There are downsides to living in Costa Rica. One such downside is the horrible infrastructure. Roads are absolutely atrocious, and under-engineered by several factors of magnitude for what the country requires. Telecommunications are under-developed, and about a decade behind even the US, let alone state-of-the-art places like South Korea.

But one of the most frustrating problems here is this:
  • Costa Rica is, obviously, way too small to make everything locally.
  • It's also too small to have established importers for most things you want from abroad.
  • If you want stuff without having to travel abroad, you need to order it sent here.
  • But instead of making it easy to get stuff into Costa Rica, they make it frustratingly hard.
We recently ordered online an item from the US. Guess what:





The item we ordered is a vibrator. It's not particularly hard to classify. If they actually needed documents to tell them what it is, the information is right there in the package. It just happens to be in English. You know, the language spoken in the United States - Costa Rica's primary trading partner.

What possible excuse do Costa Rican customs have to not understand English? I understand if people in general do not. But customs? People who deal with shipments from abroad?

This kind of crap is why this country is poor. And by the looks of it, is likely to remain so.

Edit: Follow up.