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Rebecca hugged me, tightly. Her hair caressed my face. She smelled flower and sun. The kiss she planted on my cheek burnt my skin and stamped my soul. Her warmth, her smile, the sweet touch of her hands is the last souvenir I carried away from Costa Rica. (I have since restrained myself from washing the left side of my face. Rebecca?s beso is still warm?)

Rebecca (she works at the Inter Continental business center), all the pretty Ticas, and the carnaval in Puerto Limon have just changed my taxonomic evaluation of the world. Costa Rica has just risen as #4 among the countries I would go back to, and Costa Rican women as #3, among the cutest, sassiest in the world. (That is only my classification. You don?t really need to subscribe to it.)

On an isthmus of seven tiny republics (527,000 sq km, pop: 36 million) called Central America, linking the North to the South of the New World, stands a country-paradise of four million where the theory extolling poverty and underdevelopment as the unavoidable share of the sub-continent runs amok.

The people of Costa Rica borrowed the language of their colonizers, the laws and customs of their so-called imperialist neighbor, to erect a country of beauty, stability, riches, and high living standard, where no soul fans for himself.

Costa Rica stands in stark contrast with most of its Latin American counterparts where corruption, incompetence, unbridled political ambition have created a world of social inequalities, pressure cookers breeding violence, protests, and revolution.

It does bother to discover pockets of poverty, in and outside of San Jose. But it is never as bad as anywhere it is in the underdeveloped world (Asia, Africa).

Costa Rica with its magnificent beaches, its churches and museums, his wonderful people, is the paragon of civilization in the Fifth Continent. It is not the Switzerland of the Americas. Switzerland should aspire to be the Costa Rica of Europe.

Juan, our driver, explained: ?I lived for 28 years in Long Island, New York. I earned money. I moved back here ten years ago. I earned my life back??

I will keep Juan in mind at retirement time. Until then, my mind will be filled with the images of the carnaval in Puerto Limon, and the reminiscence of Rebecca?s smile?

Hasta la Vista. Until the next adventures, it was The Traveller?.

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(The Traveller, Monday, October 14, 2002, Columbus Day.)