Ants, Compre Bien and a Highway Restaurant

We recently experienced an invasion in our house and surrounding outdoor areas of very tiny, reddish/brown ants. They were everywhere. As fast as I swept them up, they returned. There were piles of dead ant bodies.

Outside our back door (those brown piles are dead ant bodies):

Inside, in every room:

Yes, it is the rainy season and, yes, we live in the tropics but in our ten years of living in Costa Rica, we have never had an insect invasion like this one. We live peacefully with the odd insect who comes in our home but this was not acceptable.

It was time to call in the big bug guns. Who ya gonna call? Delgado Fumigadora, of course. Our bug technician was bilingual. The outdoor areas were sprayed as well as indoors. A return visit will be needed to spray the outside again. We, and many others, highly recommend this company. Price was very reasonable.

We had a lucky week! Both Lance and myself received our new Costa Rican Dimex (or cedula) ID cards showing that our permanent residency had been successfully renewed for another three years.

And … I won 80,000 CRC in groceries at Compre Bien, a Costa Rican owned grocery store that we frequent here in Grecia. That is equivalent to about $160 Canadian dollars.

Today (Sunday) was one of our designated driving days. These driving restrictions are in force to hopefully keep people at home in an effort to control Covid-19. We decided to go out to a restaurant for breakfast.

Searching online, I found one in San Ramon that looked promising. We never found it - it was not where Waze indicated it should be. So we gave that up and decided to head towards home and maybe find a restaurant that was open along the way. By happenstance, we passed one that looked promising (it had trucks out front, a good sign) - Comidas Tipicas El Paraiso on Autopista Bernardo Soto (highway 1) - so we stopped here.

It was a good choice. The service is cafeteria style. All the selections were identified and prices posted so you just have to point if you feel your Spanish is a bit shaky. I prefer this style of eating for breakfast and lunch as I can control the portion sizes and just get the items that I want. For me this morning it was a tamale, an egg cannelloni and a tamarind drink. The cannelloni is stuffed with meat and then wrapped in an omelette - I had never seen cannelloni prepared this way until we moved here. Lance ordered pinto (rice and beans), eggs, coffee and a sort of potato salad. Everything was excellent.

You will never guess what the final cost was for all these delicious items ….. 5,200 colones!!! That’s like $10 Canadian - for two people! This restaurant is very popular with locals.

Then, just to sweeten the pot, a special car drove up and parked. It just looked expensive … it had gull wing doors that swung open. We had to check it out when we left - it was a Tesla 10X! Except on TV, we had never seen one of those before. The starting price for this vehicle is about $91,000 in the USA, according to Car and Driver Magazine. I wonder how it came to be here and who owns it. 

I took a photo - the green-blue coloured licence plate indicates it is an electric vehicle. The people who got out of it and entered the restaurant looked just like everyone else - ordinary folk. Maybe this is a testament to this restaurant.

Click on images to enlarge.