We found an attorney who was willing to help us. By email we
had confirmed a time to meet at his office, near the high school in Puriscal.
We waited a few minutes past nine o’clock for him to arrive. His English was
good enough and he notarized my signature on the Retirement Application, made a
few copies for us and we left for the FedEx pickup in San Jose.
As far as I can tell there are four FedEx drop-off offices
in the country of Costa Rica. The first one we were directed to by Google Maps
was near the San Jose airport. But it turned out to be a guarded, international
office and not a drop-off point for retail drop-off customers.
Back to Google Maps and a few miles down the road we found
another FedEx office. It was in a guarded, secured, office park which I thought
was going to be off limits to foreign visitors. As we sat at the gate talking to
the security guard in ‘Spanglish’, I could see the FedEx office only 100 meters
away. We showed our passports to the guard and soon were allowed in.
With tracking number in safely in my hand and my Retirement
Application safely in FedEx’s possession, I couldn’t help thinking of the Tom
Hanks movie “Cast Away”. I kept close watch on the tracking app on my iPhone
and was relieved to see that the package was soon headed from the drop-off
point to the San Jose airport where it was soon in route to Jacksonville,
Memphis, and NYC.
I had heard horror
stories about overnight packages to and from Costa Rica taking several days to
reach their destinations, so when the nice young man at FedEx took my envelope and
said—it will be there by 10:15 tomorrow morning—I thought—I’ll
believe it when it happens.
It happened! My Pension Application arrived in NYC at 9:50
the next morning.
