Why you must always wear your shoes inside in Costa Rica.

Brandon McAlees
Nomad Things
Published in
2 min readOct 22, 2019

Do my feet need protection from the hundreds of microscopic ants crawling around the apartment? Maybe the brown recluse looking spider I found in the wall? Possibly the puddles of water from our leaky ceiling? Neigh. Our foe was a tad more shocking.

On day one we were given an electric stove. Since my incompetent American self couldn’t figure out how to turn on the gas for the gas stove, I resorted to what was just given to us. I plugged it in, cranked up the heat, and whipped out some chicken cold cuts. As I touched the chicken to the pan, I felt the chicken vibrating. Not only was the chicken vibrating, but my entire arm was. Just for good measure, I took the chicken off, and repeated the exact same steps. At this point I clearly realized I was being electrocuted through a piece of chicken, but I needed to do some good old-fashioned debugging. I turned the stove off and repeated. Same result. I unplugged the stove from the wall and repeated. No more vibration.

About an hour later, a maintenance guy shows up. In what little English he spoke, I explained that the stove electrocutes you when you use it. Without missing a beat, he asks if I were wearing shoes. I said no, of course not. Why would I wear shoes inside? Well in Costa Rica, you always ground yourself when dealing with electric appliances. This was a good enough solution for him, and therefor a good enough solution for me. Lesson learned.

Despite the horrific image I’ve painted in your head, our living conditions are actually pretty swell.

Until next time ✌️

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