Why are retired folks so darn busy? This is why!

Let’s start with Halloween, 2013. I suggested we drive to the town of San Ramon, about 45 minutes from us, to try and find the COSEVI office, and renew our Costa Rica Drivers Licenses.

A little background info: COSEVI is the Council on Road Safety, a division of MOPT (The Minsitry of Public Works and Transportation. We initially got our drivers licenses at the COSEVI office in San José, back in 2010, when we were visiting on a tourist visas. The licenses were issued with our U.S. Passport numbers as our drivers license numbers. When the law changed in 2011, a tourist could no longer obtain a Costa Rica drivers license. Now, tourists can only drive here if they have a valid drivers license from their home country, and their Costa Rica tourist visa is still valid, usually 90 days. The new law states only Costa Rica citizens and legal residents may obtain drivers licenses and the drivers license number is now the same as the citizen’s, or resident’s cédula number. (A cédula is a national identity card.)

Our licenses were due to expire in early December, but you can renew up to 3 months before expiration. So, off we went to see our local Doctora, to get a current "Dictamen Medico" (physical exam) to indicate we are both healthy enough to drive. She went online and filed the "Dictamen Medico" report electronically. Then the Doctora gave us our receipt numbers on a little slip of paper, and we were off to San Ramon.

No sooner had we reached the center of town, when we were pulled over by a Transito for a missing inspection sticker on the windshield. All vehicles must be inspected once a year and the month the vehicle is due for inspection corresponds to the last digit of the license plate. In our case, our Subaru was due for inspection back in February, 2013. It is normally my job to stay on top of these things and make sure everything gets done on time. Somehow I dropped the ball, and el Transito issued us a ticket, or Boleta, with a fine attached to it of $94 USD. El Transito explained we would be eligible for a 15% discount if we pay the fine within 10 days.

With ticket in hand, we continued on to find the COSEVI office were we had been told it was fast and easy to renew a license. We followed the instructions from a gas station attendant and pulled up at this derelict building in need of some serious TLC, but there was no one around. A couple of doors further down the street, we spotted some guys loitering around, and they assured us we were at the right place. They told us to first go to the house across the street from the COSEVI office to pay for the renewal. (Costa Rica government offices do not handle any monies. All payments for government services are handled as a deposit at the national banks into government accounts.) So we walked into this guy’s carport and found he has setup a little portable computer workstation with a printer. He is logged into the Banco Naciónal and he charges a $2 USD commission to process the renewal fees. After a payment of $24 USD, we have 2 receipts to present to COSEVI.

When we walked across the street to COSEVI, there was a gate barring our entrance, a guard came out and let us in. Next, a clerk reviewed our old licenses, cédulas and payment receipts. He explained that only el jefe (the boss) could change the drivers license number in the computer system, and el jefe was out to lunch with his boss, la jefa, from San José. It was just a few minutes after 11:00 AM and the clerk had no idea when they would return. He asked us to take a seat while he tried to call el jefe on his cell. It couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes when the clerk reported el jefe and la jefa were both back and they could attend us now.

The process was pretty painless, we signed lots of documents and they made copies of our cédulas and licenses. Then we had new photos taken, had our index fingers scanned, we electronically signed the licenses, and 30 seconds later we had our new licenses in hand. Mission accomplished!

Monday, November 4th, I went to our bank account online to see if I could pay the ticket we had received on Halloween, but it wasn’t in the system yet. Yesterday, I tried again, and it still wasn’t in the system. Very strange, especially since we only have 10 days to pay with the 15% discount.

Not wanting to get another ticket for driving without our vehicle inspection, I made the appointment at the nearest inspection station to get the Subaru inspected yesterday morning. We made the 30 minute trip to the inspection station early and Subie passed with flying colors. We had the new inspection sticker attached to the windshield before we even pulled out of the inspection station’s parking lot. On our way back home we decided to take the time to get a few more things done in town.

We went in person to the bank to try and pay the traffic fine from Halloween and the teller couldn’t find it in the system. From there we hit the hardware store to pick up a couple of things we needed. Then it was off to the local post office to order license plates.

November has arrived, and with it we are due to replace our license plates on the Subaru. The government has redesigned the plates to make them much more difficult to forge and have now included a bar code on the plates with a windshield sticker. The month you can order your new plates is based on the last digit of the vehicles current license plate. Our last digit is a 2, so we have from November 1st until January 31st to get the new plates. Since everyone with a vehicle has to do this, the government has tried to make it easy, and set it up so that the new plates can be ordered at the national banks and the local post office.

Armed with Subie’s paperwork we went to the local post office, where the lines are always shorter, and filled out the forms to order the new plates. The postal clerk keyed in all our data into the system and bingo! Red Flag! The owner of this vehicle has unpaid traffic tickets… sorry can’t get new plates until all the traffic fines are paid.

Now what? John noticed that the computer screen the post office clerk was rendered from the other national bank in town, so we thought maybe the ticket is in their system, and we had just gone to the wrong bank. So, we walked over to the other bank and sat in line for a teller.

Banking is so different here…. There are rows of chairs and a set order that everyone lines up. As the person at the first chair is called to a teller window, everyone gets up and shifts over one chair. This is repeated until you get to the head of the line and it is finally your turn. Sometimes there will be as many as 40 people in line, so you get to sit in 40 different chairs. We had about 20 bank customers ahead of us, so the musical chair exercise didn’t last too long this time.

When it was our turn, the teller keyed in the ticket information and found it wasn’t in their system either. “Now what”, I asked. How does one get the ticket into the system? The teller thought it might be a good idea to go to COSEVI and see if they could help. John and I looked at each other and knew the folks in San Ramon certainly wouldn’t be setup to help with this, and the next COSEVI office was in Alajuela, a 40 minute drive back in the direction of the vehicle inspection station.

We left the bank and were headed back to our parked car, when we ran into some good friends. They invited us to join them for lunch at a local restaurant and that sounded like just the break we needed. After lunch we took off in search of the COSEVI office in Alajuela. I knew the general area of town where COSEVI is located, so it just took us a few minutes to find it.

We were sent to 3 different buildings until we finally found the folks that could assist. We were in the Transito Delegación office and this is the place where all the traffic cops report into work. The supervisor in charge called the San Ramon office and confirmed our traffic cop had actually uploaded all his tickets from Halloween. The supervisor said we would need to wait until the office staff returned from lunch, because they are the only ones that can access the ticket information in the system.

We waited about an hour and finally the woman that knows how to run the computer returned from lunch. She confirmed the ticket hadn’t been released to the banking systems and got on the phone to San José. She conferred with her colleague in San José for a few minutes and he finally asked to speak to me. He verified all the data on the ticket; John’s full name, license number, vehicle license plate, etc. Then he told me he would have everything fixed shortly. He said we could go to the bank and pay the ticket in about 5 minutes.

We decided our day had been long enough and it was time to just go home. On our way back home we stopped at a roadside vendor and bought 5 pints of strawberries for $2 USD, and I fixed us some strawberries with whipped cream for dinner. I went back online with our bank and true to the COSEVI agent’s word, I was able to pay the ticket with the 15% discount.

I’m tired and I’m going to take a nap…

How was your day??

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The Bank

What a grand Tuesday we were having!

I was awakened by my lungs trying to suck my CPAP face mask up in through my nostrils. Then I became conscious enough to realize that I had finally popped my lips apart and inhaled vs., the usual explosion of air, accompanied by the most god-awful palate rattle ever emitted by a human-ish creature – the usual occurrence when parting my lips while hooked up to the infernal breathing machine.


“Hey, the machine quit. The power must be off,” I said, figuring that I might as well wake up Pat with the news, since I couldn’t awaken her with the vile sounds of my rattling palate. Just then …

“Pot!” came the voice of Vinicio at our bedroom door. “Johnny wants to talk to you.”
{ASIDE: I gotta tell you . In Spanish, Patricia’s everyday name, Pat, sounds exactly like somebody shouting for a cooking vessel. There is no end to the passive-aggressive fun I can have with this!}

Johnny is our really good Tico lawyer and we had set up an indefinite meeting with him for this week so that we could do all of the paperwork required to set up a bank account here, to be used for the pending house construction project. He was asking us to be at his office in ½ hour – no later – so that he could meet with us prior to a court appearance for some other client.

Race race race. No showers today. Can we do it. Pant pant pant.

The phone rings. It’s Johnny. The power is off at his place, too, so we might as well not come over since he can’t print out any of our documents.

A few minutes later the power came back on and we decided that it was now or never for Johnny.

We actually arrived just a few minutes after his imposed ½ hour deadline. He answered all of our questions, gave us all kinds of really official looking documents with purty-colored stamps and seals all over them (Ticos love colored stamps and seals – and some of their paper currency is considered the most beautifully colored in the world. No kidding.) We paid him and were off.

Had breakfast in a super little soda / panderia in town.

{ASIDE: For those of you unfortunate enough not to know what a “soda” is, they are very tiny “restaurants,” usually with 10 or fewer chairs or counter stools, and they serve a delicious, nutritious, balanced, typical Tico meal that will fill up an empty belly for less money than a burger & fries. For $3 to $5 you can eat and drink Coca-Cola with enough calories for a full day. Really amazing places. Do NOT rob yourself of this experience by going to McDonalds or Taco Bell when in Costa Rica.}

Since we had all of the official documents finished for our Costa Rican corporation, including all of the correct powers-of-attorney (not what they really call them here,) why not go get Vinicio and open up a commercial bank account.

Lesson 1: Know that doing ANYTHING important at a Tico bank will involve a lot of time. And, you DON’T have all of the proper papers, no matter what your attorney or anybody has told you. There shall be something that you’ll have to go elsewhere to get.

In our case, it was the fact that Vinicio (Corporate Treasurer) had brought the requisite utility bill that showed his post office box number, and not the verbal description of the physical location of his office. Now, lemme ask you … would you rather have, “Box 238,” at the Correo (Post Office,) as an address for service of documents or would you like to live with the Tico version of a street address: “100 meters north of Billie’s Pharmacy and 200 meters west of Our Lady of Something-or-Other Church”? Well, the bank wanted the “100 meter” thing.

{Aside: The government has announced that they will give all of the streets in Costa Rica a name over the next few years, so everyone will eventually get a “house number on a street,” address instead of the physical description based on landmarks, as they have used for centuries.}

But, the banker agreed to get started on the paperwork and we could go get a proper utility bill. Two and a half hours down and not finished.

And, oh yes, they were having trouble with the computer hookup to the national registry and couldn’t verify that we really were a corporation, even though they were holding a plethora of stamped, notarized, embossed, be-ribboned, signed in triplicate nationally official documents. Nah. But they hoped the computer would finally answer “in an hour or so.” Ya, right.

So we diddled away a delicious hour partaking of Tico BBQ ribs with all the trimmings. I’m in heaven.

We sauntered back to Vinicio’s and picked up a bill with a descriptive address on it.
Back to the bank; hippity hop inside; where is everyone?
Lunch, I guess. For a l-o-n-g time.

At 2:10pm, (no, I’m not kidding) our banker gal came back to see us. O.K., all the paperwork is there …. but she can’t find Pat’s business card that we’d given her earlier …. did we have another. Sure, everyone carries dozens of business cards with them on vacation. Hope she doesn’t need more than one more.

Typity type type. Our banker is burning up the keyboard on her PC. Typity type. I guess I’ll go over to stand in line to change some dollars into colones since the exchange rate is going the wrong direction and is expected to tank over the next few days or weeks.

That took a half hour. Not bad!

Typity type type. Wow, they’re really into paperwork at this bank.

Well, since we already have the new account number, maybe Vinicio should go over, get in line and make our first deposit.

Another 40 minutes. Things are really flying along around here!

Typity type type. Now banker-girl is on the phone ripping off a bunch of technical stuff in Spanish, and, Oh, god, Pat is rolling her eyes.

“What?” I want to know.

“Well it sounds like their system took all of your information but it refuses to take mine. She’s entered everything 3 times and now the home office is working with her over the phone trying to get it in,” says my bride.

By this time, we’re worried about getting out of the bank in time to pick people up after work, etc. So, Vinicio and Pat both work on our banking pal and she agrees, finally, to give us all of our paperwork, bundle up her copies, send them to the home office, “and let them figure this out.”

She got my vote.

Lesson 2: Ya better not have “Houston” as your city of residence because the computer system at the bank refuses to recognize it. Put in some other town name & BANG – it goes right through. Just not Houston. So there.

We cruised outa there by 4pm, the proud owners of a new corporate checking account.

We be ready to roll!
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