My Travel Optimizer

Here is a link to a website that gives you the approximate driving times between cities. This is a better guide than actual miles since Costa Rican roads usually don’t allow for a consistent speed like United States Freeways.

There is another site here and here.

I also have an article on driving in Costa Rica in my blog here.

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Social bookmarking is a way for users of the internet to share websites or web pages that they consider interesting. A service like Delicious allows you create a list of bookmarks that you can share with others. A firefox extension for Delicious will allow you to immediately bookmark sites and add them to you Delicious account. If you sign up with Delicious you can find all my bookmarks by searching for “mytraveloptimizer” under the “People->Go to user”function. You can also search by keywords like Costa Rica, Costa Rica maps, etc.

A site like Digg has a process for drawing attention to worthwhile web pages. When you join Digg you can submit any web page or article you find interesting. It is then available for readers to peruse. If they like the article they can “digg” it by clicking on the appropriate icon. The more people that “digg” the article, the higher it will rank on the Digg page.

There is also Reddit and Stumbleupon. Reddit is much like Digg. Stumbleupon is a little different. Stumbleupon is more about randomly hitting sites you might be interested in. When you download their extension you can hit a button that will randomly take you to another website. You can choose the categories of subject matter you are interested in order to guide the stumbling to stuff you might be interested in. You can also mark websites that you like so that other stumblers may discover them.

Social bookmarking is a way to sift through the vast amount of information that is available on the web. Its a time saver and a powerful networking tool. Its big and only getting bigger. I have little icons at the end of each of my articles that allow you to automatically Digg or Stumble my content. There are also icons for Reddit, Facebook and Technorati. If you like what I am writing or find it useful please mark my articles with one of these services. Thank you.

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Here is a link for waterproof (its plastic) map of Costa Rica. It’s accurate, well marked with hotels, restaurants, parks, etc.

http://mapcr.com/

If you order the physical map you will receive, free, the PDF map. Just go to the mapcr.com web page and go to downloads. Enter in the order number from google checkout and you’re done.  You can also order just the PDF map if you desire.

GPS maps are available from another provider. I have an article about that here. Since the physical map doesn’t cost much I’d go ahead and purchase one. I love technology but its nice to have a physical map when you are exploring.

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All citizens of the United States are Americans but not all Americans are citizens of the United States. Costa Ricans, Ecuadorians and Chileans are all Americans just as English, French and Italian are all Europeans. European does not mean a resident of the UK exclusively.

I’m a practical person. If I am in Europe and I say American I know that everyone is going to assume I am speaking about the United States. I don’t bother to try to be specific when I am over there.   When I am in Latin America I try to be more sensitive and refer to myself as a North American.  I’m not the most politically correct person in the world (I have a sense of humor) but the United States has not always been the best neighbor.  I think its important to treat our fellow Americans(be they North, Central or South) with respect.

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I see people ask in forums if they should wait to buy clothes in Costa Rica.  If you live in the United States I recommend you do all your shopping at home.  The selection will be better and ,in most cases, the price will be cheaper.  You can eat and stay in hotels in Costa Rica for much less than you would spend in North America.  Imported items in Costa Rica are expensive.   Clothes, electronics and automobiles cost more than they do in the US.   You should also know that Costa Ricans do not have as many large and tall people as the United states. If you wear a a men’s size 12 shoe or above I would make sure to get all your footwear at home.  If you’re a big dude make sure you have all the shirts, underwear, etc that you will need. It can be hard to find comfortable clothes if you’re a large (not necessarily overweight) North American.  You’ll find that a Costa Rican XXL is more like an North American XL.  I’m 6′3″ with a size 14 foot.  I have to go the big-footed-freak store here in the US. They don’t have them down in Costa Rica.

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