Trip to Puerto Viejo

Puerto Viejo 2006

Oct. 1, 2006 - 20 Photos

Kerri and I just returned from our trip to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica for the weekend. We got a late start on Friday and didn't get in to town until after dark, but just in time for the beach town's festivities to begin.

As we sat down to eat at Cafe Viejo right in the middle of town, a band struck up and a parade started coming down the street complete with fire dancers, drummers, and dancers. All the kids and adults were dressed in all white and playing and dancing in sync as they made their way through town. After the band had passed and we'd finished our dinner, we headed across the street to an art gallery that had just opened that was displaying local artists' works.

After wrapping up things in town, we headed a few kilometers (we speak in kilometers, kilograms, and celsius now...gotta fit in!) to check into our bungalow at Cariblue. It was a little more "rugged" than we thought it would be, but the hammock hanging on our porch made it just fine!

On Saturday, we jumped in the car and drove up the coast about 50 kilometers to Limon and down the coast about 20 kilometers to Manzanilla to see all of the drivable Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. We made on big stop at a local furniture maker where we bought 2 adirondack chairs and a matching table for the backyard of our house. We came back in the afternoon and laid in the hammock reading books all afternoon.

On Saturday night, we went to dinner at a small Italian restaurant only to find that a finalist from Latin American idol and a guy referred to as Costa Rica's "Ambassador of Tango" were performing. Seriously, I have got to get me a title like that. And then I'll make everyone refer to me as "Ambassador" or "Your Ambassadorship". They were both quite good and we were happy to enjoy the evening's free entertainment!

We took Sunday to rest and relax. We had breakfast in town, laid on the beach, got massages in the afternoon, and hit the hammock again to get caught up on some reading (currently reading "Angels and Demons", the prequel to "The Davinci Code").

On Sunday night, we recreated our Friday night dinner at Cafe Viejo--the stone-baked oven pizzas were just too good. On the walk back from dinner, we hear, "Scott and Kerri?" We turn around and find ourselves standing in front of some friends of ours from our Denver book club who were on their honeymoon. Thousands of miles from the US, in a foreign country, at a small little beach town—and we run into our friends. Small world.

On Monday morning, we woke up early to do a photo shoot. We hit the pool, jungle, and beach. No edited photos yet, but I will post them when they are done. Then we checked out of the hotel and hit the road back to Santa Ana!

Other Highlights: Kerri saw two monkeys. I saw none. We ran out of gas at one point during the trip. Not completely out of gas, but enough to not be able to get to Limon. So we had to go see "Tony" in town. Tony sold us 2 gallons of gas. For $10. Probably not a bad deal considering our other option was to walk 50 kilometers to Limon. Kerri stepped in a fire ant hill. Ouch. Not a highlight. Oh, and we bought our own hammock for the house.

Got $100k? Would You Like a House or a Landcruiser?

Costa Rica is a strange place.

Mothers legally cross the freeway (the freeway!) with their 3-year-old and their 1-year-old in tow...

yet...

it is illegal to drive while talking on your cell phone.


You can buy a house here with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths for $100,000...

yet...

a brand new Toyota Landcruiser costs $100,000.


Traffic on the freeway can sometimes back-up for 20-30 minutes behind a toll booth on the freeway...

yet...

they are only collecting a toll of 75 colones. Which is roughly 15 cents.


The country is technically advanced enough that you can walk into any grocery store and pay your phone bill, your electricity bill, your cable bill, etc...

yet...

to change the name on our cable bill from our landlord's to yours, you have to visit both the cable company's office and a laywer's office and sign 4 documents. With your landlord in tow.


The cell phone company is advanced enough to send out "Happy Whetever-Day" text messages to everyone's phones on holidays...

yet...

Cell phone calls only go through two times out of three.


You can call virtually any restaurant in the country and they will deliver to your house...

yet...

The power goes out a couple of times a week. For a couple of hours. Minimum.


We get ABC, NBC, and CBS...

yet...

ABC is blocked out every night from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Although I guess I should just be glad that we get ABC in the first place.

Weird.

Some Random Things About Living Abroad

Here are some random observations about living/traveling abroad:

• I am much more aware of what time zone I am in at all times.
  
  
• I now know what the "+" sign means in phone numbers. Don't know? E-mail me and I'll explain.
  
  
• As Americans, we completely take for granted how lucky we are to cross any border into any country—no questions asked.
  
  
• For the first 29 years of my life, I carried my passport with me once—on a month long trip to Europe after college. Now I carry it with me all the time. Or at least a copy of it in my wallet when I'm in Costa Rica.
  
  
• I always have weird money in my wallet.
  
  
• As Americans, we live in a bubble of self-interest with little knowledge/care for the world outside our borders. Or as one non-American said to me today, "In fourth grade Americans learn every step in the legislative and judicial system, but they can't tell you where Canada is." Don't get me wrong—I'm as pro-American as can be. We just don't realize there is an entirely other world out there.

¿Habla Espanol?

Living in Costa Rica, I'm forced to speak a different language. Well not forced exactly—but it does make things a lot easier.

Recently I've noticed that there are actually three languages spoken in Costa Rica:

• Costa Rican Spanish
  
• Gringo "I Learned Spanish After I Moved Here" Spanish
  
• Gringo "I Learned Spanish in High School" Spanish

Costa Rican Spanish is —well—Spanish like the rest of Central and South America except for throwing in a few "pura vidas" and "vosotros"'s for good measure.

Gringo "I Learned Spanish After I Moved Here" Spanish and Gringo "I Learned Spanish in High School" Spanish, however, are noticeably different.

I speak Gringo "I Learned Spanish in High School" Spanish. I spent four years in high school learning right out of a text book, didn't speak it from 18-29, and then it thankfully all came back to me when I hit the Costa Rican border.

Learning a language via text book ("High School" Spanish) is extremely different than learning via immersion ("After I Moved Here" Spanish).

• I can't hear a word and learn it. Period. But once I see the spelling, I know it immediately.
  
• I know more verbs and conjugations than most of my recently arrived compatriate expatriates (say that ten times fast), but they know more nouns than I do. Why? Because sometimes when you are in a restaurant, they foget to give you a fork and you need to figure out how to ask for one somehow. So you just learn.
  
• I can usually speak far more than they can, but they can usually understand far more than I can. Which is quite funny when two of us are hanging out. One person does all of the talking, the other does all of the listening.

Like I Said, It's All About the Amplitude

My brother Jeff and his wife live in Germany. They moved there in August 2005 for Jeff to take a new job within Adidas at their world headquarters in Nuremberg. In the last year, the two of them have gone through quite an experience moving out of the US and transitioning into a foreign country. Blythe often writes about it on her blog.

Wait—this is starting to sound familiar. Ok, ok—I clearly got the idea of starting my blog from Blythe. We were both English majors—we're used to "borrowing liberally".

Earlier today, Blythe made a post to her blog ("Anniversary") that really hit home for me. As a result, I'd like to "borrow liberally" again (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Right.) and expound upon my feelings on the same topic. Thanks Blythe. I owe you two ideas for blog postings now. Or maybe just one of those smoothies you like so much from Starbucks.

So living abroad—what's it really like? Well, in our post-blog conversation, Blythe put it best: "Sometimes the hardest part isn't living abroad—it's admitting to people that living abroad isn't always as glamorous as it seems."

Or as I like to put it—it's all about the amplitude. (What is amplitude?)



When you live abroad (or really, take on any new challenge in life), the amplitude of your every day experiences increases dramatically. You go from a life with a relatively low amplitude to a life with high amplitude. You go from a life that is more "hum drum" (not in a bad way, it's just consistently consistent) to a life that is full of very low lows and very high highs.

The hard thing is determining whether or not the net yield of the low-lows plus the high-highs equals the net yield of hum-drum.

Life for Me in the States
+1 + -1 = 0

Life for Me Abroad
+5 + -5 = 0

But the funny thing is, the human mind and spirit doesn't work that way. Even though the net yield is still 0, you are not the same after the experiences.

My Conclusion: Living abroad is a good thing to do—for a defined period of time. Not your whole life. And if you have defined that period of time in your own mind (1 year? 3 years? 5 years?), it makes it that much easier to get through the low times because you know it is not forever and you are—temporarily—trading those low times for the high times.

PS—As I finished writing this, I just looked out my office at home to find a huge spider walking across the hall. This proves my earlier point. Needless to say, he is no longer with us.

Jumping Back Into the Pool

Whenever Kerri and I come back into the US, it takes me about 24 hours to re-adjust. 24 hours before I stop telling the taxi driver "derecha", "izquierda", and "directo". 24 hours before I stop saying "Buenas" to every cashier I walk up to. 24 hours before I stop pulling out the colored bills from my wallet and instead start reaching for the boring green ones.

And then the same thing happens again when I go back to Costa Rica. For 24 hours, I forget how to speak Spanish altogether. I walk out of the airport and break into English with Christian, our Costa Rican driver. He just gives me this look as if to say, "So do you think I learned how to speak English in the two weeks you were gone?" Disculpe, Christian—mi culpa. But by the next morning, it has all come back to me.

It's like jumping into a really cold pool. Right when you jump in, all you can think to yourself is, "What was I thinking???" Then after about 2 minutes, you've adjusted to the temperature, it feels fine, and you're now talking everyone else into getting in the pool because "the water is actually quite pleasant." Right.

The next time you go to jump in, you know it will eventually feel fine—but the first 2 minutes are still rough. And so are the first 24 hours off the plane.

Los Muebles Para Casa Mango

Costa Rica House 2006

Aug 23, 2006 - 17 Photos

I completely forgot to post something about this—Kerri and I have finally completed furnishing Casa Mango (our house) in Costa Rica. It's named Casa Mango because we have a huge mango tree in our front yard. So now you all have a place to come stay! And it's all-inclusive. Well, all-inclusive if you like to eat mangos.

E-mail me the dates you would like to come visit.

Unexpected Visitors

We have a new guard dog at Casa de Mango. Well, actually, its more like a guard toad. Kerri and I came home the other night to find this guy sitting in front of our front door. And now he seems to show up every few nights. We held up a CD next to him to show how big he is.

Our New Guard Toad

We have geckos all over our house. Kerri found one in her shirt in the closet the other day. Another one jumped out of my closet and landed on my leg the other day. I've been showering with one for the last two days. She doesn't seem to want to leave the bathroom.

Actual Size Shown

Kerri explained to me that "it" was a "she" when it walked across a window and the sunlight shown through her skin and you could see gecko eggs inside her belly. Girl from Hawaii: No big deal. Boy from Portland: Not cool with sharing my bathroom with a gecko, even a friendly pregnant gecko.

• Between Kerri and I, we've killed no less than 5 scorpions--in our house.
  
• The other day, we went over to a friend's house for a barbeque and he showed us the tarantula he had just caught in a plastic bag.
  
• There are monkeys that throw things at you when you walk in the park.

If there's one thing that's clear down here it's that we don't live here--we're just renting from the local wildlife.

Loading Up (or Not?) in Dallas

When we moved down to Costa Rica, we put a bunch of our stuff in storage at our friend Megan's house in Dallas. Wait--let me re-phrase that. When we moved down to Costa Rica, Kerri drove a 20-foot long U-Haul truck by herself for 3 days from Denver to Dallas and got stranded in Kansas when she hit a tornado while I was sunning myself down in Costa Rica. OK--I was probably actually working, but that's not the version she tells. ;-) Since Dallas is a common point-of-entry into the United States from Costa Rica, we figured that we would pick up a little stuff each time we went into the States and bring it back down with us.

So on this last trip back to Costa Rica from Las Vegas, we stopped in Dallas for 2 nights to pick up a load of our stuff. As we started to rifle through the 20 or so boxes in Dallas, we quickly realized how little of it we actually needed. We'd been living down in Costa Rica now for 6 months with maybe 10% of the stuff we own and were doing just fine. In the end, we filled one more extra suitcase and took our golf clubs.

Now, granted, it is great to always have access to all of your stuff. To be able to pull out the blender/cuisinart/insert other random appliance here/etc. whenever you need it. To be able to spend a random Saturday afternoon looking through a box of old high school memories. Or to hold on to that favorite shirt that you haven't worn in over 2 years and that is filling your closet but that you just can't seem to part with.

But in the end, Costa Rica has been a great lesson for us in really how little "stuff" we actuallly need to get by in life.

(Megan--So sorry to have left you with so many boxes. We'll put them in storage the next time we come through Dallas. And dinner at Three Forks is on us the next time we are in Dallas!)

The Happiest Place on Earth (No, It's Not Disneyland)

On Saturday, Kerri and I were at EPA here in Costa Rica. When leaving the store, there is a store employee that stands at the front door and compares your receipt to the items you've purchased to make sure you haven't stolen anything. Just like at Costco. Checking the person's stuff in front of us was taking a particularly long time as the clerk was checking every piece in a 100-piece tool set. As a result, a line of about 15 people formed trying to get out of the store.

Kerri and I looked at the line and--in true American fashion--started to get impatient. Kerri started looking around to see if we could call another clerk over to help out. As she was looking around for the clerk, I looked at the line and noticed that everyone behind us was standing patiently talking to one another. Not one of them had even noticed that a large line had formed--and they were in it! I turned to Kerri to call off her search for another clerk--"Babe, I don't think these people mind that there is a line."

The next day, I picked up the Tico Times--basically a newspaper in Costa Rica written just for the ex-pats. There was a column written by an American woman who had just returned to San Jose from Liberia. She had taken the bus back and--because it was a holiday weekend--the bus was overcrowded. So crowded that many people didn't get seats and had to stand. For 4 1/2 hours from Liberia to San Jose. And the point of her article was that--while she scrambled on to the bus to land a seat--the local Costa Ricans around her stood for 4 1/2 hours and not one of them ever complained.

When you travel to a foreign country, the culture is always different. But I sometimes fail to remember that a core part of culture is attitude. And Costa Ricans have an entirely different mindset than we in the northern half of the Americas. They don't mind waiting. In fact, they'll do it patiently. They are on Tico Time.

Maybe that's why Costa Rica is the third happiest country on the planet.

Marsha and Ken Come to Visit

Marsha and Ken came to visit us in Costa Rica this past weekend (our first visitors!). We spent the first night at our house and took them to our favoriate Italian restaurant D'Bartolo's. On Friday morning, they were real troopers trudging around town with us as we looked for the US Embassy to notarize the closing documents for our loft in Denver. (It's sold!)

Indiana Jones Bridge

House sold, we left for the beach and encountered more than one bridge that was straight out of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. No sides to the bridge, planks moving back and forth as you go over them. And then we watched a semi cross!

We arrived in Manuel Antonio and checked into the famous Hotel Si Como No. It's an amazing hotel built right into the rain forest on the side of a mountain. We had dinner at the famous El Avion which is a restaurant built out of the plane that started the Iran-Contra Affair when it crash landed in Nicarauga. It was sold, taken apart, hauled to Manuel Antonio on a train, and reassembled as the restaurant.

During the day, we relaxed on the beach and watched USA eeek out a 1-1 tie with Italy in the World Cup at the place we had lunch. Good news is everyone in the bar was cheering for the US--Costa Ricans love Americans.

The second night, we had a fabulous dinner at our hotel's restaurant and hit the casino in town. Kerri and I were joking around with a $1 bill that Marsha had handed us and in 3 minutes turned it into $45. Then we called it a night. I know--high rollers.

On our last day, we laid by the hotel pool and hit the road to head back to Santa Ana (where we live) in the early afternoon.

(If you look close in the photos, you'll see I've got about 4 days of a beard going. A part of my electric razor broke. They don't carry the part in Costa Rica. I had to order it from the US. I waited two weeks. And didn't shave the whole time. Fun.)

View from Our Room	Scott at Breakfast
Dinner at El Avion	Balcony Sunset
Iquana Sunbathing	Dinner at Si Como No

Big Business Comes to Town

A store called EPA recently opened up near where we live in Costa Rica. EPA is basically Home Depot meets IKEA. All of the same stuff as a Home Depot but in the blue/yellow/white color scheme of IKEA. Some people in Costa Rica don't like it. They make the commonly heard argument about big business pushing out the local merchants.

Late last year, Wal-Mart bought a stake in Central America's largest grocery store chain. According to a conversation that I had with a guy who works for Wal-Mart in Central America, they are now building 6 Wal-Marts in Costa Rica.

About 5 years ago, Costco opened up a Pricesmart here in Costa Rica.

I have to be honest. As much as I don't like to see small retailers and local merchants get squeezed out, I like EPA. I like Pricesmart. And I'm sure I'll like Wal-Mart when it opens. Why? Because convenience is important. And you don't realize you don't have it until--well--you don't have it. And Kerri and I noticed it right away when we moved to Costa Rica. It was hard to get anything done because we didn't know where anything was and--when we would finally get there--they wouldn't have the size/color/quantity/etc. we wanted.

Now I guess we'll have that a bit more.

Although Wal-Mart isn't entirely taking over the world. As 100,000 square foot warehouses start popping up all over Costa Rica, Wal-Mart quits Germany and South Korea.

Callin' Costa Rica

Usually the best way to reach me is by dialing my US phone number:

(720) 224-9730

I have it set to forward to me wherever I am in the world. But I thought I'd also let you all know our new phone numbers in Costa Rica in case you want to call us direct there:

Costa Rica
Home: +506 282-4985
Scott's Cell: +506 862-7000
Kerri's Cell: +506 872-7000

From the US, just dial "011" to get an international line, then the numbers above. And of course, our US numbers stay the same:

United States
Scott's Cell: +1 720-470-9890
Kerri's Cell: +1 720-470-4743

I've also included this information in the navigation bar on the right so it is always accessible.

Costa Rica Livin'

Great news! Kerri and I have found a house in Costa Rica. It took Kerri just two days with the help of our awesome real estate agent Juan Pablo to find this place. It's a house in a complex of 4 other houses in Santa Ana, which is a suburb outside of San Jose and near where we are building our new office for Paradise Poker.

We officially move-in this Monday, but we won't be moving our stuff down to Costa Rica until the beginning of April and even then it will take 4-6 weeks to get there. But from June on, you are all welcome to come visit us! We've got a great guest bedroom and always have an open invitation for anyone that wants to come check out Costa Rica.

But don't try to send us mail because it won't get to us. Costa Rica doesn't really have a mail system like the US. In fact, they don't even really have street names and home addresses. This is our address!

Santa Ana, de Forum 1 kilómetro Oeste, Urbanización Rio Oro, Caseta de guarda 3 cuadras largas al norte y cuatro cuadras oeste, Condominio Villas del Roble

Jaco (Pronounced "Hako")

Kerri and I have just returned to Santa Ana from our first weekend trip to Jaco, Costa Rica (near Punta Renas and Manuel Antonio). I was interviewing a few candidates for Paradise Poker and we brought them down to Costa Rica to interview and show them the country.

We stayed the first night at the White House, a boutique hotel up in the hills of Escazu and owned by an American here in Costa Rica. Yes, it really does look like the White House. Kerri and I stayed in the Grover Cleveland room. No, I can't tell you anything Grover Cleveland did during his presidency.

After a night at the White House, we hit the road for the 2-hour drive to the beach in our rented Toyota 4Runner. The road to Jaco is a curvy one, but it's not the curves that will get you. It's the cows. This Tico was kind enough to yield the road to us.


We spent Friday night at the Los Suenos resort in Jaco, had an amazing dinner at the restaurant Nuevo Latino, and then played poker into the wee hours of the morning. The next day, we lounged by the pool and in the hammocks by the beach.

On the way back, we saw an interesting sign...



And then we realized what the sign meant when we looked over the side of the road and saw this!

Weekend at the Beach

Kerri and I spent the weekend in Tamarindo, Costa Rica for Paradise Poker's $1,000,000 Masters IV final table. Our upgrade to the Daihatsu Terios didn't work out so well--it was basically the equivalent of a Suzuki Samurai (if you remember that car from the 90s). So we took it back and upgraded to the Toyota Prado--the international version of the Toyota 4Runner. It made the drive to the coast about 5 times smoother.

Enough about cars. We arrived on Friday evening and had a great cocktail party and dinner with the 10 players that had made the final table. 9 men and 1 woman. About par for the course for poker these days. We were all secretly rooting for the woman during play on Saturday, but unfortunately she was short-stacked going into the final table. Toby Stubbs took down the top prize.

We had a great dinner on the beach afterwards to celebrate with the Paradise Poker team. And then off to the Jazz Casino in town for a little poker both nights. We played from about 8-2 on Friday night and I was dealt AAs, KKs, QQs, JJs, AK, AQ, and AJ and went home the big winner. Anybody can play when they get the cards though. On Saturday night, I wasn't so lucky and gave back a bit of my winnings to the locals. But just a bit.

The drive back from Tamarindo was a long one after getting stuck behind a sugar cane truck for about 50 kilometers. That's 30 miles for all of you in the States. Have to think in 6/10 when I'm in Costa Rica! But it was made much more enjoyable with some lively conversation with our good friends John and Janna. Great to spend the weekend with them as they are headed back to Ireland in March.

(Photos to come! We bought a disposable camera for the trip--as we had our digital camera stolen on New Year's--only to have me leave the disposable by the pool. Thankfully, someone turned it in and the hotel is mailling it to us in the States.)

Destination: Tamarindo...Take 2

Kerri and I are headed back to Tamarindo this weekend for Paradise Poker's $1,000,000 Masters IV final table. The event will be played live on Saturday, February 11 at the Hotel Diria Tamarindo. Here is the breakdown of the chip count and the players going into the final table.

After last weekend's adventure on Costa Rica's roads (read below) and the fact that we'll be driving up with our Irish friends John and Janna, we've upgraded from the Toyota Yaris to the Daihatsu Terios. Car names in Costa Rica are just as weird as in the US.

Then on Monday, we're headed back to Denver for a couple of weeks!

Lightning, Italians, and Guayanas...Oh My!

Kerri and I are back from our weekend trip to Tamarindo. It was quite an eventful weekend! Over the course of three days, we:

• Drove 6 hours in a tropical rainstorm (lightning included).
• Arrived at our hotel only to discover that the hotel had messed up our reservation and was overbooked. Negotiated a free night for Saturday night.
• Ate banana macadamia nut pancakes. Twice.
• Ate steak and lobster. Twice. For $20!
• Played poker with a Frenchman, three Italians, two Americans, and two Costa Ricans. Saw quad Qs twice in 3 hours. Neither was mine. Walked out slightly richer. Slightly.
• Took our Yaris through Costa Rican's worst pot holes. Think Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.
• Found Mexican food. Finally.
• Almost drove over 2 iguanas. Iguana disaster averted.
• Passed 2,341 fruit stands from Tamarindo to San Jose. Hypothesized that "guayana" means "guava". Have not confirmed.
• Had "Texas BBQ Ribs" on the way home. Yes, in Costa Rica.
• Forgot to take any pictures of ourselves on the trip.
  

And we're headed back this coming weekend for Paradise Poker's Masters IV $1,000,000 Final Table.

¡Si!

Today is the presidential election in Costa Rica. Things are crazy here. People are out and about everywhere, waving flags, handing out flyers, etc. They have a law where they stop selling alcohol in the country on Thursday night and then don't resume again until Monday morning after the election is over. Kind of ironic considering it's the same weekend as the Super Bowl.

The Costa Ricans even have a carpool system set-up to get people to the polls, especially people that live outside San Jose and other towns. People attach huge colored flags to their car of the candidate they support and then drive around picking up anyone else who wants to vote for their candidate and take them to the polls. Rumor has it that Oscar Arias will win. As foreigners, we obviously can't vote. But folks tell us that Arias is the way to go—he's very "pro-American" and is trying to pass further legislation to encourage immigration and investment by Americans into Costa Rica.

Destination: Tamarindo

Kerri and I are off to Tamarindo this weekend to explore the beaches of Costa Rica for the first time. Tamarindo is in Guanacaste near Liberia on the West Coast of Costa Rica. We are staying at the Jardin del Eden.

I'm hoping we can find some Mexican food there.

Was That Bernie Ebers I Just Saw at Hooters?

There's a lot of ex-pats living in Costa Rica. Americans for sure, but also lots of Canadians, Australians, Brits, etc. There's a funny saying down here about the ex-pats: "Everyone here is either not wanted back where they're from, or they are wanted back where they're from."

Take my hair stylist for example. She came down to Costa Rica, opened a salon and spa, was hauled back to the United States by the Feds for securities fraud, spent three years in jail, then came back to Costa Rica to her salon.

But she's a nice lady. And she gives a good haircut. So who am I to judge?

Hooters in Costa Rica?

So probably the strangest thing about Costa Rica so far is the restaurant selection. Within 1 mile of where we live, we have:

• TGI Friday's
  
• Tony Roma's
  
• Outback Steakhouse
  
• Hooters
  
• McDonald's
  
• Burger King
  
• Kentucky Fried Chicken
  
• Taco Bell
  
• Subway
  
• Quizno's

It's like we never even left the US!

(I say "the US" because you don't say "America" down here. When you say "America", they say, "You are in America." Central and South Americans are a little senstive about the whole North/Central/South America thing.)

But to really make things interesting, Tex-Mex food (my personal favorite) is nowhere to be found in Costa Rica. OK, yeah, we have Taco Bell, but that doesn't count. I've looked everywhere and asked everyone and I always get the same answer, "Yeah, we don't really have Mexican food down here." It's 500 miles to the Mexican border and you're trying to tell me that Mexican food has never made it down here? Not a taco, an enchilada, or even a chalupa or two? I e-mailed the CEO of Chevy's and informed him of the market opportunity. He hasn't responded yet.

And on top of that, every restaurant is Italian. I'm exaggerating a little. We have found a sushi place and an Indian place and people have told us about a great Thai place. But we have probably been to 10 different Italian restaurants so far. Costa Ricans love their Italian.