U.S. Embassy flooded with phone calls after April Fools Prank

Well, actually we don’t know if the U.S. Embassy was flooded with calls or not, (we have received no such reports), but we needed to get your attention in case you hadn’t already figured out that yesterday’s story regarding Obama’s Costa Rica visit was a prank.  That said, we do apologize if anyone at the U.S. Embassy had to confirm that Obama’s visit was indeed still on.

Inside Costa Rica ran an April Fool’s Day gag yesterday, claiming that U.S. president Barack Obama had canceled his planned May trip to Costa Rica due to concerns over potholes and Bailey bridges.

This was, of course, a gag.  We attempted to hide a couple of clues though, for anyone who didn’t remember what day it was, including bolding the “April 1^st” in the dateline (we usually don’t bold the date), and including “April Fool!” spelled backwards at the end of the article.

The gag was meant to poke a little fun at recent fiascos in the country, such as the opening of a sinkhole, collapse of a Bailey bridge and the “Platina” bridge saga on the General Canas.  It was not intended to be political in nature in any way.  We hope our readers found, and enjoyed the humor in it.

We have since added an editor’s note to yesterday’s article revealing the gag.

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Additional Editor’s note:  We received an email in which the reader thought that we were taking an unfair or passive-aggressive “jab” at Costa Rica.  That certainly wasn’t our intent, but rather to have a little fun and not take certain issues that happen in this beautiful little country so seriously.  It was meant to be lighthearted.  We by no means meant to offend Costa Rica or Ticos in general, and in fact our Costa Rican readership seems to have found the most humor in the gag.  It should be noted that Costa Rica has indeed made significant strides in improving its infrastructure over the last several years.  Some of the issues touched on in the spoof article (such as the Platina bridge) are more like “inside jokes” for Ticos and those residing here, that Costa Ricans themselves often use as the butt of jokes.   Costa Rica is a wonderful country which we love, or we of course would not have been here for the past 10 years.  We are quite certain that Mr. Obama will be impressed with the beauty and people of Costa Rica, and will enjoy his visit here.