean up the mess after the deed is done while the addict sips coffee in the “chill-out lounge.”
A few blocks away you can sign up for the heroin treatment program where taxpayers fund free heroin and a safe clean clinic to inject it. Members only please. Back up the other way there is a Health Contact Centre (funded by the taxpayers of course) where you can come snooze on the couch or on a mat if you spend all of your welfare rent money on drugs and have no other place to go.
There is no need for our drug addicts to spend any of their welfare money on food because there are endless free food lines all over the area. Free used cloths are handed out in several locations. Free perscriptions are part of the welfare deal here so all of that is covered. And get this – if you’re unemployable due to a disease you got shooting dope, we’ll put you disability welfare where you’ll get about $1300 a month instead of the regular welfare rate. So just about 90% of our addicts have Hep. C and that can qualify them to collect disability. About 25% (and rising) have HIV disease and that gets you in too.
We have something called the CTCT (I think) where ill drug addicts who need IV lines or are seriously ill can lay in a hospital type bed with nurses and doctors rotating in and out. This thing is located on one floor of a run down skid row shooting gallery so there’s no need to go too far to get high.
Even the downtown hospital has an unofficial crack smoking area on a forth floor outdoor lounge. The AIDS ward also has an unofficail crack smoking balcony where drug use is tolerated.
Police down on the skids don’t bother arresting folks for simple possession that often because they are viewed by the courts in British Columbia as ill rather than as law breakers and they almost never get time in jail. Even any dealers who claim to be dealing to support their own addiction (and of course you know they’re all on to that loop hole) are diverted to “drug court” instead of jail.
We have needle exchange sites all over the skids where addicts and prostitutes can get free needles, free condoms (lubed, nonlubed, ribbed and even flavored!), free little packeges of personal lubrication, little sani wipes, alcohol swabs, crack smoking pipes, little cotton balls for cooking drugs – even little blue bottles of water for mixing drugs. Of course the needles are free too and so you see this stuff tossed away all over the downtown area of Vancouver.
The health care system puts everyone with a heroin problem on methadone or free heroin but the funded recovery and treatment centers don’t take people on those perscriptions. So even if they wanted to get out of there they can’t until the kick the methadone witch is much harder to kick than heroin.
Of course the gangsters all come here. This is the pot growing capitol of North America. There are indoor grow operations on almost every street because they don’t put first time offenders in jail for that here. Or at least not very often. So you can buy some grow lights and potting soil and turn that spare room into a grow-op and make an extra $4000 tax free dollars every few months. Hell, why not just quit work and turn the basement into a grow-op too? You get into more trouble for stealing the power than you do for growing the pot in this part of Canada. I did hear something about tougher laws coming, but I’m not sure if that went through or not.
We’re also a port city and of course that means the cocaine comes here first before being shipped out to the rest of the country. Cheap prices, weak laws, weak law enforcement, a health care system that supports the drug addicts in there nutty lifestyle.
And of course we have very weak immigration laws so if you get yourself here it will take us a year or more to get your butt out of our province. In the mean time I guess if you’re a would-be gangster you can collect welfare and sell drugs until the deportation order finally comes through. By then they disappear into the woodwork until they have earned enough to afford a good immigration lawyer.
If they shut down the pot growing industry in this province our economy would probably take a huge hit. I saw a story in the paper last week saying some of our smaller towns depend on indoor pot growing for about 70% of their economy.
With all that money comes gangs and turf wars.
God help us!
As I’m sure most people have already heard or already experienced, driving -particularly in the southern part of Mexico can be very dangerous. Far more so than anywhere in C.R. I would guess. I’m not talking about the tourist area’s of Mexico because they’re fairly safe compared to those beautiful toll highways that most Mexican’s can’t afford to take. The police and the criminals compete for business on some of those roads at night. Guns, rapes and other types of violence are common. That is what might happen in C.R. if corruption is allowed to flourish. It’s never happened to me but if it does I’ll take info (car number/plate number etc) and make a report. Corruption leads to chaos.
I have friends who just returned from C.R. They say they were dinged twice in the same way.
I seem to recall hearing about a 1-800 number for tourists who wish to report police corruption. Does anyone know of this?
