Costa Rica
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| Motto: Dollars? Euros? I have them! | |||||
| Anthem: Something by Some guy | |||||
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| Capital | Sangelina Jose | ||||
| Largest city | Los Guido | ||||
| Official languages | Spanish, Chinese | ||||
| Government | Corrupt American Sponsored Oligarchy | ||||
| Satan, Jesus or the Jew | El Cadejos | ||||
| Prime Minister | |||||
| National Hero(es) | {{{national_heros}}} | ||||
| Declaration of Independence | Yesterday. Probably. Maybe. Who the fuck knows? Whos the fuck cares? | ||||
| Currency | Litres | ||||
| Religion | US Dollars paganism, duckism | ||||
| Major exports | Gallo Pinto, Natural Resources, Ticas | ||||
| Major imports | Tourists | ||||
| Opening hours | Happy Hour | ||||
 | Your Editors would rather trash current events than the whole country, but we're short on news.
Please suggest new themes on the talk page. | Los Redactores prefiríamos burlarnos de la noticia actual, en vez de todo el país, pero no estamos al día.
Pedimos nuevos temas por agregarlos a nuestra página de discusión. |
“I feel it's only a facade hiding the face of hell”
~ Oscar Wilde on Costa Rica
It was to be expected that, the minute someone named a region Costa Rica ("Rich Coast"), Murphy's Law would take over and the place would be jinxed. They had Puerto Rico ("Rich Port") as an example, but they did so anyway.
Contents |
[edit] Geography
Costa Rica's geography is a kind of Paradise. But it promises surprises due to its linkage to hell. It saps the free will of any visitor, as it has done to the inhabitants. You notice the effects when a brief dip in the pool or a shopping trip take two days and three stone off you.
There are not, contrary to the travel guides, any actual "locations" in Costa Rica, but only an amalgamation of beach, metropolis, and jungle. Again, this is the result of the pull of the fourth circle of hell on Costa Rica. It sounds bad, but many tourists choose Costa Rica specifically to escape the existential burden of free will.
All reckoning in Costa Rica is done in terms of distance and bearing from the capital, Sangelina Jose; and within the capital, all reckoning is done relative to "the Coca-Cola," the massive factory with non-working electric billboard where Coca-Cola hasn't been bottled in half a century. In the downtown area, it is also possible to orient yourself by scent, once you learn the locations of the coffee-roasting shops.
[edit] History
Costa Rica underwent phases in which it was constituted as--
- A tribal government of nearly-naked primitives, weaving baskets, trying to fix leaks in their huts, and wondering why all those finely-dressed soldiers were carrying away chests of gold
- Yet another tributary possession of Spain
- A state in a Central American confederation
- An independent nation
- A plantation-based foreign possession of the United States.
Transitions between these phases were violent but inconclusive.
Costa Rica is now a trendy Euro-state, known as "the Switzerland of the Americas," constitutionally prohibited from having an army and thus having to defend its territory on the sly.
[edit] Government
Costa Rica has had uninterrupted republican democracy since 1950, an accomplishment otherwise unthinkable in Central America. Only a few of its Presidents have been military strongmen. The current President, Nobel-winning Óscar Arias, was returned to office after a prohibition in the constitution against re-election was declared somehow unconstitutional, this just following a wholesale purge of the Supreme Court. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
The country has won an award 23 years in a row for being the most inefficient in all of the Americas. Both daily newspapers in Sangelina Jose tout on their mastheads the special recognition granted by UNESCO for their tireless anti-United States editorializing.
Each of the past 14 Presidents has been indicted for taking bribes while in office. This incomparable consistency in political corruption brings pride to the population.
[edit] CAFTA
Costa Rica has ratified CAFTA, the free-trade agreement with neighboring nations and the United States. Its labor and environmental provisions will bureaucratize the Costa Rican economy, for seamless integration with the bureaucracies of the other signatories. The enabling legislation to pry open Costa Rica's industries will be passed, maybe mañana, señor.
[edit] Economy
Costa Ricans have developed a fine asphalt-carving skill which allows them to make pavement traps almost everywhere. Their specialty is the tourist-in-a-street-hole trap, which lets them dispose of all tourists’ belongings. A complex tunneling system then takes the loot to the Virilla River, where Albino Vargas, head of the ICE religious cult, processes them into rainforests. These can be sold to the highest bidder or exchanged for cigarettes.
[edit] Exports
Costa Rica's main exports are agrarian: coffee, pineapple, and chips from the Intel plant. It also exports customer service to the United States through its offshore poker sites and sports books.
[edit] In and out
Costa Rica is an important transshipment point for cigars from Cuba that illegally enter the United States.
[edit] Out and in
Costa Ricans export many of their natural resources to global corporations, and then are baffled to find out how much more they have to pay to bring the finished products back in.
[edit] In and out and in and out
Costa Rica is also a favorite prostitution venue, involving workers of all ages, sexes, and species. Reportedly.
[edit] Eco-tourism
Costa Rica did not know that its vast stretches of insect-infested jungle would be renamed the "rain forest," nor that its uninhabited parts would become a favored destination of tourists who wish that Earth were uninhabited. But when it happened, Costa Rica adapted quickly, and "eco-tourism" is now a chief national money-maker. Tourists from the United States and elsewhere in the developed world arrive in droves and are shuttled out to Irazú and beyond, on dinosaur-watching tours, in some cases before they can see the brown tinge over Sangelina Jose, whose residents burn plastic, tires, and automobiles in open fires to avoid taking them to the dump.
Eco-tourists are well-to-do; they are notorious for telling other potential eco-tourists of their travels ("I have been to the Rain Forest!!!"), which leads to more eco-tourism; and they are remarkably easy to separate from their money. After all, they are there not so much to see or experience anything as to make a statement about themselves, something for which there is no fair price. In fact, paying more may make a bigger statement about you.
[edit] Surgical tourism
Costa Rica has emerged as a destination for ailing United States citizens to combine medical treatment with rest and relaxation. Surgery can be scheduled in a Costa Rican hospital so much cheaper than U.S. rates that it pays for the air fare and hotel stay. This is because U.S. hospitals overcharge paying patients to cover the cost of Costa Rican deadbeats getting treatment in the U.S. To avoid problems, talk with your surgeon before the operation. Right is derecha and left is izquierda.
[edit] Other tourism
Tourism having nothing to do with making environmental statements is still strong. The country offers bungie-jumping, amusement parks, cyber-cafes, baseball and basketball leagues, and other activities easily available at home, for tourists who don't mind an overnight flight and two days of diarrhea.
The first thing you notice in downtown Sangelina Jose is tall gringos practicing their sauntering, going from shop to shop, never entering, just checking things out. On further examination, you can identify the following archetypes:
- Nicaraguans and Colombians, who are indistinguishable from the locals except for their disinterest in the consequences of their actions.
- Misfit backpackers from the United States (see also Eco-tourism above).
- Cheap, lost Canadians. (How can no-lifes be in a mid-life crisis?)
If you meet fellow tourists who do not have a screw loose, they would be European industrial thieves.
[edit] La Sele
A secondary source of income is Costa Rica's famous circus side show, la Sele. Former manager Hermes Navarro of the FEDEFUT Costa Rica Subliminal Control Group (CCSS) claims there are millions of dollars available, though no one has found a single cent.
Other backers of this circus with its beloved ball-kicking animals are La Nacion and the Pope. Also, President Arias uses them as war conscripts. Towns that refuse to underwrite la Sele, like Heidelberg in the latest international German conflict, are blackmailed for great sums. Rumor has it that Heidelberg was forced to give away the names of all the opponents of CAFTA. Now, the owner of La Nacion, Julio Rodríguez, has taken matters into his own hands and bribed them with free beer, cell phones, jobs as fashion designers and tickets to the new Intel Bar, in Pavas-Escazú.
[edit] Culture
Costa Ricans are smarter than the average bear--and lazier than the average sloth. The former is because the process to become a citizen or foreign resident requires extreme intelligence (or a dozen good lawyers and a couple well-placed bribes).
Costa Rica, like other Latin-American countries, has as its national dish a virtually identical mixture of rice and beans, with a distinctive national name for the dish. But Costa Rica is unique in having a different name when the dish is served for lunch, from the name when the same dish is served for dinner.
Costa Rican women are notorious as gold-diggers. Their unrelenting search for a wealthy foreign husband is not unique to Costa Rica, but it is developed into a national identity as nowhere else.
Like other Latin audiences, Costa Ricans love bullfights, especially during their Christmas and New Year festivities. However, they regard as cruel the "staged professional massacre" between bulls and trained matadors and prefer throwing drunken amateurs into the bull ring instead. This works well for both sides: the bulls never get hurt, and the drunks put on an entertaining show running away from a 1100-pound bull, which somehow never manages to catch them.
[edit] Security
Costa Rican police are called Pacos. The name imitates the mating call of a local parrot that stays hidden in the foliage and stockpiles weed. Pacos work for about $200 per month, plus tips.
Pacos enforce law and order, mostly using pistols and shotguns from the 1856 Battle of Rivas. A few of them even wear bullet-proof vests and helmets. Their tasks include the following:
- Pull over anyone in a rented car and cite them for technical violations, including failure to produce a receipt from the last toll booth. This requires the tourist to make a court date in Alajuela in two months, or offer an on-the-spot cash payment.
- Combined with the world's most efficient judicial system, arrest, try, sentence, and release thugs and criminals, all within 12 hours.
- Keep the peace at Costa Rica's biggest private parties, involving Nicas (Nicaraguans), Colombians, and lately Dominicans.
- Get the squatters and their tents out of your backyard--except during the term of a President who was elected with the help of the labor union that sent the squatters.
- Defend the national territory, as Costa Rica boasts to its violent neighbors that it doesn't have an army.
Sangelina Jose is the most secure capital city anywhere in Costa Rica. Especially at midnight near La Cueva (a sort of underground Mall), or the "Tierra Dominican", where drugs ARE NOT sold or consumed. At all. Not one bit. Seriously.
Tourists can be victimized in other ways than by armed robbery, which Pacos are as unable to redress as they are armed robbery, even those they don't author. These include:
- Being quoted a higher price than natives pay
- Hiring a lawyer, which you must do to get a phone or buy a car.
In 2009, a new transit law formalizes traffic violations with a point system. Drunk driving is immediate loss of license, while being nearly drunk is just a fine. Negotiation would seem to be in order. The transport ministry will hire 400 new highway police to the lucrative profession, but will protect the traveler by conducting stings of officers who may be conducting stings.
[edit] Language
Costa Ricans speak the purest Spanish, with only one small syntactic transformation: Every utterance is preceded and followed by the highly respectful and candid word mae. For example, these sentences are transformed:
¿Como está? -> ¿Mae cómo está mae?
¿Qué hace? -> ¿Mae qué hace mae?
¿Adonde va? -> ¿Mae a dónde va mae?
Que bueno -> Mae que bueno mae
Que cagada -> Mae que cagada mae
And since Costa Ricans are so gentle, soft-spoken and respectful, sentences are sprinkled with honorifics, such as puta, hijueputa, picha or carepicha. Now you know Costa Rican Spanish, mae malparido, mae me cago en tu reputisima madre, mae hijueputa carepicha de mierda.
[edit] Trivia
- Costa Rica was chosen in 1894 as the site of the first Olympic Games, by 43 votes to 1. When the others went down to the pub to celebrate a decision well made, the Greek dissenter simply crossed out Costa Rica and wrote in Athens. No one noticed until departing athletes were told at the docks to bring a bouzouki.
- Costa Rica has the world's longest coastline. This was determined by a bored junior civil servant of a mathematical bent, who filed to have all its internal waterways (including canals, ponds, and wells) declared international waters for a millimeter-thin strip down the middle of the channel. This led directly to the invention of Fractals.
- The most popular dessert in Costa Rica is tapioca pudding, but they eat it with ice-cream.
- George W. Bush found Costa Rica listed on the back of a coffee can after becoming President and said to Dick Cheney (thinking it was a coffee bar), "Let's go to Costa Rica for some coffee." He was rather surprised when Air Force One was got out of the garage.
- Costa Ricans are referred to as "Ticos" or "Ticas," which in Spanish literally means "many men waving arms at cars while parking in small lots."
[edit] Related Articles
[edit] External Links
- Costa Rican Tourist board
- A profile from the BBC
- Route planner + map of Costa Rica
- Lonely Planet Guide
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