Nancy's Blog

Some things in Costa Rica are crazy expensive, inexplicably so.  Expats complain about the cost of peanut butter as if their last dime was being rooted out of their pockets.  Yesterday Gary and I needed to send a package to San Jose, the capital city located on the other side of the country.  There’s no postal service here, and we didn’t know where to go, how to do it, how long it would take, or how much it would cost.  A friend directed us to “a building in front of Pescador Restaurant,” which is about as close to an address as you’re going to get around here.  We found the building and brought in our package.  On it, we wrote the name of the recipient along with a code and off it went.  For $3, it was safely delivered the following morning at 9 a.m.  Now if we could just put the delivery guy in charge of the peanut butter distribution, this place would be perfect.

...$850 was deducted from our checking account, $50 more than last month.  Our health insurance has gone up -- vision and dental not included, and the deductible maxxed out at $20K. The high cost is a penalty for being self employed, middle class, and rural.  Meanwhile, here in Costa Rica, we’ve had a $10 eye exam, a $50 dental exam with cleaning, and a bargain skin care treatment that would have cost a small fortune in the U.S.  When Obamacare kicks in next year and our cost goes up a projected 30%, its conceivable that families like ours could actually live here just on the difference in health care costs.  Loca!