Electricity - ICE

Anyone that knows anything about Costa Rica knows that they love bureaucracies.  The biggest is ICE, the power and telephone company. Well, we can’t have a development if we can’t get power. So to get the permits for power, it comes down to who do you know.

We got two bids for power to the property. Both came in at about $12,000 for 200 meters.  One bid clearly stated that our development was not legal and they didn’t think we could get permits. He also stated that the permit process could take 6 to 8 months.

The second bid said “Permits are no problem.”  I would have expected this to be the higher bid as it probably had some kind of bribe but no, it was the lower of two bids.

The process was supposed to take 2 weeks to get the permits. Well, we are on week 4 and it looks like the permits will be issued next Monday. Why the difference in opinions of permits? The engineer we used is best friends with the engineer at ICE that approves permits.

In contrast, when Isabel goes to ICE, she gets immediate results.  She has already requested 4 telephone connections even though we only have one house under construction. I’m glad we didn’t use “Expert Engineer” to try to get the phone lines!