• Subscribe by Email!

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner


Duty Free Shopping in Golfito, Costa Rica

March 26th, 2014

SaveOccasionally I get submissions from other bloggers here in Costa Rica and sometimes, I hear about an article written by one of them that would be a great additions to The REAL Costa Rica Blog.  In this case, I contacted the author and requested permission to reprint one of their Blog articles. I got a really good deal from blogger Pat Wegner who writes Blog: Mi Chunche. Don’t bother looking up chunche as you likely will not find it.  It means, for lack of a better word, thing or thingy… maybe even whatchamacallit…  a damned fine and handy word to know if living in Costa Rica and you have no idea how to say some word in Spanish.  Great catchall word!

Anyway, Pat’s fine article appears below and explains the processes and procedures for making a trip to the Southern Zone to do some serious shopping, especially for appliances, electronics and other highly taxed items.  As you will read, it IS an investment in time and money, but if buying a ton of hard goods, can be a very cost saving trip.

Duty Free Shopping in Golfito By Pat Wegner

Have you ever considered a duty free shopping spree in the Pacific town of Golfito?  If this article is of interest, read on! Continue reading »

Stats ‘N Stuff – Who Reads The REAL Costa Rica?

June 21st, 2010

Stats interest me.

I don’t push advertising on the main web site or Blog, but I do put up a few ads to sort of cover some of the costs. It is always fun, though, to see just who visits The REAL Costa Rica during the month.

The Real Costa Rica gets a bit less than 60,000 new visitors every month making it one of the most popular Costa Rica web sites on the Internet.

Here is a summary of the basic stats!

Interested? Read on!

Continue reading »

Time to Make Changes…

November 10th, 2007

… to the look and feel of this Blog.

One of the zillion neat things about using WordPress as your Blog software is the ability to change the theme (look and feel) of the Blog pretty much any time you get the urge.

The last theme, brownish in nature, was OK, but some folks found hard to read. The prior theme that I really liked (the one with the raindrops on green leaves) was excellent, but after 6 months of trying, I could never get the ‘search’ feature to work properly. Searching in a Blog this size is important as there are years of Posts on many different topics. Many people just click one of the Categories that are listed to the right, but that is dependent on the Post author correctly ticking off check marks in all the appropriate categories.

Anyway, while changing a WordPress theme talkes about 10 seconds, adding back the custom coding on this blog will take days and will most assuredly screw up the site until I fix it! So please be patient if you click here and the display is truly fouled up. Trust that I am all over it! Sadly (or happily), I am buried in work and this Blog must come behind my actual income producing labors.

Love it? Hate it? Could give a hoot? Feel free to leave a comment.

We have a new Contributor!

November 6th, 2007

Nora StraightPlease welcome Nora Straight who moved here from California with her husband and two sons aged 18 and 14. Half Chilean and half Mexican, it is no surprise she is Spanish fluent. She and her family live in Rio Seco which is about 15 minutes inland from Parrita, approximately 25 minutes north of Quepos.

Her bio indicates she likes Books, politics, cookbooks, travel, and knitting. It also indicates she likes chocolate. Having visited her Blog and seen her picture, it is clear that this is just nonsense. No serious chocolate lover could look like that. She probably doesn’t even sweat on the stairmaster either.

Welcome Nora! Now write something!

Just a Little Bit About Myself

November 24th, 2006

If I may take a moment of your time, I’d like to properly introduce myself. My name is Susan Carmichael.  Tim said he erased the last introduction I did, but oh well, there’s always time for a second chance.

Continue reading »

New Author for This Blog

November 18th, 2006

Susan Carmichael will be our newest contributor.

Susan lives here in Costa Rica and busies herself raising her two kids. She will provide readers with an expatriate mom’s view of Costa Rica that may well be of interest to other parents planning to move to Costa Rica with the younguns. She will address all the hot topics of interest to moms in general i.e. vomiting and diarrhea, schooling, bugs… etc.

Actually, Susan already submitted her first two posts, but like a bonehead, I managed to erase the first one, so you don’t get the intro post until she re-submits it.

Susan will have her own Category, so keep up to date by checking it regularly.

Welcome Susan!

Where is Nora?

November 8th, 2006

That is the question being asked by some of our regular readers. Nora Schild is moving to Costa Rica… VERY soon… and has been contributing posts detailing her adventure.

The problem is… she has suddenly stopped writing! I have called her home in Missouri and chatted with her husband on several occasions. She is NEVER home! Now this is odd! For a woman only weeks away from the BIG MOVE, she seems to never be in her home!

This makes me wonder if she has been the subject of foul play! Perhaps her husband, driven loco by a woman bent on the expat lifestyle, has done away with her! Perhaps she is buried in the cold, cold Missouri soil behind the house!

Thus, I am making one more plea… Nora? Where are you? If alive, please write or call.

(signed)

Yo

Now Get The REAL Costa Rica Blog by Email

October 22nd, 2006

I have received several emails from people asking if they could get new posts and updates to The REAL Costa Rica Blog by email. They prefer to receive new Posts by email so as to not have to deal with RSS or visit a ton of blogs to see if anything new has been added.

This turned out to be a pretty simple request thanks to the folks at Feedburner, the company that handles my RSS feeds. Interested? To subscribe, just place your email address in the subsciption form at the top-right. You will immediately receive a verifying email which you must answer. Then you will be all set. The system will send you a copy of any new posts in HTML format at about 6-9 AM CST. No posts? No email.

Prefer a direct link to subscribe? Click Here

Fresh Blood!

August 24th, 2006

As you can probably imagine, I get a ton of email from people who are thinking about making the BIG MOVE. Some are just sticking a toe in the international waters while others are in various stages of living the rest of their lives as expatriates.

Of course I made the move here some years ago and I remember I experienced the excitement, fear, doubts and panic that attend such a decision. I said my goodbyes to friends and family (my daughter did not believe I was really leaving until about ten days before I actually left). It was/is a scary thing experience for just about everyone I know who has done this.

So when I received an email from someone who was in the process of packing HER family and actually experiencing the emotions above… and when she further told me she wanted to BLOG her experiences, I jumped on it immediately! Welcome to Nora Schild who will be chronicling her family’s move to Costa Rica.

Continue reading »

OK… It’s Sort of IE Ready

July 30th, 2006

happy face.gifAfter a LOT of screwing around, this blog now displays (almost) perfectly in IE.

Those of you who have had the “pleasure” of designing for the IE browser know how much fun this was. IE does not use the “normal” HTML set of commands, so stuff like this happens a lot. As more and more people use Firefox and other more compliant, secure and state-of-the-art browsers, making web sites work in ALL browsers become really important. But there are always the holdouts!

So IE users rejoice! And when you finish rejoicing, by all means go here and download a good browser! It will make you happy!