Coinage

Aaaah... the good old coin system here. Costa Rica uses the colon (with an accent on that last o) as currency and, as in many other countries in S. America, the currency is constantly dropping in value as compared to the US Dollar. This causes the necessity of frequently redesigning and releasing new coins into circulation, with evidence of inflation each time. A coin worth 20 colones gets sucessively smaller each time. The huge version of the 10 colones coin is about the size of those Liberty dollar coins and has got to be worth less than the 2 cents (USD) it is worth. But since it was made just fifteen years ago, I suppose they are reluctant to take them out of circulation. The result is a huge array of coins all worth the same ammount mixed with several versions of other coins of varying ammounts - all being used at the same time! Oh, and sometimes you end up getting back Dollars for change, too.

I'll try to get a picture of all of them up here some time soon.