Don Mateo

The blocking of roads as a way of protesting a grievance used to be a regular occurrence in Costa Rica. In the year 2000, highways throughout the country were blocked for three weeks in the ICE combo protests. This was an early, heavy-handed attempt to privatize the telecommunications arm of […]

I have now lived half of my life in Costa Rica, and as I have no plans to leave, my reality is that I will die here. With the recent Dia de los Muertos fresh on my mind, I have been thinking about what I want done with my body […]

Newcomers to Costa Rica encounter many challenges: A language barrier for non-Spanish speakers, cultural differences, dietary adjustments to name just a few. And for anyone who enjoys the distraction of games, there are small, curious variations to get used to. The first time I ever played a game of pool […]

The recent turning back of the clocks in North America reminded me that when I first arrived in Costa Rica, the country was experimenting with its own version of daylight savings. On the surface, it made no sense. At nine degrees north latitude, our proximity to the equator guarantees very […]

It’s that time of year. The afternoons are overcast and rainy, darkness falls before 6 pm, and everywhere you go, you hear the sounds of sneezing, wheezing, coughing, noses being blown and loogies being hocked up. No matter how healthy you may consider yourself, oncethe Costa Rican gripe – especially […]

In case you missed it, last week’s biggest story came from the vaults of Banco Nacional. In one of those, ‘Haven’t we heard this before?’ events, it was reported that some 3,200,000,000 colons have gone missing from the vault of the Banco Nacional headquarters in San Jose. That is 160,000 […]