[costa rica 1]


Welcome to the land of cockroaches and Argentinean meditators, Ecuadorian biologists and Honduran sociologists. Where toilet paper is never thrown in the toilet, shower water is ice cold, and floppy discs are used to store data.

Where it rains every day, where spider monkeys and sea turtles roam, where Nicaraguans and Colombians immigrate, where gringos come to play, where three ex-presidents have been arrested for corruption, where prostitution is legal, where minors don't go to jail.

Where everyone is learning English at a language institute, where gallo pinto is served with each meal (a mingling of rice and beans), where lunar eclipses and one-minute earthquakes materialize, where machismo and soccer are adored, where the national soccer team is still in the running for the World Cup 2006 in Germany.

Where you can buy forty bananas for one US dollar, where labor was once brought in from Jamaica to the Caribbean coast [Patua spoken], where the Brunka people have succeeded in preventing the construction of the Boruca Dam on their land, and where white under your fingernails means someone is thinking about you.