Ok, it has been awhile since I wrote a blog post and it is mostly because I live in a time warp. It might be that living here in Cost Rica when the sun sets and rises at the same time each day you can just get lost in the rhythm. Paradise has it’s own timetable and no matter how hard I try to stay on task, live with my Day-Timer loaded to the gills, I simply cannot do it. I could be on a publishing deadline that feels like the thin line between life and death and find that I have been staring at the Toucans in the tree outside my window for a half hour. Costa Rica is a drug.

So, I thought to write about all the things that can derail you here in Costa Rica. Things like the big weather, car repair nightmares that define what it is to have a car in Costa Rica, living without a dryer and hanging out your clothes for days in and out of rain showers, my addiction to farmer’s markets and even about jellyfish when snorkeling, but alas, I am writing about the Internet. The Internet for us here in Costa Rica is the true test of one’s patience and fortitude. It tests your true metal.

My entire Internet life in the USA was a breeze. If something broke the Genius Bar at Apple did magic in a day. If the Internet went down in the mountains of Colorado it was up in no time. I depended on connectivity like I depended on the sun rising and setting. But, not so, here in a developing country. The Internet, just like absolutely everything else, is subservient to mother nature and repairmen who are never for any reason in a hurry about anything.

We get storms every day. One storm can boot you off the Internet for days. And then there is no talking to your children, no being punctual with clients on Skype, no surfing the web for an answer to how to get rid of ticks on the dog your are fostering, and no watching Netflix and keeping up with your new obsession: Legends. It all comes to a grinding halt. The parrots keep squawking and the breezes keep blowing but that little circle in the middle of your computer screen that keeps spinning and spinning, just keeps on spinning.

So fixing a Wi-Fi tower is not like in the USA. They have to use machetes here. I think you get the picture. So, patience is what this ongoing debacle breeds. You end up having to, by no choice of your own, just allow for the possibility that even if the internet is down, work will get done, people will find you, deadlines will get met and life will go on. Pura Vida.