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As many of you might remember me in this site, I am a gringo married to a Tica for the last 7 years. Recently we have decided to make a life change and move to Paraguay for a couple of years, we hope to make it back to Costa Rica permanently in 2010. Mainly for family reasons, since my wife has no family in the states and all are in Costa Rica.
I have come to the conclusion that most gringos are not true adventures, meaning if it is good for the mass it must be a great deal. Costa Rica is an incredible country! How ever it is just another country out side of the U.S. ! Costa Rica has its problems with pollution, politics, and crime like every country. If you go off the beaten track you will find many open dumps that are spilling into the rivers and will give you the true reality of the country. Costa Rica doesn’t have the resources to keep up with the demand of retirees and foreigners at its current pace, this is true like most countries in central and south America.
Before the gringos have started to invade the little country (with in the last 10 years) other foreigners came and made profits such as the Europeans.
Here in Paraguay most of the foreigners are Germans, Taiwanese, and in the southern Tri Border Area middle eastern. As we all know how the Germans made it here and still have deep roots in the community, they still have a flow of new people. I know many German people that have immigrated here in the last 5 years and have created business for others to follow.
The people in Paraguay are very friendly and in most ways just like Ticos! They will give you the shirt off of their back but will also steal your wallet if you let them! Kind of like New Yorkins…hahaha
What my point is, don’t let the beauty of Costa Rica blind you of your possibilities because as time goes by there will be many doors opening in other countries just as that are just as beautiful and in many cases cheaper!
I am sure that many will disagree and still defend CR as haven on earth but many are there for the money or are just following the mass!
When you take a good hard look, the “true reality” of most countries is a darn site uglier than the “true reality” of Costa Rica …
There are a lot of very beautiful and more affordable places that someone could check out for a retirement abroad – absolutely – but few that are as welcoming and as convenient to North Americans as Costa Rica.
And although there will be “many doors opening in other countries,” I would suggest that it’s going to become more difficult to walk through those doors.
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comspeaking of dumping trash into rivers, I just walked my property yesterday and discovered that has happened on the neighboring property. Is there no remedy? No municipality functionary to contact? Or do I just wait for the jungle to over grow it? This is on the Rio Grande and it makes me sick to think that this pile may grow bigger. TRhe nearest large municipality is Naranjo.
I don’t know if I really do agree with that. Last year when I was stuck in El Salvador for a week because of mechanical problems. We stayed in a gated community where many gringos had invested. One individual that I had a long talk with was from Colorado and was in communications industry. He stated that El Salvador had its problems (major crime) but if it ever became fixed he thought it would be just like Costa Rica and closer.
Here in Paraguay they are very open to foreigners, just like ticos (which i believe ticos will regret in the future) in many ways they are more advanced than Costa Rica but they are the poorest country in South America! However like all countries they still have the high class malls and terribly expensive cloths.
You are right that some countries can be much uglier than Costa Rica (politically).
This discussion can, and suspect will, go in many directions.
Specifically responding to the political aspect as well as the mention of El Salvador, I think that it is very important to point out that we, the USA, do not have a history of invading or covertly staging puppet governments or dictatorships in Costa Rica.
This “lack of history” is one of the main reasons I feel more comfortable in Costa Rica.
In El Salvador, Chile, or Nicaragua there is a good chance that the local you meet will have a relative who has been effected in a major way, be it torture or some other form of violence that was sponsored by the U.S.
Granted, with CAFTA, we will influencing Costa Rica in a big way, I just think that the lack of a violent history between our two countries is a huge plus.Interesting thought process!
I would say that I don’t agree with it because in all of these countries we have done more good than harm. Even today events that are taking place for humanitarian aid is enormous and you wouldn’t even know how much money is being put into these countries by the U.S. In all of South and Central America we the U.S are responding to countries needs while the rest of the world lets them flounder.
There was a up raising at one time with Johny Walker! (U.S. invader).
Again my comment is correct that most gringos are not true adventures, meaning if it is good for the mass it must be a great deal.Yeah! Uhhuh! Jeez! scottbenson please read a book! You are so dreaming.
The U.S are responds “to countries needs” when there’s something BIG in it for them. Their so called humanitarian ALWAYS has LONG strings attached and while Lancet estimates more than 1,000,000 ONE MILLION HUMAN BEINGS have been KILLED in Iraq because of the US invasion and occupation – MOST OF THEM INNOCENT CIVILIANS and apart from that 20% of the Iraq population are refugees or have been ‘displaced’ which is the equivalent of 60,000,000 people in the US.
What was it you were saying about doing “more good than harm”
Here’s an interesting article for your bradbard from the Santa barbara News-Press [ http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=565268553130182116' defer onload=' ]:
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Report: Afghan aid money spent on high salaries, living costs
JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
March 25, 2008 9:52 AMKABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Too much money meant for Afghanistan aid is wasted, with a vast amount spent on foreign workers’ high salaries, security and living arrangements, according to a report from humanitarian groups published Tuesday.
The prospects for peace in Afghanistan are being undermined because Western countries are failing to deliver on aid promises – and because much of the aid money they do send is going to expatriate workers, according to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an alliance of 94 international aid agencies.
Since 2001, the international community has pledged $25 billion in help but has delivered only $15 billion, the alliance said. Of that $15 billion, some 40 percent of it – or $6 billion – goes back to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries, the report found.
‘A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, living, security, transport and accommodation costs for expatriates working for consulting firms or contractors,’ the report said. The costs are increasing with a recent deterioration in security, it said.
The cost of a full-time expatriate consultant working in Afghanistan is around $250,000, according to the group.
This is some 200 times the average annual salary of an Afghan civil servant, who is paid less than $1,000′ per year, the report said.
Amy Frumin, an international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations who spent a year in Afghanistan as an officer on a U.S. Agency for International Development reconstruction team, said blaming high expat salaries is unfair.
‘You have to pay them good money to do that. They’re still having trouble finding people to fill these positions. It’s a dangerous place. Not many people are willing to risk their limbs,’ she said.
The report said that Afghanistan’s biggest donor, USAID, the U.S. government’s aid arm, allocates close to half of its funds to five large U.S. contractors and that ‘it is clear that substantial amounts of aid continue to be absorbed in corporate profits.’
The five companies are KBR, the Louis Berger Group, Chemonics International, Bearing Point and Dyncorp International, the report said.
Donors, especially the United States, should ensure the primary objective of aid programs is poverty reduction and that they address genuine Afghan needs and build Afghan capacity, it said.
The report also said the United States has not delivered $5 billion worth of aid it pledged to help rebuild Afghanistan, and other donors have fallen short by about that same amount.
Jim Kunder, acting deputy administrator of USAID, said he recognized there are always concerns about the speed in which aid is delivered but he said the envisioned work is being done.
‘The U.S. government is on track to provide the aid to Afghanistan that it pledged,’ Kunder said in a telephone interview from Washington.
He said the report didn’t recognize that often much of the cash earmarked for projects isn’t spent until the work is completed. Roads and schools are being built and the Afghans are being helped to create democratic institutions even though the final bills haven’t come in, he said.
USAID said it had pledged $25.8 billion, and of that $17.4 billion has been spent or is in the pipeline. Kunder said the money has gone to a broad variety of projects, including ‘supporting the national elections, constructing roads, reducing infant mortality by 22 percent, putting more than four million Afghan children in schools.’
Previous reports by aid groups have said the international community is spending far less aid money in Afghanistan per capita – and putting far fewer soldiers on the ground – than it has in previous conflicts.
In the two years following the U.S.-led invasion, Afghanistan received $57 per capita in aid, while Bosnia and East Timor received $679 and $233 per capita respectively, the ACBAR report said.
Associated Press writers Lindsay Holmwood and Kent Kilpatrick in New York contributed to this report.
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Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comTo tell you the truth scott, I had a meeting this last week with USAID and the Peace corps… I am NOT impressed. USAID only contracts out all of their work to NGO groups and the Peace Corps only teach the natives to think… like they can’t do it on their own….
Well brad,
I have to STRONGLY disagree with you… almost every country including COSTA RICA need and want the help from the U.S. …
I have participated in the help here in Paragauy for yellow fever out break. If they didn’t have the U.S. they would not have recived the valuable supplys and medicine to help over 2.0 million people.
Also have you ever thought what the rest of South and Central America would say about Americans if they didn’t help their countries. Do you think that it would creat more resentment about gringos or less?????????
By the way … I don’t have to read about if I am in the middle of it.
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