One of the Nicest Species on the Planet

Image by Costa Rican Resource via FlickrUS companies are finding out that one of Costa Rica's prime assets are its people. They are well trained, well educated, kind, gentle and bilingual. They can provide service to Spanish speaking countries as well as the English speaking countries, and they do it for a competitive salary. Chile attracts business because of its minerals. Costa Rica attracts business because of its human capital.

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Costa Rica's Early Influence

Image via Wikipedia The Old and the New World met in Costa Rica when Christopher Columbus landed here in 1502. In the years that followed, the largest city in Central America was Guatemala City. Costa Rica was so far from this city that it was difficult to develop trade routes. But there was an upside to this. Because Costa Rica was so far removed from the center of Spanish activity, it was allowed to develop without supervision from the The Crown. This was a blessing in disguise. Isolation meant the Spanish did not enslave the people to work on their land. Although the Costa Rican people were separated from the “big money” in Guatemala City, it certainly did not hurt them.

Today Costa Rica is no longer isolated, but sought after as a vacation land and a permanent home to people from all over the world. Those years of isolation did not hurt the people either. Few countries are as well known for their “nice people” as Costa Rica. While Costa Rica was considered by the Spanish as one of the poorest places in Central America, today it has one of the most stable economies in Latin America. The Conquistadors left Costa Rica alone, and Costa Rica certainly made the best of it.

No, Not my Address!

Image via Wikipedia The one thing you do not want to hear in Costa Rica is the question: “What’s your address?”

Addresses in Costa Rica are basically the directions to your house. Giving someone your address is like writing an essay. For example, my address is San Jose de la Montana, the main road out of Barva, 200 meters before the church, on the right, with the wooden gate. That is what you write on the envelope of you letter, in Spanish. Other addresses are even more involved than that. A couple that Mary and I met at immigration started to give us their address on the back of an envelope. They ran out of paper. We settled for their phone number.

We moved recently, and I do not even know my new address. It has something to do with so many meters passed the two bars and around the bend, the first right. That’s why I got a P.O. Box.

However, this address system, as convoluted as it sounds, is amazingly efficient. I have had to find several people using this address method, and I always found them without a problem. If you can’t find them, then all you have to do is ask once you have gone as far as the address will take you. It seems like all the people in Costa Rica know one another. They even know me, and I do not speak the language very well. An American friend of mine could not quite get to my house using my address. So after he got to my village, he stopped in the grocery store, which also serves as a welcome center, and asked if anyone knew me.

“Si, he is the gringo hombre,” the clerk replied. “He lives back there.”

San Jose, the capitol, is going to spend over a million dollars to put numbers on streets and houses. Taxi drivers love the idea, but will it work for the general public? I’m not so sure. I still think people are going to say, “I live a hundred meters past the Shell station on the right, next to the Dairy Queen.”

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