Prices

Prices are really funny in this country.  Some things are super cheap while other things are very expensive.  Any branded item imported from the US is usually very expensive.  There is a store here, Mas por Menos, where you can buy some American branded stuff.  I’ve seen tubes of toothpaste from the US for $7.  Usually they have the same kind of toothpaste twice: one made in the US and imported, the other made here somewhere in Central America.  The packaging and branding is the same, but the place of manufacturing is different.  Usually the one made in Central American cost about half of the US imported one.  Cereal is like this too.  You can buy Frosted Flakes from the US for some horrible price.  But then they also have Zucaritas made by Kellogg here in Central America, complete with Tony the Tiger and everything.  It’s basically the same cereal for about half the price.  It think the grains may be a little coarser.  My budget can’t handle the American prices so we’ve been sticking with the locally manufactured stuff.

The best example of cheap prices came when Brayden got sick the other day.  I won’t go into detail about his sickness, but we had to take a sample (you figure it out) into the hospital for testing.  They did the lab test, then I went to the pharmacy and bought two kinds of medicine for him.  Total cost for lab test and two medicines = $16.  Hilarious. 

One thing I’ve noticed is that anything for which manual labor is a significant component of the total price is going to be very cheap.  Labor is cheap here (I’ll write more about that later too).