There are some things Costa Rica does really, really well.

  • Beaches.
  • Palm trees.
  • Friendly strangers.
  • Crazy animals and fruits.

But the internet? That’s a problem.

There’s a maxim here that goes,

“Costa Rica is ten years behind the United States.”

With fashion, with technology, with any advancement that happened in the United States ten (or more) years ago, they are just now becoming adopted in this small Central American piece of paradise.

Ten years ago, I was making the transition from dial-up to Broadband in my apartment in Portland.

Thankfully, wi-fi is much more widespread here than circa 2002 USA. But when there is a monsoon, the internet stops.

All of my failsafes were down this weekend. I had no wifi, no 3G, no data card access at my house.

When I went into town, wifi was down all over the place.

So I calmly waited for the weekend to complete itself (pura vida!), spent time with my family, and on Monday morning got myself down to the coast, where signals are better.

I’m working today from the hot beach town of Uvita, where my connection is strong and the coffee is stronger.

If you’d like to see what the rest of my daily offices look like, I’ve got a Tumblog about my laptop offices in Costa Rica.