The Hales had a big year in 2009; it was adventurous to say the least! 2008 had us feeling a bit restless, and we felt the need for a “shake up” of sorts. We dreamt big, and decided to sell our home, leaving our “stuff” behind so we could travel the world indefinitely. However, our dream quickly deflated along with the Calgary housing market, so we refocussed on work and “real life”. Later in the year we did get an offer on the house, and decided that downsizing was still a good idea; we could be debt free (except for the mortgage), and actually have some cash in hand – woohoo! After the move and some personal disappointments, we got the travel bug again and decided to forget about the bank account and take an abridged version of our trip around the world. We’re so glad we did it!

We were lucky enough to visit 14 different countries on our trip. Hopefully we’ll be lucky enough to return to our favorites some day down the road. Ireland, France and the UK were some of our favorites, and definitely Italy. In Italy we volunteered for two weeks in an attempt to offset some of the massive carbon footprint we made with the numerous flights on our trip.

Mid way through our trip, Jason was presented an amazing opportunity to work in Costa Rica. We didn’t have to think about this too long; what an awesome way to get ahead in his career, and for us to see more of the world! Along with the excitement of this move, we had some more exciting news; our family was about to get bigger! The best part of 2009 was the arrival of our little tico Braden.

And here we are now, in this always beautiful, sometimes frustrating country. We’re learning to live the Pura Vida lifestyle, and hoping to have an even better year in 2010. Best wishes to all of our friends and family for good health and happiness in 2010!

As I mentioned in the last post we’ve finally bought a car. A 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara. Blue book value in the US, ~$4500. Cost in Costa Rica, 5,600,000 Colones (~$9500).

Car Shopping

Finding a car dealer in Costa Rica is easy, they’re everywhere. It’s easy to find your major dealers and as much as I would have loved to buy something a little more exotic like a Fiat, Alfa Romeo or even a Peugot, it just wasn’t in the budget. So we ended up visiting a few second hand dealerships that, just happened to be scattered all over this country. Most of these dealships are nothing more than a piece of land with some fencing around it so people can’t steal their cars.

Fortunately, or so we thought at the time, we found a 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara in only a couple hours of searching at Autos San Marino. The car was in pretty good shape and it drove well so we put a deposit down and made arrangements for the full payment and to pick the car up in a few days. We were set and once we got home we had already started planning our first weekend excursion to Volcano Poas.

Buying the Car

Buying a car in Costa Rica is a lot more complicated than back home in Calgary. First off, you need a lawyer to do all the paper work. Then just like in Canada you need to get your plates and registration but no insurance is needed as basic insurance is covered by your registration. Unlike Canada you also need to get your car federally inspected to make sure it’s safe to drive and it’s emissions are within acceptable levels. We set everything up so Autos San Marino would use their lawyer and take care of everything before we took possession.

But when I went to pickup the car I found out there was just a few things we needed to care of. Namely, the plates, registration and inspection. So after a couple weeks and several more phone calls with Autos San Marino because their lawyer twice forgot to give us papers we had our car complete with all paper work associated stickers.

We were now free to start touring the country, just as soon I had this power steering leak checked out which popped up of the last couple weeks.

Mechanic

When buying a used car in Costa Rica your covered under warranty for 30 days from the date of purchase to get anything fixed by the dealer. But after making 2 trips to Autos San Marino to only be told their mechanic was not available we decided to cut our losses and get the car fixed properly by a reputable garage. Enter the local Suzuki dealer, Ventrasa Suzuki.

Turns out our car was originally from Florida and was in a big accident. The insurance company then decided to write off the car as the cost to fix that car was more than it was worth. So if you thought all those cars that are written off end up in a scrap yard your wrong. A lot of them end up here and other developing countries where paying a 70% import tax on a car that’s not worth anything doesn’t cost all that much. These cars are then fixed up to look nice and sold to stupid people like me. The lesson here is to ALWAYS GET A CARFAX when purchasing a used car.

This lesson cost me a cool 1.1 million colones. A number of things were wrong with the car but the most costly for me by far was to replace the entire power steering rack. Luckily the awesome people at Ventrasa Suzuki were able to fix my car up in a week and get us on the road.

Lessons Learned

So just to recap what I learned throughout this process.

1. NEVER buy a car from Autos San Marino. I won’t go as far as calling the corrupt bastards but they really SUCK ASS!
2. ALWAYS get a Carfax report on ANY used car you buy.

Seems there still a few things to get fixed on the car as well. Wonder how much a passenger airbag will cost to fix?

So after being turned away by the inspection office because I did not have the proper paper work I drove to work, illegally, where I hoped to get some help in finding out what the hell I had to do next. Now, I’m a pretty laid back guy, but this morning I was mad. I felt like Milton from Office Space “That’s the last straw.” I have now been angry twice since arriving here, once when the airport lost Maggie and today.

After some french toast (free breakfast Friday at work) and a small cool down period I was able to get all the information to our awesome “Get Shit Done” lady at work, Angelica. Turns out the lawyer who helped with the sale of the car “forgot” to give me the most important piece of paper I needed. This is also the second document he has “forgot” to give us.

Then to top the day off we were heading to Moto Psychos this evening for a few drinks. We finally arrived, 90 minutes late. But the day did come to a decent end with the proper paper work in hand and a few rum and cokes to take the edge off. Tomorrow we’ll try again to get our car inspected without an appointment this time. Wish me luck.

Update: So turns out today is a holiday in Costa Rica, Guanacaste day. And since it’s a holiday the RTV is closed so we couldn’t get our inspection done. But after reviewing all of the papers we had, and thanks to Google Translate, we realized that not only did we now have all of the papers we needed, but the car had already been inspected this year and everything was now registered properly. All we’re missing is a couple of stickers to go in the windshield.

With this new found knowledge we set out today confident that even if we did get pulled over we had all the appropriate paper work. So we drove, and it felt good.

Today we played tourist and made a quick trip out to Grecia and Sarchi with Mark, Denise and the other Jason & Jennifer. Jason and Jenn were super awesome and drove us around as we still can’t drive our car (post coming soon).

Grecia

The town of Grecia is about 30 minutes away from where we live in Belen and is known for its car dealerships, like all the other dealerships just more of them, and their metal church. We weren’t originally planning to stop in Grecia but since the road to Sarchi takes you right by the church we decided to make a 5 minute stop. Originally built in the late 19th century the entire church was made in Belgium and then shipped here in boxes. I’m glad we made the quick stop as the church is quite impressive and doesn’t even look like it’s made of metal from a distance, but upon close inspection you can see the rivets. Knocking on the side of the church will confirm it’s metal with a nice hollow metal sound.

Sarchi

We weren’t exactly sure how to find Sarchi with minimal street signs (common in Costa Rica) but while driving somewhat in the right direction on some windy mountain roads we eventually found it. We also found this giant ox cart in the middle of Sarchi in front of the church. Sarchi is the cart/artisan center of Costa Rica. If you’re in the mood for souvenirs or muebles (furniture) this is where you go. We found many souvenir shops selling almost exactly the same things, had a nice lunch overlooking a coffee plantation and even saw a couple pet squirrels.

Overall it was a great day trip and it sure was good to get out of the city for a few hours. Big thanks to Jenn and Jay for taking us. You can view some more pictures on my flickr page.

Today we celebrated Canada Day, prematurely in Costa Rica with the Sowrey clan. The Canadian Club of Costa Rica put on an event right in our neighborhood. The club they chose was so close we were able to walk to it. That’s quite nice in this area as you usually need a car to get around most places. At the club we were greeted by many smiling Canadians, all wearing their red and white. Our tickets for the event included admission to the club, including use of all it’s facilities (pools, tennis, miniature golf, foozeball, etc), lunch, cake and entry into the door prizes raffle.

Highlights included:

• cooling off with a dip in the pool.
• cooling off with a bubble gum flavored slush that came with (I think) powdered milk, condensed milk and a funky after taste.
• listening to the Canadian Anthem
• cake, mmm
• cleaning up on the door prizes

Originally we weren’t even planning on staying long enough for the door prize draws, but due to the cake being cut later than expected we lucked out. Somehow, all of us managed to win a prize. Megan took home a small baby toy, Geoff won a night at the Adventure Inn, Alex won a salon gift certificate, Jenn won dinner for 2 in a nice restaurant in Escazu and I won a gift certificate to the Tandori Palace in Santa Ana! My win is really fortunate as we were already planning on going there in the near future, now we just have another reason to go.

To top off our Canada Day festivities we even rented a Canadian movie, One Week, courtesy of the iTunes. All told it was a really good day packed with all things Canadian and hanging out a nice club with lots of facilities is really making me want to get a membership.

Puerto Viejo

A couple of weeks ago we made our first trip to the beach. With neither of us really being beach going people we didn’t really know what to expect. The drive out was amazing and had us driving through a rain forest, through banana and pineapple plantations and along the caribbean coast. The coast there is full of beaches and although the waters were a bit rough we still had lots of fun, Maggie included. We can’t wait until our next beach trip where we plan on checking out the Pacific coast.

Moving

The week after our trip to Puerto Viejo we finally got to move into our new house. We are now living in an area called Belen very close to the Marriot Hotel. It’s a brand new 3 bedroom house with a nice yard for Maggie. The house is so new we’re the first people to live here. But because we’re the first people to live here there’s a lot of little things that need doing like blinds(next week), cable & internet (done, yaaaa!). And not only is our house super nice, it’s close to work too! It’s only a 10 to 15 minute drive each way.

+ One

Last week I took Wednesday afternoon off to take Jennifer over to Hospital Cima. The hospital is about 20 minutes away in Escázu. There are closer facilities but we’ve been told this was the best hospital for us. After waiting an hour because our doctor had an emergency surgery we were finally able to confirm what we already new. Jennifer is pregnant and it looks like we’re going to be having a Costa Rican baby sometime in early November. Hopefully we’ll be able to sort out a passport and a place for Maggie to stay before Christmas so we can come and visit everyone with our new family member.

Farmers Market

Yesterday we made our first trip to a farmers market. Every community here has their own market so for our first trip we decided to visit our local market even though we heard it’s a little small. So at 7:00am yesterday we headed to the Belen open market. We were greated by about a dozen different stalls on the street where we got everything we need for the week including the best pineapple I’ve ever had. Next week we plan on checking out one of the larger markets in Alajuela or Santa Ana.

The Initial Booking

When we were first booking our flights to Costa Rica our travel agent at CM gave us two options. The first being with Continental Airlines via Houston, the second being American Airlines via Miami. After some research into the airlines we booked with Continental for two reasons.

1. Their PetSafe program is regarded as the best in the industry.
2. In Houston they have a kennel at the airport, not just a big warehouse, this was a big factor considering there was a 6 hour layover.

During the booking, which was in March (this is important), our Travel Agent was told that she needed to call 3 days in advance in the flight to officially book the dog. We both thought this was odd but in the weeks leading up to departure the agent once again called to confirm this procedure.

Getting the Paper Work

The paper work really isn’t a big deal. I won’t elloborate on our story because we have/had a crappy vet which complicated things. You’ll need to make 2 vet trips, the first to get all of her shots up to date including her rabies shot more than 30 days before departure, note Costa Rica does not acknowledge a 3 year shot. The second, within 10 days of departure, for her international health certificate. This health certificate you’ll also have to get signed by the Ministry of Agriculture before leaving. They have an office in the NW of Calgary, it’s easy to do.

4 Days Prior to Departure

Since we left the Monday after Easter weekend our travel agent called to confirm the dog booking 4 days before our flight on the Thursday (3 days before was Good Friday). It was at this time she was told of a new policy that required booking the dog MORE than 3 days in advance. It also had to be booked with cargo instead of the passenger side and by me, as our travel agent wasn’t allowed. 

So the Thursday afternoon before a long weekend I called Continental Airlines cargo department to book my dog onto the flight. I was surprised again when I was told that I was not allowed to book my dog on the flight and that I had to find a licensed pet shipper to book my dog onto the flight. 

The cargo agent also informed me that these policies had been in place for two months, since February, due to a new law regarding bringing pets into the US. Well last time I checked February came before March so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have been told this in March when our booking was first made.

The Pet Shipper

After taking a few minutes to cool down I started calling around to find a licensed pet shipper that would be able to book Maggie on our Monday morning flight. Luckly I got in touch with the great people at Beinnein Kennels. I was assured by them that they had gone through this process before for their own dogs and we’d be sure to get Maggie booked on the flight.

Everything went smoothly over the weekend and the pet shipper was able to secure Maggies spot on the flight. On Sunday night at 7:00(12 hours before flight) we met at the airport to precheck Maggie in. This was to get all of her paper work in order so there would not be any issues in the morning as we had an early flight. After weighing Maggie and the kennel, placing all of the stickers on the kennel and about 45 minutes of nervous waiting we were then informed that Continental had oversold the flight and there wasn’t going to be enough room for our dog. Thanks Continental, I guess your “Guaranteed Booking” is a big crock of shit.

Leaving Maggie Behind

It was after all of this that Jenn and I decided that we would leave Maggie at Beinnein Kennels for the short term as they had graciously offered to help us out. So after a long talk and a longer drive we checked into the Delta airport hotel without Maggie less than 7 hours before our flight departed.

The Solution

In the days that followed us arriving in Costa Rica we looked into several ways to get Maggie here and we discovered we had 3 viable options.

1. Use our pet shippers network which included a member in Costa Rica to arrange everything. This included an import certificate as the rules are different if you aren’t accompanying your dog. This was going to cost well over $2000, probably closer to $3000 once all customs fees were paid in Costa Rica.
2. Find our own customs broker here in Costa Rica, this would still require the import certificate and many fees, without even knowing how much the customs broker would cost.
3. Jenn could fly back to Calgary and accompany Maggie on a flight with Air Canada via Toronto. This would not require the import certificate and would actually end up being cheaper.

So 5 days after we arrived in Costa Rica Jenn was on her way back to Calgary. Then 28 hours later she was with Maggie on a flight back. My wife is awesome!

Arriving in Costa Rica… again

After Jenn’s super long trip I was surprised when she came out of the San Jose airport without Maggie in tow. Turns out the had “lost” our dog. What had actually happened is they sent Maggie over to Cargo because someone had messed up. So we went to the cargo division of the airport, luckily I some experience there, where no one speaks english.

Luckily for us, upon entering the cargo offices I saw TCG(The Cargo Guy). He knew I was going to be bringing my dog into the Country and had already offered his services if I needed them. So after a bit of explaining we got across that there was a mistake and Maggie was supposed to be baggage, not cargo. We then found the Air Canada/Delta cargo manager who informed us of their error.

We then headed back to the airport, with TCG. After a lot of talking, by TCG, and running around and waiting I saw Jenn emerge from the airport with Maggie. Happy days, our tumultuous experience was finally over.

We may have to stay here for good now though, I’m scared to think of what it will be like taking Maggie back.

1. It’s hot, hotter than I expected although I am getting used to it. I also haven’t seen a drop of rain since arriving.
2. You need to get around by car, there is not a lot of public transit and from what I hear it’s hard to figure out exactly where each bus goes as well. Also since everything is so spread out you need a car to get around, taking taxis all the time will start getting expensive.
3. Traffic can be insane here. We went looking at properties yesterday and after 4 hours we had only looked at 2 because of the traffic.
4. When there is a traffic accident Costa Rican law states you have to leave your car where it is until the police arrive. Due to the small roads and many cars this can cause major backups for hours with no way around. See above point.
5. Our office here, The Hangar, is pretty cool and everyone there is super nice.
6. It gets bright here very early. Costa Rica is on the same time as Calgary but it should really be on Central or even Eastern time zone. Because of this the sun is up at 5:30am and it gets dark a little after 6pm right now.
7. There are security bars, gates, fences everywhere. It’s going to take getting used to seeing all of the security everywhere.
8. Costa Rican customs can be … interesting.
9. Coke here is good. Better than back home because it’s not made with that corn syrup crap. It has real sugar like it’s supposed to.
10. People here are real friendly and I really need to learn some more Spanish so I can communicate better.

This morning I took an early morning trip to office to meet Marcela (our super awesome HR lady), who was going to take me to customs and help me get my computer back. Neither of us had ever dealt with customs before so it was quite the learning process.

When we arrived at customs we were met outside by a helpful man who turned out to be the manager of the customs office. In retrospect I believe he was just waiting outside for a gringo like me to come along so he could get a little “tip” for his services. Unfortunately I never got his name so I will simple refer to him as The Customs Guys (TCG). 

TCG first told us that the computer could not be considered “personal” because it was not a laptop. Why others in the office have been able to bring down computers, in some cases multiple computers on the same trip, I’ll never know. Marcela and I thought we should first double check with Continental Airlines to see what they recommended. TCG followed us to the Continental office where some sort of agreement was reached where we’d pay a small customs fee of ~$50US. Using a the standard 15% customs fee rate this turned out to be a pretty good deal and I decided to go for it rather than to try to keep arguing.

Marcela and I then got in her car with TCG and he directed us to another building near the airport where we had an invoice created from “Circuit City INC” which said I bought the computer for $500 two years ago. We then headed back to the regular customs building now that we had all of our “proper” documentation.

Over the next couple of hours we spent the time between visiting a customs lady 3 times, another manager 3 times, the cashier twice and waited a number of times on the bench. Marcela was awesome throughout the whole process especially since none of the people we dealt with spoke english and she had to do most of the speaking for me. I don’t know how I would have got this done without her and I cannot thank her enough.

After all the paper work and waiting finished TCG escorted us to the dock where he took my computer out of customs and loaded it into Marcela’s car. We then thanked him for all his help and he said,  with a smile on his face, that he was not going to charge anything for his service but if we wanted to “tip” him that would be nice. 5000 Colones later we were on our way back to the office with computer in hand.

Now I don’t want anyone to worry about Maggie, she’s safe and on her own little vacation thanks to the great people at Beinnein Kennels. Hopefully she’ll be joining us soon but we’re still waiting to find out all the details about getting her imported into the country.

I would also like to thank the Costa Rica Customs office for holding my iMac at the airport. Apparently I have to pay customs on it because it is not a laptop, I’m sure we’ll get this sorted out over the next couple days as well.

Now not everything has been a downer the last couple days. Upon arriving in Costa Rica we were met by our relocation agents, Luz Elena and Angie. They’re super nice people and were very helpful giving us a quick tour of the area on the way to our temporary residence, a cute little condo in Santa Ana. I’m looking forward to looking at housing with them tomorrow.

Now I’m off to meet my coworkers at The Hangar! Here are some pictures of temporary place.

Jenn working diligently