We all lament and are still shedding tears over the loss of a budding star, one which began to shape our lives the first day he shared that innocent childhood grin in 1984 as Theo on ”The Cosby Show”. His passing was personal to me because, having spent my teenage years in the USA, he played so many roles which I related to having lived with my family in Brooklyn only a few years earlier.
Even more painful for me was the fact that this scenario was a repeat. When I moved my family to Los Angeles, CA, in the 1980s one of my coworkers asked me for advice since his UCLA-graduating son had asked for his gift to be a trip to Costa Rica to study Spanish. I was so delighted to know a Black American youth who wanted to visit and learn of my native country. I called a friend who was a professor at the “Universidad de Costa Rica” and she agreed to chaperon the young man. At the end of the summer program the class went to celebrate at Manuel Antonio Beach in Puntarenas, where he drowned. You can only imagine when I received that phone call from the US Embassy in Costa Rica (mine was the first US contact number they found for him) asking me to inform my friend and his wife their youngest son had passed.
Today our firm www.csdgcr.com provides customized investor tours to the Caribbean Costa Rica. Many of the enquiries we receive are from folks who are not sure they need paid guides, who simply think our services are unnecessary or too expensive. After all it’s a small country, there are lots of Americans already settled here, and they have read so many wonderful things about the country. How difficult could it be? The best response we have found is to compare our services to the alternative when you make the wrong move in a foreign country because you don’t speak the language, don’t know the geography, history, culture nor pitfalls. Those first few trips should leave lasting positive impressions for our guests. With a knowledgeable guide, first-timers get to relax while a native make their reservations, provide all local transportation, translations, geographic orientation, community history and property locations, investment options, finding legal and financial advisors, intro to community leaders, restaurants and entertainment, and just as important is the follow-up after they leave the country.
Last weekend my extended family and I went out to celebrate our teenage grandson’s birthday at Point Magu Beach, Southern California, and it dawned on me to write this article. While Costa Rica is a beautiful country with lots of natural resources, we have been struggling for decades with the adjustments necessary to fully migrate to first-world standards. Many of the challenges in reaching this goal appear to be more cultural than structural.
On a non-holiday weekend at the Southern California beaches, aside from the posted warnings, we witnessed three levels of staffed lifeguards: at least one in the lifeguard tower, another circulating a pickup truck with emergency kits up and down the coastal roads between towers, and a third on a jet ski skidding up and down the coast about 100 yards from the beach. Some might think that’s an overkill, but it sure made me feel better. I took a few photographs to illustrate California’s investment in beach safety for locals as well as tourists.
I know in Costa Rica the first reaction will be “We don’t have budgets for all that”. Maybe not, but with the softening of the electronic manufacturing industry as a leading economic driver, Costa Rica might want to find ways to make the necessary changes to not only strengthen but grow the tourism significantly beyond the $5.4B USD. In our firm we believe our job as guides is to assist the newcomers bridge the differences and understand CR still have quite a way to go to adequately protect our tourist, but we are trying. To our tourists, please remember, as my grandmother in Limon used to tell us “yu-not-at-home”, do not assume you know the ropes. Be cautious, after all you are in a foreign country.
