For the nation, this represents a huge financial burden. Public employees are the best paid, most secure, and most highly unionized and vocal workers, and the supposedly neutral bureaucracy has become the largest and most insatiable pressure group in the country. Unfortunately, Costa Rica's government employees have nurtured bureaucratic formality to the level of art. Corruption is part of the way things work, though to a lesser degree than in other Latin American countries. And travelers may find a lot of their time being tied up in interminable lines.
Travel agencies can usually arrange a trustworthy despachante.
Design by Ulla Zang .