The not so good side of Costa Rica

At the Fourth of July picnic for US citizens, people were drumming up support for better protection for foreigners. We signed a petiton encouraging the police to be more active against thefts and stop their “catch and release” policy with criminals. We remember skipping over the box that said “have you been a victim of a crime”.

Well, we can no longer skip over that box.

On Saturday morning, we headed out of the Meseta Central to spend two nights on the southern Caribbean Coast near the town of Puerto Viejo. Many people had told us that this was definitely a place to see. The jungle goes right up to the coast and we should go in the Fall when they don’t have as much rain.

We drove across the north side of San Jose and got on 32, the road that heads to Limon. We’ve been on this road several times and are familiar with it. When we had gone about 10 km and were approaching a gas station, a motorcyclist went around us honking and pointing down to our tires. We pulled into the gas station and got out and found that our back passenger tire was flat. Jim was opening up the back of the car to change the tire when a guy came over and told us in Spanish that we were too close to the entrance where the trucks pull off and we should move. He directed us further back behind the station. We proceeded to change the tire with the help of this guy who obviously knew what he was doing. And then he just left in the middle of the process. When we got back in the car we realized that Nancy’s fanny pack, with wallet, cell phone and camera were missing from the floor by the front seat. We talked to the people at the station and they said there was nothing to do. We called the US Embassy and got a Marine manning the phones. He said that there wasn’t much to do about it, that he received this type of call about 3 times a day, and then he helped us cancel our credit cards. We had to drive back home to get more cash and take the car to National rental and got the tire replaced. We figured out that our tire had been punctured on the side. So, this “good Samaritan” punctured a hole in our tire and then followed us until we needed to fix it and took advantage of us. We don’t know if he was working alone or with others.

Fortunately, Nancy was only bringing her fanny pack. She didn’t have her passport. That is now her only form of ID. We’ll see how long it takes to get back to “normal”. We came back to San Jose earlier today and planned to pick up a few groceries so we can make it through the week. The banks were closed (Columbus Day) so we couldn’t exchange the $100 bill we still have remaining. The grocery stores will not take US $100 bills. They also wouldn’t take American Express (Jim has one for work) our only credit card between the two of us. So, we had one $20 bill and a 10,000 colones bill. Fortunately, Nancy had stocked up on meat last week. We bought 7 items for just under $20 (yes, food is expensive here). That should keep us for the week until we get our new credit cards.