ExpatPZ

When I first arrived and bought the property of what’s now the Buenaventura Retreat Center in this hidden and serene valley in Costa Rica, there was no electricity, no land lines or cell phone service, no TVs, no washing machines, no refrigeration, no ice, and definitely no internet!

And lets not forget to mention the road conditions back then, a 20 mile 4×4 only drive to town took nearly 3 hours over cloud forest covered mountain ridges and through lush and dense valleys of primary rainforest on a bumpy, rocky and often very muddy back-country dirt road. That was 2001… Buenaventura in the Flintstones era.

Fast forward to 2011, and I’m on WiFi surfing the web with a MacBook Pro sitting outside under an open patio at Posada de Suenos in Buenaventura’s Pueblo Nuevo Eco-Village looking out over the river, with electricity, satellite TV, 3G cell phone service, all the useful home appliances, lots of cold drinks!, and all the internet magic happening with a solar-powered 45′ steel Internet Tower I had built nearly 1,000 feet atop the Buenaventura mountain ridge with a line-of-sight antenna and WiFi router set up down in the village. Today at Buenaventura… its Jetsons in the Jungle.

From 1991-2009 I was living in San Francisco, catching the waves of the infamous internet bubbles and busts, and there’s no question the first bubble in the mid 90s was the best – Million Dollar launch parties and cool Schwag you would actually use.

In 1996 my partners and I launched SF Station, which later became one of the most popular and award winning online city guides in San Francisco. It was a true dotcom start-up on all fronts, from the early years of living off credit cards and depleting our IRAs to keep the company afloat, to the later years when even after we sold our company to a media network in 2005, its maintained its independent brand, integrity and local flavor.

I was 25 when I first used e-mail, surfed the web, used publishing tools like Excel, Photoshop, listened to music or watched videos online.  My first emails where sent during the first days of starting SF Station, as my partners and I literally learned how to use the web as we built a start-up from the ground up out of Victorian Flat in the Mission District.   That was 1996.

Now in 2011, as I write my first blog surrounded by rainforest covered mountains with modern amenities and digital gadgets, I’m connected both to a serene natural world and an ever-changing online digital world. 

I  call it… Jetsons in the Jungle!

Pura vida desde la selva,

Harlow Salvador

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Building the Buenaventura Tower – Photo Gallery

More about Buenaventura