Chapter 4 - BANKING

              We finally got the bank account settled.  We had some complication transferring money from our account in Kelowna, and had to buy a printer, copier,  make out a requisition on paper for funds to be transferred here, then go into town and pay for a fax to the Canadian bank before they would comply with our request.  This is just at the time of the Christmas holidays, so we had to wait for a few days before the funds arrived.  I don’t want to do that again, it cost $100 to get the job done, but now we have fresh funds in our account here.  Some people were very surprised that we were able to open an account in Costa Rica, there have been trying stories, but we actually had very little problem.  Our first trip to the bank, we had Gigi in Mel’s arms and the armed guard just shook his head and we had to put her back into the car.  We weren’t able to open the account that day. We had to get a letter signed by the landlady that we were renting a house in a permanent location and time frame.  She also had to provide a utility bill, and give her passport number and home address and phone number.  When we accumulated all this paper work and went back to the bank, they seemed satisfied to open an account for us.  We put the account in Melaney’s name, with my name as beneficiary.  They apparently don’t have joint accounts here.  When we attempted to transfer money to that account from my account in Kelowna, the Kelowna bank refused to transfer to a secondary person.  COMPLICATIONS !!  We had to go back to the bank, set up two more accounts, Mel’s in an American account and my personal account in an American account.  Then we were able to satisfy both the Costa Rica banking system and the Canadian.