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Yep, I got robbed, despite the armed guard, the alarm system, and neighbors close by. It doesn’t appear that they stole anything but a cheap broken stereo system and my CD case. I hope they like Bob Dylan. They didn’t empty drawers and they didn’t vandalize anything which is a good thing considering I have huge valuable paintings on the walls and vintage photographs. They didn’t steal the appliances, and they didn’t find the few pieces of jewelry I had stashed. Oh well. C’est la guerre.
Are you in CR now? I have read your posts and you make a lot of sense. A Bob Dylan fan too. So am I.
So do you think it was the neighbor, or the guard. I tend to pick the guard if there is questionable forced entry. These little invasions seem to happen more frequently around the holidays with peole beiing off and drunk and running oput of money.
Do you thinks it a legitamate threat, or a nusiance robbery.
This is the FOURTH robbery in a month. My next door neighbor got hit about 3 weeks ago. They entered through my sliding doors in the dining room but outside the dining room is a ten foot high block wall so they picked the spot where they wouldn’t have been seen by the roaming guard, or the roaming polizei. One neighbors said “kids” another neighbor said “Nicas from the cane fields.” And no I’m not in CR yet — January 24 is when I arrive. Yeah, they had better like Dylan and alot of other odd music because they have plenty to listen to but it won’t be on the stereo they stole because the CD player is broken!!! So I guess the joke is on THEM!!
Also it was extremely foggy, and that’s when they like to strike. It obviously muffled the sound of my screeching alarm system going off which they soon disabled because my neighbor (who is less than 30 feet away from me and his bedroom is on the side of the house nearest where they entered) didn’t hear a thing. Just proves once again that if they want to get in, they will get in, but they’d better not do it a second time because I am putting up signs on my doors and windows that say in Spanish “If you come into my house, I will kill you!”
I once made aliving as an in-house artist for an advertising company and I aspired to make art in my free time. This was 35 years ago. Over the years, I kept a half dozen of my paintings and they always hung on my walls wherever I lived. My Miami home was broken into once and my condo before that. The thief-thieves were a neighborhood teen(s).They took a camera and a few other small things. Of course, the paintings were never touched. Most petit thieves are not sohisticated enough to appreciate art nor connected well enough to get any value out of stolen art work.
Nonetheless, I empathize with your fears about losing the art. I am also apprehensive
about my own paintings when I move to CR. I think the only way to avoid the anxiety is to pay a trusted local to stay in the house WHENEVER you are absent, if that is possible. Gates, window bars and uniformed guards are no guarantee. This is a culture of petit theivery and is a regrettable price we have to pay to live in Costa Rica. Consider the cost of a Brinks alarm system in your U.S. home compared to a few bucks paid to a local in Costa Rica for house sitting.Okay, over the last decade I have lost 3 car stereos, two 5 gallon gas cans (full), two sprayers, and some other smaller things I can’t recall. Lets call it a thousand dollars in losses.
My point is all that stuff (oh and the two broken car windows) cost about $1,000. That’s a $100 a year average in losses. Compare that to the cost of a night time caretaker to watch my precious car stereos and other stuff.
Caretaker cost about $5,000 a year, if he’s part of the Caja, and $3,600 if he’s not.
Now do the math:Caretaker: 10 X $4,300 (average). That’s $43,000 dollars!
Losses from thieves $1,000.Obviously we know which number is best.
The point is that most people spend the extra money to prevent them from feeling violated. It’s not about the monetary loss. It’s about their precious ego. Thier inability to let go of obsesive control and feelings of superiority.
I agree that gun crime is on its way up, but just like the rental car thread, Americans want to apply their standards to the rest of the world. Some want to come here and fill their houses with expensive stuff, like back home. Then they need to have bars. Then they complain about the bars. It’s not the bars, but their mindset that cages them.
Costa Rica is set up for life without a lot of stuff. So, be the kind of person that values expensive material possession, and be prepared to guard them. Or, be like the majority of Ticos that have few material possessions, and when they are stolen, replace them. Usually by the time the stuff is stolen, it’s well used. That means it’s lost at least half its value (if you apply that logic to my situation I have averaged only ($50 a year in losses).
I chalk the losses up to the price of doing business (living here).
My place has no super expensive electronics, although I would like to bring a 40 TV from the states, because after watching blue ray movies, its hard to go back. However, I plan to bring one large enough that it will be clumsy to steal.
You just have to think things through and not expect Oz to be like Kansas.
It’s different here. And If you come here and apply your standards, you will end up in a complaining session with a group of gringos. You will be like the editor of amcostarica (except off line): full of inappropriate expectations.
Inappropriate expectation are hard to fulfill. It’s like a person of average wealth and appearance thinking they are going to marry a beautiful rich supermodel. It’s possible, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
I finally saw the pictures of the crime scene. OIJ came and took fingerprints and filed reports. Who knows if anything will come of that. Yes, they made a mess, throwing stuff from the drawers and cupboards where clothes were stored, but oh boy, it could’ve been so much worse. I have a friend staying in the house but who is gone at the moment so the stuff in the drawers was hers, not mine, as my clothes, etc. were packed in space bags which they apparently didn’t bother to open. Their take was about $700 worth of stuff — mostly in CD’s, her cell phone and charger, two CD players, one of which was broken. They missed the two pieces of jewelry I had stashed, and even though they rifled through the chest of drawers, they didn’t see the false bottom in one of the drawers where my friend had left a thousand dollars in cash. They didn’t destroy anything, didn’t cut the cushions of my sofa, just upended them, didn’t spray paint the walls or break things. As for my art, the three paintings I have there that are worth anything are 5 x 6 feet and 7 x 8 feet. To the untrained eye, they are ugly. I always knew they wouldn’t get stolen; my fear was that they would get slashed, but basically whoever broke in was looking for stuff they could fence, I guess, or maybe it was kids because someone who was a hardened thief would’ve taken something more than the few things they got. All of my electro-domesticos were there; but they are really cheap appliances that I bought IN Costa Rica, and the blender, coffee maker, juicer, etc could all be replaced for $60. Hauling out a 20 pound cuisinart wasn’t on their agenda. So now we WILL have the bars put on the windows that would provide easy access, and put on metal sliders outside the sliding glass doors. This was certainly a wake-up call. I was feeling pretty invulnerable once I got the wireless alarm system installed, but those little creeps immediately went for the console and unplugged it and took it to a bedroom where they buried it under a pillow because obviously the thing was still going off because of the battery back-up. To hell with these wireless things — I’m having the hard-wired system hooked up when I get there and the console for that will be behind a locked metal panel. There will be no shutting it off. I got robbed in New Jersey 20 some years ago and we had bars on the windows. they still got in, stole the stereos, and then took a big dump in the kitchen. At least the ladrones didn’t do that!!! So yes, I was feeling rather traumatized and violated, but today I am grateful that they took that broken stereo — it alleviates my having to dispose of it somehow — and didn’t get the stuff I would’ve really been upset about. Welcome to living in the third world where theft is part of life.
And they cleaned out my larder in the laundry room where I had 20 pounds of rice, 10 pounds of pasta, and 5 pounds of beans stored. Thankfully, the kitchen cupboards were left intact because I have all my gourmet ingredients there that can’t be bought in CR. I hope they eat well!!
Caretaker cost of $5,000 a year? No it does NOT cost that much unless maybe you are talking about an empty house. I am talking about 30 bucks for a week end and maybe $5 for a few hours whenI go to the market.
As far as filling a house with “expensive stuff”, a computer and TV are essentials for modernliving. Period. Unless you want to embark on a real life adventure of living like people did a century ago in the States and still do in CR in many cases, you ARE going to have expensive stuff in your house.
Go ahead and live like many of the thieves live in order to not be a victim if that is your best solution. It seems rather more of a bother to do that than to simply lay out the modest money cost of security. Life style is the deciding factor here. I rarely go out when I have a home I like. I am older now and feel no need to be out on the town often if ever. If you are still in your 30’s or even 40’s and prefer to spend your time and money on travel rather than possessions, that is another life style decision with it’s own solutions.
I don’t have and will not have a TV in my house in Costa Rica. I also don’t have a computer for the same reasons. I’d rather go to an internet cafe 3x’s a week than have my computer stolen. I don’t miss having a TV AT ALL!! I do have a small DVD player and that’s plenty. My neighbor had his BIG TV stolen in one of the robberies. It’s nothing for two ladrones to walk off with a 42 incher.
Maravilla,
I am sorry to hear about this loss of yours. But let me get this straight…nobody in Costa Rica can expect to own and keep a computer or a TV? Nobody? I see appliances and all kinds of durable goods being sold in the stores. Who is buying them? And why would anyone buy anything of value that can, and according to many on this site,WILL be stolen eventually?2BNCR and you are both talking about simply not owning certain things because those things will just get stolen and theft prevention is too costly or too much of a bother. Isn’t that sort of like having all your teeth pulled since they are going to fall out eventually anyway?
You can buy those things, surely, but don’t expect they will last you a lifetime. Of course, they’re being sold in all the stores — people have to replace what was stolen. Unless you are living in fortress, it will probably happen to you, maybe not right away — hey, I’ve been there 2.5 years in my house and never had an incident — but almost everyone i know there, Tico and gringo, has had SOMETHING stolen either inside or outside. Once you accept that this is part of life (everywhere now) you can deal with it pro-actively. Yeah, I’m sorry it happened to me too. It’s not a good feeling.
I don’t know a single person who has not experienced a theft of some sort no matter where they live. As far as things lasting a lifetime, I can’t think of too many things that do. Appliances, pets, cars, computers, TV’s etc., all these things are very finite. If they aren’t lost, destroyed or stolen, they will wear out qucikly enough anyway. Not much lasts a lifetime.
There are two aspects to this culturally ingrained Costa Rican problem of rampant thievery. One is purely economic and the other is emotional. The economic side is just simple math. Whatever you own will eventually have to be replaced one way or the other. Just accept that and figure the replacement cost of each item into the budget. The fact that things do not last a lifetime is not enough reason to deny yourself those things.
The emotional cost of suffering a violation of your home is another more difficult matter to deal with.
There is a difference between the teeth and the TV analogy. What you absolutely don’t want to happen is that the ladrones decide they want what you have when you are there, inside your house. There is no way to tell if they are high on crack or guaro, are armed or not, murderous or not. I don’t want that kind of confrontation for any material thing. Personally, I hate television, so NOT having a TV is a great thing for me. The stereo they stole cost $60 at Maxi Bodega, and the one I am bringing down to replace the one that was stolen cost me $30 on sale at Wal-Mart here. No way in hell would I own a GOOD stereo in Costa Rica. My days of having Bose anything are over! If I had a computer at home, I wouldn’t have to go to town hardly at all, but I like going to town, so I use the internet there 3xs a week. It costs me $2.00 a week for that. It’s a lot cheaper than satellite internet and I don’t have to worry about where I am going to hide the cmputer when I leave the house. I didn’t move to CR to live like a rich gringa. I also don’t wear my good jewelry there for the same reasons. I don’t need the hassle of someone trying to steal it. These are facts of life in most places now. They are in-your-face facts in Costa Rica. We’re pretty sure we know who committed the thefts in our hood, and we are going to ask the finca owner to inspect the shacks these people live in to see if they have any of the items that were stolen. The police are useless although the OIJ made some vague attempts at trying to solve the crime. So here we did all we thought was necessary to be safe — armed guard, vigilant neighbors, alarm systems, dogs and yet it still wasn’t enough!
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