We came to Costa Rica for adventure.
Between a rental ripoff, cockroaches and ongoing Internet outages in the month and week we’ve been here it has proven more of a misadventure. This is the real Costa Rica, not the swanky five-star resorts, spotless beaches and crystal blue swimming pools that gloss the pages of travel brochures.
After two sleepless nights listening to the skittering of legs running across the marble floors in Casa Roach, the fumigator arrived. Our landlords, to their credit, were quick to respond to the problem and hired someone to come in and blast the buggers with something they assured me would only kill the disgusting devils — and not us.
It can only be described as a horror show as the usually nocturnal and hardy creatures were forced from their hiding places and into the broad daylight as some sort of liquid spray choked the life out of them.
Within an hour the house was like a battlefield, littered with dead bodies of all sizes. The bigger ones ended up on their backs, their long, crooked barbed legs sticking up in the air like some sort of roach rigor mortis.
Thankfully, the fumigators took with them the carnage, serving as both executioner and undertaker.
It was such a relief to fall asleep to a quiet house, at least inside, without fear of having to run the roach gauntlet on a midnight trip to the loo.
I woke up to one lonely dead roach in the bathroom.
The same day our Internet finally began to work after three days of runaround from the local cable company. For some unexplainable reason, there are continuous web service problems throughout the country. The cable guy was unable to give a reason, only saying the government-owned company was switching to a new system it hopes will work better.
Perhaps it has something to do with a rampant cable theft problem.
The local English weekly newspaper reported this week that thieves are stealing up to three kilometres of electric cables during the night, pilfering them for the copper wire inside that is sold to scrapyards. Communities across the country have been left without electricity and phone service as a result of the cable thefts.
“We are in a permanent state of war,” an electric company official was quoted saying.
The company, ICE, has taken to coating telephone polls with slippery oil and barbed wire to deter thefts but it’s not working.
These issues have given me a new appreciation for the level of service provided by utility companies back home. I used become irate at spending 10 minutes on the phone with the cable company when my Internet went down. A power outage for mere minutes resulted in a similar reaction.
Here, roaches and power and Internet outages are just part of an ordinary day for most people.
I can live with the latter two. Fingers crossed our dirty roommates have moved out for good.
Beating the boom 