Don Mateo

Buying a used car in Costa Rica is a hit or miss proposition. The choices are endless, as can be the problems one encounters with the car after the purchase. Caveat emptor. Over the years in Costa Rica, I have owned a series of aging road warriors that began with […]

When our 13 year old dog died of natural causes, I told my wife I did not want another. We had gotten her when we lived in a rural area. She was a large German Shepherd/Black Lab mix with dark fur and an intimidating bark. She spent most of her […]

Homelessness is a growing worldwide problem and Costa Rica is not immune. In the past 25 years, I have witnessed the homeless population in San Isidro de el General grow from a handful of alcoholics to a mix of drinkers, addicts, the mentally ill, and the sporadic arrival of Venezuelan […]

I live in one of the knock-off capitals of Costa Rica. Walking around town today I saw three different men, in three different parts of town, all wearing the same t-shirts with variations on the Levi Dockers logo. None resembled the actual Dockers logo. At the largest Ropa Americana in […]

I just read an article in an online business-related website, that quotes at length from a US American expat, lamenting the cost of living in Costa Rica. Among the claims were that prices for daily expenses can be double what he paid in the US. Anyone who has lived here […]

A friend– I’ll call him Lenny– recently became a crime victim for the first time here. His car was broken into on the street in San Jose, and his laptop and a drone were stolen. Two days later, back home from the mean big city, he had hardly cooled down. […]

Expats come to Costa Rica for all types of reasons; Some come to live, some to die. Some are running from something, others in search of something. Some come to embrace nature, some to sell it to the highest bidder. Some come to immerse themselves in the local culture, some […]

I was in the world’s largest Harris-Teeter supermarket, located in eastern North Carolina. The supermarket was cool and expansive with wide aisles and the shelves and counters filled to the brim, the coolers stacked high. I enjoy that good old US American abundance, with ten kinds of everything and well-fed […]

According to the visitcostarica.com website, there are presently 25 different airlines that fly into Juan Santamaria airport. From the following account, try to guess which of those airlines I used to fly back into the country last week: My return flight to Costa Rica was scheduled for 6:40am. Planned to […]

In this viral era, a rumor can circle the globe in seconds. Disinformation is taken as fact. The more it is repeated, the more believers there will be. It is not a new phenomenon. People have listened to, repeated, refined, and retold rumors probably since the first groups of humans […]