My countrymen seem to be saying Costa Rica isn't what it used to be. One could extend that to include all of Central America…well hell, let's just say the whole world isn't what it used to be either, ok? Ticos are grumbling too. Prices have pole vaulted over wages to such an extent that the middle class is in apparent danger of extinction. All I can say is what a pity if that actually happened. Costa Rica has the best public education, health insurance, and middle class among all the countries in the Center of the Americas. If that is in fact being eroded, then it bodes ill for the huddled masses in neighbouring countries who are yearning to be free - of poverty, for a start.

Is it coincidence then that the popularity of outgoing president Abel Pacheco, a psychiatrist-turned-politician and part-time (albeit published) poet, has ebbed to an all time low? Not according to him. Sr. Pacheco blames the high cost of crude for putting him in the doghouse. I for one beg to differ: Asked recently to comment on a tragic but potentially avoidable hospital fire that claimed 19 lives (including a heroic nurse who died trying to help her charges escape), Pacheco - who should really know better - said merely that Costa Rica is 'a poor country'.

Enough politics already! The point is that the normally happy go lucky folks who inhabit this charming land are a little long-faced of late. This is quite atypical, as social criticism in Costa Rica has always seemed to me a rather sanguine affair. 

Unlike the Nicaraguans and Salvadorenos (who foment), or the Nicaraguans and Guatemalans (who militarize), the swallowing of society's bitter little pills is done here in the style of Will Rogers rather than Clifford Odets. Social justice is arbitrated by the cab drivers, the columnists, and the commissars of the arts rather than the mob. Ordinary folks just don’t bother with it. Of course there are exceptions to this laconic style: One community

Lately however the ordinary folks have been extremely 'bothered with it', as it were. That North American style chronic unhappiness you and I know so well - vandalism, road rage, the vague feeling that you’re not living right - seems to be growing. Some among us have taken that as a cue to head for the exits. Living anywhere else in Central America is unthinkable to all but the most rugged of retirement aged folks. So where else do we have to go? Well, there is Argentina. Far away, yes, but the expat press has been lauding it lately. Writes a friend and colleague who has lived and worked there for two years, ‘things are cheaper after the devaluation of the currency three years ago – everything had to be downsized to sell at the new Argentine Peso value’.

He adds that certain items and services are inexpensive all over Argentina. Labour, including skilled labor is very inexpensive; transportation is inexpensive; food and wine – eaten in or out -  is very inexpensive; lodging is inexpensive. Legal and accounting services in the bigger cities are expensive, but a lot less than North America. These same services outside of the big cities are very reasonable. 

'You will be impressed with Buenos Aires and Argentina in general,' he says in closing.