When I returned three years ago there was little left of the Costa Rica I remembered as a child.

They truly gave the Circus to the clowns… !

Lazy, parasitic and spineless is the new social norm.

And I have tried given my "people" the benefit of the doubt.

NO EXCUSE !

Sadly Panama is going down the toilet, lived there too, all of my Panamanian friends have had encounters with crime, including me.

The problems in most SA countries is cultural. Tell a Colombian that the crime rate is high and you will get 3 hours of excuses for the criminals. In the end there are 2 real problems 1 that nobody will take action. "I didn't see anything!" Not surprising given the fact that witnesses tend to get murdered along with lawyers. 2 They aren't harsh enough when they do get a conviction. No capitol punishment and short prison sentences. Add to that the corruption and you have most, if not all, of Central and South America.

Compare them to other really poor places I've lived like China. There you can walk down the street with an expensive camera hanging on your neck even in poor areas of big cities. Your can flag a taxi at 4am without a second thought. Why? Because someone sees everything and the system is very harsh on criminals. Their arrest and conviction rate is much higher than even the US. Hence very little crime even with a population of 1.3 Billion. If it weren't for the crappy weather and the language I would still live in China.

Why would you Marry a Tico if you feel they are ball less, spine less jelly fish.

Or more importantly why would a Tico marry a ball crushing , suicide inducing , ugly gringa when there are women in Costa Rica that are so young 18+ and beautiful that they put a play boy playmate to shame. I will be moving there to get away from USA women and s, genetically modified foods, & too many other gringos.

Crime you dont know what Crime is till you lived in the USA. The hood, barrio s, and the white trash dont get left behind …

Your comment reads like a propaganda hit piece. Defecating on a whole nation as having no backbone, and your additional claptrap makes me question your motives. Anyone will agree CR has crime issues, but to procede to dump on the country as a whole says more about you than the country.

There are known criminals who break into homes and steal and beat old people and no one does anything to stop them. And the towns people say nothing to these theives.

When a guy hit another guy over the head with a machete and tried to kill him. The people of the town treated the perpetrator like he did nothing wrong. Did not even call the police or try to stop this man.

This passivism is not only towards crime it's towards every facet of life in CR. This is their culture.

At the banks when there is a long line of people and only one teller working while 2 other tellers talk on their cell phones laughing, no one complains. They just sit with blank faces waiting for hours. In the US someone would be complaining.

I have seen ticos sit by and watch while crime is being done, and do nothing about it.

The Costa Rican people's culture is to not make waves. Don't fight. Don't complain. Don't have your own voice. Don't stand up for what is right. No back bone, no "balls".

And now they are paying for it with all this crime and no one does anything about it. So it's not just with the polices' response to crime, it is the culture of CR.

And please don't blame the "Nicas" for your problems. Costa Ricans need to face up to their own problems and change their attitudes and get a "backbone"

I really did not like the American expats telling me that they live in CR for 40% less than in the states, but "manage to stay under the Costa Rican government's radar" in how they operate their businesses: do not have the required number of Costa Rican employees, work the business when they are supposed to only oversee, etc. I wonder if they even send in the taxes that they collect. I got the distinct impression that the money generated by the American expats was making it's way back to the U.S. fart more than supporting the local economy.

As for crime, I was frequently warned by Ticos to be careful and lock my car doors and keep an eye on my things on the beach. On my trip out of Costa Rica, I met a Costa Rican lady returning to her home in Dallas, TX. She visits family in CR, but says she would never live in CR again. She said she feels safer in Dallas, and that she feels very unsafe in CR and so do her realatives. She said that as the years go by the fences get higher. While she was visiting her cousin in the San Ramon (pop 155000)his car was broken into at 3 in the afternoon in his driveway…he had fallen asleep and did not put the car behind the high fence.

I talked with a Canadian who owns a small day spa in Escazu (think upscale looking neighborhood with modern shopping centers, including a mall with prices to rival the states). The rent rivals prices in the states ($1800 a month), but she said she was willing to pay more to be in an area where she did not feel like she had to put bars on the windows/doors and did not feel like she'd get robbed.

I have visited 29 countries and CR is by far the most disappointing except for Iraq, but I live and work there and it is in it's own unique category.