The ever important INTERNET

We live in a rural (jungle) area about 5 miles outside of the coast town of Puerto Viejo (Talamanca). We are the last house on our road to have telephone service. There is no DSL or cable up here. I have a 3G cell phone which can access the internet but I need to walk out into the road, on a clear day, to access it. In Costa Rica, if you have a telephone with access to "900" lines, you have dial-up internet. If you do not have access to "900" lines you can simply ask ICE (the national utility company) to add that feature to your line. The cost for your internet time will show up as a line item charge on your telephone bill and is about a penny a minute.

The actual process is simple. Connect your computer to your telephone(in Costa Rica only), dial 900-365-4632. Put in your username and password - ours is "racsa" for both. Since Racsa is the company that provides internet service in Costa Rica, I am pretty confident that everyone with dial-up has the same username and password. Racsa has several other internet packages available but this one requires no contracts, no extra equipment and makes access available to anyone, rich or poor, who has a telephone. Not bad. If we are going to spend a good deal of time online or need to upload and download large files, we go to town where there are numerous internet business to choose from. For a quick check of messages nothing beats home internet.