Flowers, and a loan from the IDB 16 years ago, helped to make Chaves Rojas a millionaire, and he's using them to turn his newest venture into another gold mine. Of course, it helps that he built the restaurant at an ideal spot on the Inter-American Highway an hour from the capital, and that the food is excellent. Chaves Rojas is already thinking of establishing a chain of restaurants at prime locations all over the country.

An optimist with a warm, confident smile, Chaves Rojas is a living rags-to-riches story. He grew up in the lush hills of Zarcero in central Costa Rica, the second of 10 children born to a poor farmer in 1938. At the age of 10 he was working as a farm laborer, bringing money home to his family. The local school only provided instruction through second grade, and the nearest school offering higher grades was a two-hour walk from his house. At 14 he took a job on a dairy farm, and there he stayed until he married at the age of 29.

Eventually Chaves Rojas began buying male calves from the dairy farm on credit and selling their meat to San José supermarkets. Soon he was earning $45 a week. In two years he saved the $1,200 he needed for the down payment on a truck. Soon he was buying cattle all over Costa Rica and earning several hundred dollars a week, because, he says, he was very good at estimating a cow's weight and rarely overpaid its worth as meat.

"I couldn't believe how much money I was making," he recalls. "Sometimes I had to pinch myself to make sure I was awake."

A year later he bought his first house with all new furniture and appliances. He also bought a small farm in Zarcero, started raising carnations, and still had $10,000 in savings left over. "My wife was so happy," he recalls. "But I was exhausted selling beef and raising flowers. So I flipped a coin to pick one or the other." Flowers won.

In 1981, Chaves Rojas obtained a $60,000 loan through an IDB-financed agricultural credit program to build more greenhouses and purchase French roses that enabled him to double his flower production. "The IDB loan was very important," he says. "It accelerated my business success."

The loan has long since been repaid with interest. Profits have enabled him to acquire three dairy farms near Zarcero (including one on which he once worked as a milker), a grocery store run by his adopted daughter, now 19, and a small building in San José that he rents to a pizzeria. He has also built a large house with a swimming pool and invested $135,000 in building his new restaurant. "A lot of young people think that because they're from a poor family they can't succeed in life," says Chaves Rojas. "I think I'm proof that you can. He estimates his net worth today at about $1.3 million.

"We all have opportunities," he explains. "They're like the ocean waves, because they come and they recede. You have to grab the shrimp when they come in."

"But," says Chaves Rojas, "half of my success is due to my wife. She is a very economizing woman. She has always managed my finances. Too many people," he says, "just spend their money instead of investing it. The schools should teach kids how to manage money and teach them to work hard when they are young. Because later on in life they won't have the energy."

But at the age of 59, Chaves Rojas still gets up before six o'clock to make the 30-minute drive to his highway restaurant, where he delivers buckets of fresh long-stemmed red roses in time for the breakfast crowd.

"Roses are like my friends," he says. "They've helped me achieve what we have today."