About the Mail

We do not get mail in Costa Rica.

We do not send mail in Costa Rica.

This is a conceptual model that could have saved the US billions last year in cost overruns at USPS.  Sometimes it is the simple ideas that count.

A new gringa in town had some meds mailed to them from "up north" and they had not arrived in a couple of weeks.  "It was mailed in a first class envelope," she exclaimed!  I am presuming she believed that "first class envelope" had some meaning in a country that doesn't use mail.

Banana Delivery

I suggested (though too late to be of any real service) on our local message board, "personally I would not send anything important or unimportant by mail.  And I have asked nobody send me anything by any express service e.g. Fedex as the extrication process is beyond my tolerance levels."

I'll get to that another day.  Or at least why it is I have a peculiar response to the statement, "Fedex has a package for you."

I do like the idea that Costa Rica has a mail service modeled after normal mail services . . . you know "counters", "lines", "commemorative stamps" etc but there the resemblance to normalcy stops. It's like walking into a store front from 'Men in Black'. They look normal but what goes on behind the wall is from
another planet.

Fire Truck, Guanacaste

A year before I discovered Kindle, I had subscribed to WIRED magazine knowing full well the vagaries of the Costa Rican postal service.  I had presumed that with a real postal box and a real post office (here in Alajuela) and a magazine nobody locally could give a hoot about, I might have a chance.  I was OK with the magazine being a month or two late as the likelihood of the technology I was about to read up on was likely to bypass Costa Rica anyway.   3 of 10 issues arrived at my PO Box that year.  My wife and I discussed this at renewal time.  Her patience with me was demonstrated by her actually agreeing to renewing the subscription - fortunately for me they invented the Kindle just in time.

The US Postal Service seems to have decided that the solution to their financial problems is to focus in part on increasing promotions for junk mail.  It just goes to show you that our, near useless, postal service is less dysfunctional that that of the USPS.

Heck, could it be possible that Costa Rica is in fact a model of what the USPS could become years from now.  When a tourist asks me "how is it possible to run a country without mail?"

"First," I reply, "let's run a test."
"OK," they say wondering what the mad innkeeper might propose next (as they already believe the previous conversation is bordering on the surreal).
I stop the next staffer walking by and ask, "when was the last time you sent a piece of mail?"
The answer is always, "never".

"So you see, I have definitively proven you do not need a postal service for a country to function.  Ask anybody you meet the same question."

You can see more of how it works by clicking here (it ain't pretty but it kind of works).

COSTA RICAN MUSINGS - Addresses, Mail or lack of

ON THE COSTA RICAN CORREO (POSTAL SERVICE).
A person considering doing business in Costa Rica wondered about using the local mail to ship stuff.  This is a subject of much debate as Costa Rica has few street names, very few street signs and no real addresses. 

If you ask a Tico when was the last  time they sent a letter, the odds on answer is "never".

Yes we do have a post office in big towns like Alajuela and they even have commemorative stamps though, who these get sent to, is a mystery.  The postal service here must have been modeled on one from a country that has actual addresses however it requires very few personnel and in a town like ours of many thousands (perhaps 70,000 - nobody really knows) we have just 2 people doing deliveries.

So many folks reaction to that is either disbelief or plain ole dumbfoundedness. 

"You mean you have no junk mail!?"
"Yup!"
What happens if you forget to pay your phone bill?"
"Um, well, it's one of the commonest reasons you don't get a phone answered here."
"Why?"
"You forgot to go down to the phone company (we only have one) and pay the bill."
"Then what?"
"The phone starts working again."
"Wouldn't it be easier for them to mail you a bill?"
"Heck no, where would they mail it to?"

This is why about one day a month you will find us scurrying around our town of Alajuela  - to ICE to pay the phone bill, the the municipality to pay the utilities and taxes, to the CAJA (health service) to pay the workers comp and insurance and to the bank to pay the rest.

Yes we do have a PO Box but most people in our town do not.  Yes occasionally someone will mail something (about the only thing now is my newsletter from PAII, the Professional Association of Innkeepers) to the hotel in Alajuela.  I will find it a day or two later among front entrance jungle, marvel at the process that got it here and scurry off to read about Innkeepers in the real world we left.

One local thought or thinks their mail they get from the US is opened from time to time.

Which reminded me of a favorite bit in a book:

"Sharing the hospital room with Yossarian are numerous others, including his friend Captain Dunbar, who has also fabricated an illness, and a man wrapped entirely in gauze and plaster. The patients, all of whom are officers and most of whom it seems are not truly ill, spend their time censoring the letters of enlisted men. Yossarian takes particular pleasure in censoring the letters in bizarre and creative ways; in one instance, he eliminates all words except "a", "an", and "the," producing what he terms "a message far more universal." Because all officers are required to sign their names at the bottom of the letters they censor, Yossarian signs his "Washington Irving."

At this point the reader is first introduced to the term "Catch-22." Yossarian uses the phrase to describe the requirement that officers sign their names at the bottom of each letter. The author doesn't explain what Catch-22 means exactly; but he does hint that it reflects a bizarre or seemingly contradictory situation.

The only person left in the ward is an under-cover C.I.D. man sent to investigate the mysterious "Washington Irving." He has caught cold and is actually sick. "

Now what's really stupid is that I borrowed this synopsis of a favorite book from "jiffynotes" designed for people who don't want to read (books).

You see how this all comes around to our beloved post office? They recently made little slogan stickers for each of the empty booths at the Alajuela post office about their excellent service. Pause for some retrospection.

When there are two guys in the office, they usually inhabit the same booth . . . I wonder about such things but say nothing. Overall, if I am not using their services, I rate them #1. And am a big fan of the commemorative stamps.

Every day the employees wake up thankful we have no army or they'd be required to deal with actual addresses. Um what else did you need to know about the postal system?

Here's a bit of trivia in a conversation the US Postal Service might have had a couple of years back when  they were looking for ways to save money (reader note: M-Bags were a fabulous system used to distribute books from countries with too many of them to countries like Costa Rica with almost none):

"We just got a call from the head of the Costa Rican Postal Service."
"About what?  I didn't know they had one?"
"The size of the M-Bags."
"What about them?"
"They complained they're too big."
"Everyone else takes em, even Lichtenstein and Kirjikstanabad!"
"Well they use scooters in CR."
"They do?"
"Ya one guy drives and the other hangs on the back holding the M-Bag."
"OK we'll just abolish the M-Bag."
"Ya, that'll work."

p.s. My Mother Once Sent me some Mail, I promptly asked her to Stop Doing That.