Costa Rica Easter Week at Wal Mart

These 3 photos are of Hipermas, San Jose, Costa Rica.  Wal Mart bought it out.  Even though this is a Wal Mart store, the liquor is covered up during Semana Santa, Holy Week, Easter Week.

Wal Mart Costa Rica Undergoes Changes

Wal Mart Costa Rica bought Hipermas.  Hipermas was a large Costa Rican grocery chain.

In April 2011 there were a lot of changes made such as the orange signs posted and many rows were rearranged.  One of the store managers told me that there would be employee training to improve service.

Costa Rica Wal Mart

Wal Mart has quite a presence in Costa Rica.  The top 2 photos are just outside of a Wal Mart not far from where I stayed in Barrio Aranjuez.  It is called Hypermas.
The bottom photo is from Mas pro Menus which means More for Less.  This store is in San Jose's downtown.

Taught Saving & Investing in Costa Rica

I taught Saving and Investing at the National Public Library of Costa Rica in March, 2011. A photo of the Library is attached.All of my teaching was in Spanish. First I had to teach myself how investing worked in Costa Rica. To do so, I read the financial newspaper and I interviewed Costa Rican financial professionals in Spanish. It was very challenging.

When teaching investing I used examples from real life. I showed an offer from the Bank of Costa Rica (BCR) . If people invested by April, 2011 they could receive very high interest. I also used Bond Fund information that Banco Popular shared with me. I taught people how to read Fact Sheets and compare January 2010 to June 2010 information for different funds with different risk profiles. After considerable practice, I divided my class into smaller groups. Each group was assigned a different fund and was to report on changes from January to June (2010), composition of the fund i.e. were all of the bonds government bonds or were some instruments business bonds . Because Costa Rica is such a small country there wasn't nearly as large a selection of investments as we are accustomed to in the U.S. Also I pointed out that different bonds had different expiration dates and showed participants how they could identify those.

To teach the Saving session, I also had to teach myself about the Costa Rican every day life matters. How much were people paying for cell phone use, basic food items, transportation and more. I spent a great deal of time going to the grocery store, taking public transportation and interviewing accountants and others.

Costa Rica Just Got Back

This post is dedicated to Jeanette.

Costa Rica Hmmmm.... Why is it such a popular travel destination? Well, every 40 minutes the geography changes. You can be in San Jose in the morning, visit the cloud forest in the afternoon and the next day see one of the many volcanoes. The Pacific is 3 hours drive from San Jose, the Atlantic is only 5 hours drive in the other direction.

If you do not particularly like (or do not have the time) taking the public bus, guess what? There are air conditioned tourist busses that pick you up at your hotel (no, I'm not kidding) and drop you off at the next hotel.

Since respecting local culture is very important to me I try very hard to read up before I go. I took a lot of taxis in San Jose (they are inexpensive). Once I saw a sign on a taxi dashboard "No tire la puerta". I asked what does the verb tirar mean. "Eslam" was the reply. "Todos los gringos tiran la puerta". I had not realized that for 2 months I had been slamming the door too hard! The driver and I laughed.