“P
EOPLE REFER to a corner shop, a bar, a tree even a tree!” exclaims Rolando Granja Enríquez, a postman. For a place with well-developed public services, Costa Rica’s addresses are a conundrum. Nearly everyone uses vague places, distances and compass directions, rather than street-names and postcodes: 200 metres west of such-and-such juice bar, 100 metres north of the house with the pink fence, and so on. Worse, sometimes the landmarks used as reference points have long gone, says Mr Enríquez.
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This archaic method may be quaint and infused with local history indeed neighbouring Nicaragua has a similar system. But it has a high economic cost, says Geovanny Campos, the head of logistics at Correos de Costa Rica, the postal service. Exactly how much is unknown: the last study, over a decade ago, estimated a toll of $720m annually.