costa rica – Happier Than A Billionaire

Panama vs Costa Rica

By Nadine Hays Pisani| 2018-04-15T18:19:08-04:00 July 27th, 2017|Categories: Tourism, Uncategorized|Tags: cost of living, costa rica, Kay Pratt, panama, pursuit of panama, tourism|

Costa Rica Cost of Living Update: Bus Ticket from San Jose to Panama City — Under one hundred dollars

There has always been a debate on whether Panama or Costa Rica is a better choice for expats. People will hunker down with their opinions and list all the many ways one country is better than the other. You would think it’s the World Cup. No one has flipped any dumpsters yet, but these discussions get pretty heated.

“Bananas are cheaper in Panama,” someone yells.

“Yeah, but look at our beach towns and lifestyle. Ticos really know how to enjoy themselves!” another responds.

I just sit back, eat to my slightly more expensive banana, and stare into space. I have no dog in this fight. Unlike what many people think, it’s not my mission to convince anyone to move anyplace. Happier Than A Billionaire is about finding a happier life, and mine just so happened to take place in Costa Rica. If it occurred next to an oil drum in Bayonne, New Jersey I would have written that version of my story.

The truth is that becoming an expat has many variables. Success has more to do with your attitude than what particular country you are moving to. Learning a new language will be difficult, reinventing a new life is challenging, but the biggest obstacle is always going to be yourself. To assimilate into a new culture often means you have to experience things on the fly. And that means letting go of who you had previously defined yourself to be.

Take Kay Bratt; author of The Pursuit of Panama, a wildly successful writer who, with her husband, went through their own adventures in Panama. For two weeks, they explored the country wondering if moving abroad was the right decision for them. In her journey, Kay wrestles with her version of happiness. The question she set out to answer was whether or not Panama was going to be her happy place. She was inspired in part by reading my books and hopefully learned not to let her husband shove twelve thousand dollars into his underpants during their travels. Or hide any guns in a functioning fireplace.

We are all looking for that happy spot in life. It’s a moving target. A place that was once warm can grow cold. When that happens, it’s time to move on, and moving on could mean moving out, changing jobs, or even leaving old friends behind. This line of sight is never straight, and often means you have to bend in the wind in order to hit the bulls-eye.

People often ask me how I got the courage to leave my old life behind for a new one in Costa Rica. A foreign place, a foreign language, and with no guarantee it would work out. But there was this moment when I realized it was riskier not to do it than to take a chance. I knew if I didn’t break out of that stifling lifestyle, I would look back at the moment and have profound regret. I saw a beacon of light through a foggy time in my life, and its soft beam gave me hope.

I still follow that beacon even though there is little fog left in my life today. The skies are bright in Costa Rica, and the sunshine lightens up even the darkest corners. But at night I still see it. The beacon calls out for me, reminding me to keep dreaming, to keep being happy, and to keep remembering that life is in constant flux. Ebbing and flowing is always the best way to ride a wave, but you have to paddle out to sea before you can go with the flow.

So if someone chooses to debate me on whether Bocas del Toro has better snorkeling than Playa Conchal Costa Rica, which it does, or if they have more volcanoes to hike, which they don’t, I’ll just rock in my hammock and continue staring up at the powder blue sky. I’m not here to argue, or convince anyone that their ideas are wrong. There is room enough for everyone on this journey, and I’m still bending in the wind on mine.

If you are thinking about a move to Panama, or even just dreaming of what such a change might be like, you can find Kay’s latest book, The Pursuit of Panama, here on Amazon. I’m sure you will be inspired by Kay as well. http://amzn.to/2w2Qd0L

And while I’m not here to convince you to move to Costa Rica, if you would like to come along with me on my hilarious journey please read Happier Than A Billionaire and The Sequel. If you are inspired to join me in Costa Rica, you may also enjoy my guide to living here with everything I’ve learned over the past nine years, The Costa Rica Escape Manual . http://amzn.to/2eQeO5g

STOP…OR MY HUSBAND WILL SHOOT

By Nadine Hays Pisani| 2018-04-15T18:20:04-04:00 October 10th, 2010|Categories: Cost of Living|Tags: alarms, costa rica, gun, pepper spray|

One morning in July 1979, my family awoke to a small hole in our living room window. After careful investigation, it proved some little shitter shot a BB gun at our house. This caused considerable alarm and phone calls urgently placed to the authorities. These were the days before CSI, so no fingerprinting was performed or DNA swabs sent to headquarters, but three squad cars did appear and took down the report, shaking their heads in unison concerning the blatant disregard for my mother’s picture window and Hummel figurines. The perpetrator was never found, and it was my first encounter with the dark side of living in suburbia.

Rob, on the other hand, wrestled a gun away from a druggie while driving car service. The older drivers would not take the call from the individual bearing a swastika tattoo (handsomely inked on his forehead no less) who staggered into the dispatcher’s office. Rob needed the money, took the fare, and ended up fighting for his life. Police were radioed and shook their heads in unison concerning the blatant disregard for calling them while on their coffee break. Needless to say, Rob has dealt with more than a BB gun in his life, and these experiences have contributed to his impression that people, if given the opportunity, might stick a gun in your face.

Due to these circumstances, Rob searches the Internet for any information about crime in Costa Rica. He’s learned that if your car is stolen, it will most likely be held for ransom. The crooks ask for a few hundred dollars, meet you in a park for the exchange, and give you back your car. If I had to choose which crime to be a victim of, this one might be it; I like the non-violent nature. I get to spend an afternoon in the park and can go back to my life without suffering the irksome side effects of Stockholm Syndrome, not a bad day. My sister would probably volunteer her minivan if it guaranteed her a few hours out of the house and away from her three kids.

To prevent this from happening to our car, Rob installed four hidden kill switches: two to disconnect the electricity, another for the fuel pump, and one to directly cut off all power to the battery. He also attached an anti-theft Club to the steering wheel, giving a criminal a well-deserved smack in the nuts if he attempts to turn the car during a getaway. It takes ten minutes to shut off all the kill switches and remove the Club, which confirms that we will never make a quick escape if the need arises. Rob claims his preoccupation with thwarting crime is a result of being married to me.

“You are a liability, but in a good way,” Rob comments. “I love you too much to risk anything happening to you.”

“I have a hard time believing I am any more of a liability than having you around.”

Rob lets out a snort. “Trust me. Having you here makes me extra cautious, and you can’t rely on the cops to come, so we need to take care of ourselves. And, don’t kid yourself. You’re the only person I know who asks crackheads for directions when we get lost.” Just for the record, crackheads are better than a GPS. They are more familiar with the neighborhood and know all the back alley short cuts.

After safeguarding the car, Rob decides to thug-proof our house, even though we live on top of a mountain, in a gated community, on a practically inaccessible road. The first thing he does is install battery-operated alarms around the house. A beam emits, and if something passes in front, it will beep a specific number. The back terrace alarm beeps four times; the porch beeps three times, etc. In the event one is activated, we will know exactly where someone is lurking. These alarms are not only sensitive to people, but also to spiders, butterflies, and absolutely nothing at all.

Last night, I awoke to four beeps. Realizing our perimeter had been breached, I peeked through the curtains to discover a black and white calico cat urinating in my basil planter. Rambo Rob never woke up and was totally unaware of the evildoer that invaded our turf. I went back to bed aggravated, more so because I’d been using that basil in my homemade tomato sauce.

In addition to the alarms, Rob buys a machete. He loves his new toy and insists on practicing his swing on a banana tree. One loud crash later, he learns that the trunk of a banana tree is as flimsy as a cardboard toilet paper tube. It will take nine months for the tree to grow back, but worse for Rob, it will be nine months of hearing me lecture about the consequences of swinging a machete around like Babe Ruth at batting practice. Also, he hid the machete tip-down behind our headboard in our bedroom. Since then, it has already fallen over twice: once snipping the phone line in half, and another time narrowly missing my cat’s tail. It appears the principal danger of living in Costa Rica is the danger from living with my husband. And, just in case this arsenal is not enough, Rob has just informed me he is going to buy a gun.

“Seriously Rob, why a gun? We have alarms, a machete… why do we need that?”

“Because if I had a gun right now and someone wanted to break in, I’d shoot the bastard.” As always, I can rely on Rob to provide interesting dinner conversations.

It’s not that I don’t like the theory behind gun ownership. I agree that someone who breaks into my house loses all rights on whether he leaves with a few bullet holes in his spleen, and the slogan, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is something I can stand behind, even volunteering to wave the banner during a redneck rally. But, Rob has no experience with shooting a gun. Now that my cat’s tail has narrowly missed amputation, I think this deserves a little reflection, which Rob tells me I can do while we are in the car on the way to buy the gun.

The gun shop is located in an upscale mall with shops for Armani, Tommy Hilfiger, and other high end lines. Who would think in the middle of Central America you could have access to such luxury? As we walk around looking for the gun shop, I notice that Rob clipped a can of mace, as one might clip a ballpoint pen, to the collar of his shirt. He thinks it makes him look scary, an observation reinforced by the expression on every salesperson’s face as we enter their store.

“Will you please take that off? You look like a nut. Seriously, is that how you’re going to walk into a gun store?” A minute passes before turning back around and catching Rob accidentally macing himself in the eye. He has now succeeded in looking like the scariest person in the mall.

“I’ve got to get to a bathroom; it’s burning really bad,” Rob says as the surrounding tissue of his eye begins to simmer. We find the food court and he disappears in the men’s room for half an hour. I enjoy the alone time and eat a slice of pizza; not surprisingly, it tastes like a taco. He exits the bathroom, and his eye is puffier and redder than before. I suggest skipping the gun store, but Rob insists he’s going to buy a firearm today.

The gun shop has numerous glass display cases with a large selection of hunting knives, nunchucks, and batons. Above the cases, a harpoon and AK-47 are mounted side-by-side on the wall. It’s an admirable inventory, one that any manslaughter enthusiast would applaud. I’m looking at ten years to life for just walking into this store.

We walk up to the counter and see the salesman buzz something hidden beneath him; consequently, another man walks from the back and stands in the corner, watching us. The salesman requests our paperwork: a criminal report and a separate corporation for the gun. Everything you own in Costa Rica goes into a corporation for legal purposes I still don’t quite understand. Even my cell phone is in a corporation. Since my husband has never operated a gun, he’s prepared a list of absurd questions. I take a seat next to a rotating stand of Zippo lighters, knowing, from past experiences with Rob, this is going to be more entertaining than the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“Will it shoot underwater?” Rob asks.

“Sir, why would you be underwater with your gun? I would suggest the harpoon,” he says while pointing to it on the wall.

“What about fire? If I was in a burning building, and the gun caught fire, would it shoot?”

“I would suggest if you were in a burning building you find the nearest exit and get out immediately.”

“Ah ha… so you’re saying it will not shoot?”

“No, the gun will shoot under high temperatures. Of course, if the bullets catch fire, they will explode… hey… what’s happening to your eye?”

Rob’s eye starts to squirt like a malfunctioning sprinkler system. The man in the corner runs into the back room and leaves his buddy alone to deal with Rob. It occurs to me that I should always carry a video camera when taking my husband out in public.

We end up purchasing a Smith & Wesson, or Saturday Night Special, or something with an equally badass name. Rob also buys a quick loader just in case five bullets aren’t enough to kill the grizzly-sized intruder we’ll catch peeing in my basil planter. I guide Rob out of the store since he is now temporarily blind in one eye and has lost all depth perception. The door automatically locks as we leave, and I don’t blame them one conjunctivitis bit.

The only thing worse than buying a gun with Rob is watching him search for the perfect hiding place. While he scouts for a spot, I go into the bedroom, only to come back and find Rob sitting in the fireplace, his legs poking straight out with his upper torso hidden in the chimney. He’s decided that hiding the gun up there is the safest place. I think hiding Rob up there is the safest place.

“What are we going to do if you forget it’s there and we start a fire?”

“That will never happen. I’ll always remember to take the gun down before starting a fire. It’s the best hiding place we have so far. Remember, I am doing all this because I want you to be safe.”

What a sweet thing to say, and to show his main goal in life is keeping me safe, he surprises me a few days later by forgetting to take the gun down before starting a fire.

“This is so nice and cozy. Where did you put the gun?” I ask Rob a second before we both see the gun drop from the hiding place and into the middle of the flames.

It lands with the nozzle pointing straight at me.

I find myself frozen for an unconscionable amount of time, even though knowing by doing so, I face a highly unpleasant and messy outcome.

Rob pushes me aside and screams, “GET A COOKIE SHEET!”

I race to the kitchen to grab the metal tray and a wet towel.

“Oh God… oh God… it’s gonna blow,” I scream while quickly trying to recall what the salesman said. I can’t remember if he told Rob it would shoot underwater, in a fire, or both.

“STAND BACK.” Rob throws the wet towel on the fire and slides the pistol onto the cookie sheet. He runs into the kitchen, drops both into the sink, and turns on the cold water. He submerges the gun and watches as the rubber coating on the handle melts into a congealed, amoebic formation. A toxic mushroom cloud chases us out of the house and onto the back patio.

While the black smoke fills the kitchen, Rob turns to me and says, “Well, you don’t see that every day.”

You’re right Rob… no… I can’t say I do.

To prove the gun still works after it has cooled and dried, Rob walks past the beeping alarms, over the fallen banana tree, and down to the river. He blasts three bullets into the ground, subsequently blasting three holes in our water pipes. The gun functions. Our water pressure doesn’t.

What have I learned about this debacle? Three things: a gun will shoot while on fire and after being submerged underwater; Rob’s stupid questions at the store eventually did serve a purpose, and gun practice is best done two hundred feet away from any utility lines.

Thankfully, he didn’t buy the harpoon.

GOING POSTAL AND MOTOR VEHICLES

By Nadine Hays Pisani| 2018-04-15T18:20:04-04:00 October 10th, 2010|Categories: Car|Tags: costa rica, drivers license, mail, motor vehicles|

There is one compelling reason to get a Costa Rica driver’s license: the ability to get cheaper admissions to parks and attractions. For example, the tourist price to see Poas Volcano is seven dollars per person, versus only a little over a dollar for Ticos. You actually need to show your residency card, but other gringos say their Costa Rica driver’s license works just as well. It would be a considerable savings, so I agree to go to Motor Vehicles, a place with little promise of a positive experience.

I grew up only ten minutes away from the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles. The building sits next door to Rahway State Prison, a name later changed to East Jersey State Prison as requested by the citizens of Rahway. Apparently, many residents felt that having a maximum security prison named after their city decreased property values. I would argue that it was living near a maximum security prison that decreased property values, but what do I know about the economics of real estate? Regardless, changing the name of it made the fastidious villagers happy, and they all rejoiced in their cul-de-sacs.

I always thought the community should have embraced their semi-famous clinker. Movies are always shot there, and the prison has the distinction of being the facility where the 1978 Academy Award winning documentary Scared Straight was filmed. This is a small piece of trivia my father is strangely proud of. He found this a perfectly acceptable way to prevent juvenile delinquents from re-offending and would threaten my sister and me with this program if we continued smacking each other in the back seat. Since Motor Vehicles was next to the prison, I got to relive this endearing childhood memory every time I renewed my driver’s license.

At first, I didn’t want a Costa Rican license, thinking it was a great way to avoid paying a ticket. Where would they mail it if we were not in the system? Nevertheless, mail doesn’t seem to be an issue because we don’t get any. None. Unlike the American structure of mail service and basic common sense, there are no house numbers or street signs anywhere. I recently found out my actual address is something like “six hundred meters south of the mango tree.” I now have to listen to my dad argue with me that I am hiding my real address from him, for no other reason than I want to hide my real address from him. All this confirms the sneaky suspicion my dad already has about me; I left the States for some nefarious reason. It couldn’t be that I just hated my job, something everyone on this side of the hemisphere already knows.

After a couple weeks, I realize that getting no mail has greatly decreased my anxiety levels. I like not having a box full of credit card applications, circulars, and catalogs that keep coming even though my last purchase from that store was in 1995. It’s less clutter, not only in my house, but in my brain. The whole point of moving here was to simplify my life, and that’s impossible if you are saturated every waking second with advertisements, and although Domino’s new cheesy crust pizza sounds delicious, I don’t need to read about it every day. However, it would explain why I ate the new cheesy crust pizza three nights a week.

It’s great that you do not need to get mail to pay your bills. Their system is easy: while at the supermarket, you can pay for your electric and phone bills along with your groceries. The arrangement is surprisingly uncomplicated. Somehow, in the States we have a way of making some of the simplest things more difficult, exponentially making life harder and less fulfilling. Living here is teaching me to trim off the excess to make room for what makes me most content, and clearly, that excess includes a lot of junk mail.

Technically, there is a mail carrier gallivanting around. I frequently compare him to a folklore creature, like Sasquatch or The Loch Ness Monster: often talked about but rarely seen. I did catch a sighting of him as I drove down the mountain one morning. He was leaning against his scooter with a small messenger bag strapped across his chest. He didn’t appear hurried, considering he was in the same place when I drove back up the mountain an hour later. He spent sixty minutes of his workday talking with a beautiful woman who appeared delighted to share his company. The man was the happiest postal worker I’ve ever seen, and why wouldn’t he be? All in all, it looks like a great job. “Going Postal” probably has a completely different meaning here than in the States. It would not be synonymous with workplace rage, but with something as cheerful as eating dessert or climbing a tree. I can imagine the kids on the playground scream, “Let’s go postal!” before merrily running to an ice cream truck. There are really great reasons to live here. I hope that going to Motor Vehicles is one of them.

Just as we are about to exit Valley Ranch, we see Dolores and her dogs walk toward our car. We give her a short greeting and tell her we are on our way to get our licenses.

“HAH, you’re both crazy. Hope you get it, but you need a medical exam first. You know that, right… AN EXAM WITH A DOCTOR,” she barks. Her eyes protrude out of her head like someone who just heard raccoons are taking over the city and establishing a new rule of law.

“A what? I have to see a doctor before getting my license?” I ask.

“Yup, you sure do. They have a bunch of medical offices outside Motor Vehicles. Go to one of those shit holes. That’s what the other gringos do. They are all a bunch of shit holes.”

I’m not sure if the last “shit hole” comment was concerning the gringos or the medical offices, but I don’t ask her to clarify, worried her eyeballs might pop completely out of her head. We drive off with the troubling information that we have to go to a medical office first. I hop out of the car to open the behemoth padlock on the gate, possibly for the last time since the hydraulics will be fixed, as Carlos promised, next Friday for sure.

The whole medical thing sounds scammy. A bunch of doctor offices around Motor Vehicles? The only thing I know about this process is I have to pay for something at the bank first. I don’t know what it is, but Rob doesn’t seem bothered by this. As a perpetual organizer, my brain cannot work this way. I must know all the details, unlike Rob, who says, “Hey, how bad can it be? We will figure it out when we get there.” This might be okay if we spoke the language; however, Rob does not consider this an obstacle. His method works most of the time, and due to default, my life has taken on this quirky solution to all my Costa Rican predicaments.

As I previously mentioned, there are no street signs in Costa Rica. It is impossible to get directions from anyone, so we spend the majority of our time just finding a place, sometimes to come back the next day to do what we had intended to do the day before. But we get lucky this time and find the location, only because a guy is standing in the street with a dirty, ripped cardboard sign that reads Medical Exam, a sign I would more likely expect to see on the side of a dirt road at a refugee camp. We find a parking space and ask the kid with the sign where to go.

Donde esta doctor? Por favor?

The kid points to a garage.

It looks like a place where, at the very least, we can place a bet on dog fighting… buy a kilo of coke… or plan a hit on your spouse. We stand there confused and unsure what to do. However, after seeing people walk in, and with no better option, we decide to follow the crowd.

We enter a dirty waiting room with plastic chairs and a man behind a counter asking us for ten thousand colones each (approximately twenty dollars). In return, he gives us a small piece of paper and points to the chairs. Across from us is a standing, decapitated female mannequin wearing a pair of soiled corduroy shorts. The room looks like the opening scene of a horror flick. Wasn’t Hannibal Lector a doctor?

My mind races, and I am sure I hear screaming victims in the back room trying to claw their way out of a twenty foot hole. My heart starts to pound, and I look next to me at a woman casually reading a romance novel. Nobody would read a book with Fabio on the cover if she were in mortal danger, so I calm down and take in my surroundings. I start to think about all the attention I placed on my waiting room when I was a chiropractor: beautiful wallpaper, scented candles, and relaxing music. Would my patients appreciate the dirty chairs and the stained walls, not to mention, The Silence of the Lambs theme? Not surprisingly, there is no suggestion box to voice my concerns.

I go into the untidy exam room first and answer a variety of questions regarding my health. Thankfully, the doctor speaks English. He is in his early thirties and presents himself with all the authority of someone who wants me out of here as quick as possible, a position I find myself in more times than I’d like to admit. I take no offense as I quickly read an eye chart, get weighed and measured like a steer up for auction, and finally walk out with a stamped piece of paper with the instructions to bring in the next patron. It probably took no longer than seven minutes. As Rob goes in, I start talking to an American couple who tell me I need residency to get a license. Rob and I have not even begun getting all the paperwork needed to apply for permanent residency in Costa Rica, and I never considered I needed it to get a license.

“You need to be in the system,” they say, “but, like anything else in Costa Rica, that might not be the case today.”

This totally ticks me off; we just blew forty dollars for a ridiculous medical exam and might not even get a license. I tell this to Rob after his exam, and as always, he is calm and says we should at least try since we are here.

We go to the bank and pay the fee for something that I am unsure has anything to do with getting our license. We take that receipt, walk next door to Motor Vehicles, and stand in line to get the copies of our passports stamped. Costa Rica is all about stamps, and I am inclined to get a bunch of generic ones and stamp the hell out of my documents. I really don’t think they would know the difference. Now the rest of the story is surprisingly similar to America: lines, then another line, and then another. We sit in chairs, and as the next person is helped, we each have to move down a seat. The room looks like we are doing the wave at a sporting event: up, down, up down. We have no idea what each line is for; we just go through the motions. Nobody here speaks English, and all I can keep saying is that Costa Rica is beautiful, Muy bonita Costa Rica, in some Tourette-like, Rain Man sort of way. Some look irritated with me, and some feel downright sorry for me. I feel sorry for myself right about now.

Finally, we are the next people in the last line, and we get our licenses. “Gracias, mucho rapido, muy bonita Costa Rica,” I exclaim in jubilation. I don’t think I would have done this without Rob. No, I definitely wouldn’t have even tried. With each hurdle I cross, I begin to feel more optimistic. This strange road I walk, one leg physically in Costa Rica and one mentally in America, is slowly becoming easier. Instead of a bumpy, jolting ride, the road is becoming a bit smoother.

In the end, I don’t know if we actually needed to be residents, or if maybe it was our lucky day. It took a mere five hours, and Rob confidently announces, “I knew we could do it. It really wasn’t that bad, was it?” To answer that question, all you need to see is the picture on my license. I look as if I am trying to claw out of a twenty foot hole.

BUYING A CAR WITH UNDERWEAR MONEY

By Nadine Hays Pisani| 2018-04-15T18:20:05-04:00 October 10th, 2010|Categories: Car|Tags: car, costa rica|

“How are we going to carry all this money out of the bank? We can’t just walk out of here with a paper bag full of cash,” I question as money is stacked in front of us.

We just withdrew five thousand dollars’ worth of colones, the Costa Rican currency, to buy a twelve thousand dollar car. There is a limit to how much cash you can withdraw from this bank in a single day. We now need to go to another one across town and attempt to withdraw the remaining seven thousand dollars to purchase the vehicle. After the teller finishes counting, she lays out two hundred and fifty bills in a single pile. Costa Rica does not have any currency worth more than twenty dollars, thus creating my towering skyscraper of cash. This has brought a considerable amount of unwanted attention from the other customers standing in line.

“Don’t worry,” Rob leans in and whispers, “I’m going to stick it in my underwear.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No I’m not kidding you. I’m going into the bathroom to stuff the cash into my underwear, most in the front with some in the back. I’m pretty sure I can get it all in there.” Rob reaches across the desk and slides the neatly piled cash into a plastic shopping bag. He then casually walks to the men’s bathroom.

I’m embarrassed to confess that this isn’t the first time Rob has hidden things in his underwear. Rob is constantly concerned about crime and feels that his drawers are the safest place to hide sensitive documents. On more than one occasion, our cash and credit cards disappeared into the dark recesses of his pants. I always felt sorry when I bought something from a vendor, giving them the cash that had been against Rob’s nether regions for the better part of a sunny afternoon. Now Rob wants to take this a step further and do the same with the five grand.

We never thought we would need to spend so much for a used car. They are expensive because the cars are shipped into the country and taxed heavily, a burden passed on to the buyer. This makes the cost double the blue book value listed in the States, but we had no choice and narrowed our selection down to a four-wheel drive SUV. The harrowing drive across Costa Rica influenced us in owning a powerful vehicle to handle the occasional river and steep mountainous inclines, and since the road to our house takes us through a river and up a steep mountainous incline, an SUV appeared to be the best option. We spend a few days looking at different models and decide on a Mitsubishi Montero, mostly because many people drive them here, and we know it must be cheap to get parts.

While shopping, we notice the dealerships have replaced things in the cars that one doesn’t usually see replaced. It wasn’t uncommon to see gray seats, a white dashboard, beige glove compartment, and a black steering wheel all in the same vehicle. This patchwork reminds me that this would be an excellent way to hide the effects of the waterlogged cars from Hurricane Katrina, and since some of these cars have “floated” on over to Costa Rica, Rob and I are meticulous when inspecting the inside and outside of the vehicles. I trust Rob since he has a lot of experience fixing cars.

When Rob was in high school, he noticed a puke green 1970 Nova that hadn’t moved for the street sweepers in months. It accumulated tickets until there was a pile clipped under the windshield wipers. He left a note asking the owner if he wanted to sell the car. The guy showed up and told him it ran, but someone had stolen both the radiator and the battery. Rob had no idea if it would work but knew Novas had a history of being reliable vehicles. Rob talked the owner down to fifty bucks, went to the junkyard, and bought a battery and radiator. He also took a roller and painted the car with two coats of Benjamin Moore’s white outdoor oil paint. That part, he said, was to impress the ladies.

Rob made the necessary repairs, and the Nova ran great until his crazy friend Dom (a guy who used motor oil on his head to clean out his hair follicles), got angry with Rob and shot out two tires, both car doors, and something under the hood that caused the heater to remain on indefinitely. The shoot-out occurred while Rob hid behind an oak tree helplessly watching as his car, and the oak tree, got blasted by a hail of bullets. Once Dom went back inside to lather his head with more oil, Rob jumped in his car and wobbled away on two flat tires.

After going back to the same junkyard, he once again fixed the Nova and used it for his budding career as a car service driver. He picked up customers in a car with bullet holes in the doors, a duct taped window, and a heater blasting in the middle of August not to mention, the passenger door was jammed, making them enter through the driver’s side and slide across the bench seat. It was this attention to detail that made the car unforgettable, not only to his paying clients, but also to the girls he tried to pick up while cruising down 86th street.

With that in mind, Rob searched for a vehicle he felt would have the same stamina the old Nova displayed years before. We found a red 1998 Mitsubishi Montero with roughly one hundred thousand miles, priced at twelve thousand dollars. Nobody in their right mind would pay that in the States. We brought our interpreter with us and started to negotiate, but this is where being gringos and pulling up in a rental car hampered us getting a good deal. Desperation is the world’s worst cologne, and we reeked of it.

Our interpreter was a sweet seventeen-year-old girl formally from California. She moved here with her parents when she was five and is fluent in Spanish. The owner of the dealership was not present, but the salesman called him and gave the phone to our interpreter. With her help, Rob began the negotiations. I was eager to see what kind of deal we would get. Rob’s tough Brooklyn-style bargaining had been successful with us never paying sticker price. He would talk down the price of a turkey sandwich if he thought he could get a better deal.

“Tell him I’ll give him ten grand,” Rob said. Reluctantly, our interpreter relayed the message.

“He said he’ll take twelve thousand dollars,” she nervously returned.

“What? Tell him I’ll give him ten thousand five hundred.” These negotiations went back and forth as our translator got upset. She had not planned on being in the middle of a heated discussion, and at seventeen, I doubt she had ever been placed in this position before. I started to feel bad for her when Rob barked, “I won’t go over eleven thousand five hundred. Tell him that’s it; I won’t pay a penny more.”

“Hmm… ah… he’s not going to like that.”

“Just tell him, that’s it; I’ll walk.” Rob confidently leaned back in his chair as our interpreter meekly relayed the message and consequently pulled the phone away from her ear. All of us heard the screaming. She then put her ear back to the phone, listened for another ten seconds, and turned back to Rob.

“He said he’ll take twelve thousand dollars.” And that’s how we ended up paying full price for our car, the first time in Pisani history. Rob’s Brooklyn negotiation skills sucked more than finding a DVD boxed set of Steven Seagal movies under the Christmas tree. I actually thought Rob might walk away, but the thought of paying another week for the rental car caused him to fold. It was the end of an intoxicating era.

I was thinking we were finished when the owner requested something out of the ordinary and more than a little suspicious. He wanted the money deposited into his account before he signed over the title. At first, we thought this was translated wrong. But no, he definitely said it. He promised he would provide us the legal paperwork after he received the money. Rob had done his homework and knew that this transaction should be performed in front of an attorney at the time of sale. Once we said we wouldn’t provide the money without the paperwork, the owner then wanted the money in cash or he would sell the car to someone else. We had no other choice but to figure out how we could acquire such a humongous sum of money in one day. With all the modern fraud protection on bank accounts, we knew this would not be an easy task.

I am now waiting for Rob to return from the bathroom with the five grand in his pants. We took the maximum cash advances on our credit cards and as much money as we could from our checking account. Finally, after several hours, we end up with less than half the money. Rob walks out of the bathroom and we try the same procedure at another bank. Luckily, they allow us to withdraw the remaining seven grand. We now need to walk two blocks with Rob carrying all of the cash in his underpants. Forgive me for being paranoid, but I get a little uncomfortable running all over a Central American town with twelve grand in my husband’s tighty-whiteys.

Rob exits the men’s room and waddles toward me with his grossly distorted pelvis. His pants are pulled up to his navel to prevent the money from pulling his underwear down. This gives him an unflattering case of high waters. I am unclear how this will help us blend into the crowd since my husband now looks like Jerry Lewis. We leave the bank and make a run for our car.

“You go first, and I’ll follow,” Rob says as he waddles across the street. He always makes me go first, another one of his security precautions, but this time it doesn’t make much sense since he is the one carrying the money and the one most likely to get hit over the head. Taking one last glance at his mismatched socks, I decide to take his advice and walk as far away from him as possible.

“This is crazy… the whole thing… it’s nuts,” I say as Rob opens the car door for me. “I feel like everything is harder here. How are we supposed to get anything done if buying a car is so damn difficult?”

“It’s just a snag, a small inconvenience. Today we will get the car and return the rental. It’s one more thing we can put behind us.” Rob starts the car, and we head to the dealership’s attorney. He is bilingual, so we will have a modest idea of what the hell he is talking about. It doesn’t take long for him to invite us into his office, where he lays out a variety of papers for us to sign. However, the SUV is not here yet. We ask the attorney to call the dealership and find out what the holdup is. When he reaches the owner over the phone, we can overhear him screaming, and the only bit I understand is crazy gringo. Just what you want to hear with twelve grand stacked in front of you.

“What’s the problem?” Rob asks.

“There seems to be an issue, Senor. He doesn’t want to sell it to you anymore.”

“Why the hell not?”

“He says you did not trust him. He wanted you to deposit the money into his account, and you didn’t, and I don’t think he likes gringos too much,” the attorney says as he pulls at his buttoned collar. Rob stands up and approaches him.

“If you think I am going to walk out of here with twelve thousand dollars in my pants… well… you’re out of your fucking mind. How many other people know I have this money?” Rob’s voice gets louder with each step toward the attorney. “I want you to call him back, tell him we did everything he asked, except we want a legal transaction just like any other Tico in Costa Rica. You got that?” They’re standing face to face, and I see a bead of sweat trickle down the attorney’s forehead. He quickly grabs his phone, and a salesman drives up with the SUV in less than five minutes.

The paperwork appears to be in order, all but the amount of three thousand dollars he put down as the purchase price, another way the dealership can avoid paying additional taxes, but we don’t care. We sign everything, and the salesman hands us the keys and one license plate.

“Where’s the other one?” I ask.

“You only need one in Costa Rica,” he says before swiftly leaving the office. We walk out to the street and soon notice all the other vehicles have two license plates. I am not surprised; the guy had all the intentions of screwing us one way or the other, but on the bright side, I do get great satisfaction knowing they are handling money that sat in Rob’s sweaty underpants.

The most important thing is that we have a car and can return the rental today. And even if they got one past us, at least the car is in my name.

I think.

MARTIN THE INCOMPETENT REALTOR

By Nadine Hays Pisani| 2020-02-20T10:39:46-05:00 October 10th, 2010|Categories: Tourism|Tags: bees, bulls, costa rica, crocodile, realtor|

While in the car, I glance down at the Costa Rica real estate magazine on my lap and marvel at the homes listed. Clay colored tile roofs, spacious bright rooms, and nymphs dancing on fountains in the middle of circular driveways. I turn the page and see a home with an infinity edge pool that looks like it’s cascading into the ocean view. I can’t afford any of these homes, but it will be fun to walk through their open houses and imagine a white gloved butler pouring me a Cosmopolitan while I work on my tan. This daydream stops short when Rob pulls the car over on a dirt road. He parks in front of a field that leads up into a densely wooded mountain. There are no infinity pools in site.

Martin tells us the entire stretch of land is for sale; forty acres of forest situated on a steep incline. There is a spectacular panoramic ocean view only visible at the tippy top. This seems pleasant enough information, and I am waiting for Rob to start the car again and take me to the spectacular mansion that surely waits. Instead, both Rob and Martin get out of the car, go into the trunk, and take out three pairs of black galoshes. I put down my magazine. “What are you doing?”

“Hey… why don’t we hike up the mountain and see what the view looks like at the top?” Rob answers. “It can’t be more than a mile.” He backs away and avoids making direct eye contact. His strategy when dealing with his wife is strikingly similar with how to avoid a bear attack.

It’s clear why he is worried asking me this. My last cardiovascular activity occurred around 1998 when the sewer pipe exploded in the basement, causing raw sewage from the street to back into my house. I was on a three-hour bucket brigade, running back and forth from the backyard to the basement before reinforcements came and installed a new pipe. It was an incredible workout, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to burn calories and/or flirt with Hepatitis A. Since then, I’ve become happily sedentary, not performing any exercise that would pump my heart to any level of physical exertion. Other than the tachycardia sewage crisis, my heart has always officially beaten a steady rhythm of eighty beats per minute, the perfect zone for eating a bag of potato chips while reading real estate magazines. Precisely what I was doing before we pulled the car over.

The plan is to hike up the mountain, through dense vegetation, along an ambiguously marked path. I am not sure why Rob is willing to do this. “Maybe it’s a good opportunity,” he says. I think it is more like a good opportunity to get lost in the woods for six hours. The whole idea is crazy, but I don’t have much choice. When I consider my fate sitting alone along the side of a deserted road versus contracting malaria while searching for my husband’s “good opportunity,” a mosquito-borne illness doesn’t sound that bad.

Martin hands me my galoshes. I kick off my flip-flops and try on the pair of boots, only to find they are two sizes too big. To make matters worse, it’s raining, and I don’t have any rain gear except my travel-sized pink umbrella. I think back to the man on the plane wearing his all-weather hat and conclude I was a little hard on the guy. I unfold the umbrella, which provides a measly twelve square inches of coverage, making my Lilliputian purchase look more like a paper parasol garnish for a Bahama Mama cocktail. I lock my umbrella into place, and the metal frame rips through the top of the fabric, channeling rain directly onto the top of my head.

Martin goes first, then Rob, then me. Every time Rob walks past a plant, it snaps back like a taut rubber band at my head. On account of already being wet, I fold my umbrella and attempt to use it as a weapon against the vegetative onslaught. When the next branch springs toward my face, I hold up my umbrella for the pre-emptive block. The force of the branch smacking against my umbrella slingshots bugs, spores, and other forms of life into my face. A sticky cobweb now covers my mouth.

Slightly dazed and already confused, I follow my team and end up at the edge of a fast flowing river. Martin pauses, looks around the riverbanks, and walks straight through to the other side. I start to take off my galoshes, but he advises me to leave them on. He must have read the same article I did on river borne diseases in Costa Rica. I march through; however, the water quickly fills my galoshes, weighing them down like heavy sandbags. The water is now up to my thighs, and I am dragging my feet inch by inch to the other side. Once there, I empty my boots and find a crayfish; I toss him back into the river and watch him swim away.

We walk farther into the forest, my feet slipping and sliding as we go. I try to take another step, but my back leg is stuck in mud. I pull on my leg, but my foot leaves the boot, consequently stepping forward into a warm, muddy mass that squashes between my wet toes. My first impression is this feels pretty good. However, this soon turns into alarm as it becomes clear, by the warmth and the pungent smell, this is no ordinary pile of mud. I have no choice but to stick my stinky foot back into the boot and call out to my husband. “Rob, I think I stepped in…”

“What?” Rob yells as he keeps walking.

“I think I stepped in a pile of…”

“I still can’t hear you.”

“I think I stepped in a pile of shi……holy shit.”

Martin stops short, and Rob bumps into him, causing me to crash into Rob. We are in the middle of a grassy clearing, equal distance from the forest behind us to the forest ahead of us. In the center are four bulls, big bulls, with sharpened horns perfect for gouging the awry traveler. I have literally stepped in a pile of bullshit.

I’ve never been this close to a bull before. They remain so still that for a moment I think they might be statues. That is until I see one of them flick a fly away with its tail. I decide that being so close to the bulls makes me equivalent to a rodeo clown. Only, I don’t have a barrel to hide in.

“Maybe we should back up slowly. We can keep an eye on them that way. Do you think that’s a good idea?” I whisper so as not to disturb even the tiniest gnats flying around their heads.

“I don’t know, but I’m getting the hell out of here,” yells Martin. He races through the clearing and disappears into the rainforest. Rob grabs my hand, and we both start running in the same direction. I toss my pink umbrella so that it doesn’t provoke the bull like the red flag of a matador. We make it to the forest and find Martin hiding behind a tree. All three of us are gasping for air.

“I didn’t know they would be there,” pants Martin. His less than courageous actions have left me with little hope that the realtor can get us off this mountain. Nevertheless, we can see that the top is only a couple hundred feet away, so we carry on as if this ridiculous incident never occurred.

Once at the top, we are rewarded with a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. I find a rock to stand on and video tape the scenery. Martin starts his spiel about the potential for this property, and Rob is already running the numbers through his head. “If we charge one hundred thousand dollars a lot, times forty lots…that’s like…that’s like… a lot of money! We’re going to be rich.” I let Rob have his moment. I know he is smart enough to figure out that we are in the middle of nowhere and don’t have a clue how to develop this land. My husband, with his sense of direction, wouldn’t even be able to find this place again.

After we’re done, we start the hike back down the mountain. We come across a large cactus, approximately thirty feet tall with each green stem about a foot in width. It seems oddly out of place in this rainy jungle environment. The five-inch long thorns poke straight out and are thick as porcupine quills. Rob stops in front of it and starts to poke at the green waxy stems in between the thorns.

Boing…Boing…Boing

“Hey guys look at this,”Rob says.

“I don’t think you should be touching that,” I warn.

“This feels soooo cool,” he replies. It’s common for Rob to touch things and then eventually break the things he has just touched. I have seen the man shatter a priceless crystal wine glass after knocking it into someone’s soup bowl at a dinner party. Once, at our neighbor Matt’s house, Rob attempted to warm his feet by the new fireplace. However, he didn’t see the closed glass doors because our obsessive-compulsive neighbor impeccably polished them. When Rob reached his foot toward the fire, he inadvertently pressed his sock-covered toe to the hot fireplace door, causing the fabric to burn and stick to the glass. No matter how much Matt tried to clean the scorched blemish, the impression of Rob’s big toe remained plainly visible: a permanent fossil for future generations to behold. So I can get a little jumpy when I see my husband poking a cactus.

Boing…Boing.

He continues, but on his last poke, I hear a faint buzzing sound. “Shhhhh,” I call out. Rob ignores me and keeps poking. “Seriously, stop it. Can’t you hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything. Lighten up and have some fun.” But after his last poke, Rob pauses. We both hear a heavy buzzing coming from deep inside the thick green stem. We look up, and out from a crack shoots a darkness that develops into a villainous shadow above us.

“What is that?” I holler to Rob.

“I think it’s a swarm of wasps.”

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know, but I’m getting the hell out of here,” Martin yells. He takes off for the second time, disappearing into the brush. Rob grabs my hand and drags me down the mountain. My other arm flails widely around as I swat away the wasps; their synchronized buzzing resembles a high voltage electrical wire. Rob zigzags as if dodging bullets, but the wasps spot us at every turn. We finally outrun them and find Martin, not surprisingly, hiding behind a tree.

We are busy pulling twigs and leaves out of our hair when Martin reveals we are lost. We ran off the path, and he is unsure where we are. Our plan is to keep going down the mountain and find the same river we crossed an hour ago. If we continue past it, we should eventually find our parked car on the dirt road.

After thirty minutes, we approach a river, but it is not at the same place we crossed before and is much deeper. Unlike the last time, Martin doesn’t look so eager to cross. He paces back and forth along the bank and scratches his head nervously.

“What’s the problem?” I ask. “Can’t you swim?”

“I can swim, but… ah… the water is deeper here, and I am a little concerned about crocodiles. Before, the river was shallow, and I wasn’t too worried, but this is deep, and they can be anywhere.” My blood pressure starts to surge. My husband looks at my reddening face and takes a couple steps back. I am about to attack.

“Okay, let’s go over what both of you have put me through. I stepped barefoot in bullshit, which is still in between my toes. I ran up a mountain to get away from four bulls only to be chased back down the mountain by an army of wasps. So now I have to go back through a river I had already crossed, with the ever present fear of contracting a parasite, at a place where crocodiles could be waiting to eat me?”

“Hmm… yes… that’s what I am suggesting,” Martin mumbles.

In an anxious attempt to prove to me we are not in danger, Rob dashes into the river. The water quickly rises, climbing up to his neck, then his chin, and now over his mouth. He reaches his arms straight up holding the camcorder above his head. It reminds me of the scene in The African Queen when Humphrey Bogart’s character gets out of his boat and drags it through a leech-filled swamp. Rob continues, holding his breath, walking until the water slowly recedes and I can finally see the back of his head again. He makes it out alive with a functioning camcorder and a leech-free body.

“It’s under control. I’ll help you get across,” Rob says while wiping river gunk out of his eyes. But I don’t need Rob’s help because Martin and I find a shallow spot only six feet away, and it takes no time to join Rob on the other side.

“So should we put a bid in on this one?” Martin suggests.

I want to strangle him and throw him back into the water.

We gather ourselves and continue hiking down the mountain. I take one last look at the river and see something make a large splash. I don’t bother telling the others, convincing myself it’s just a really big fish. By the time we make it to the road, we are a half mile away from our parked car. The realtor, cheery and upbeat, now wants to show us a townhouse for sale. I am soaked through and look like someone who was just rescued from the jungle after a long and agonizing fight for survival.

I climb in the car and fasten my seat belt, wondering why we couldn’t have looked at the townhouse first.