Thanks to those who tested the site. Reading the same old pages for errors is booooring, but you really helped!

Anyway… here it is: The REAL Costa Rica

Enjoy!

So this week, I will be publishing a NEW Real Costa Rica. It is in Beta right now being checked by friends and volunteers. The design is totally different. The menu system has been revised again, new photos have been added, the 30 or so pages that were added since last year will now be available in the menu system (can you imagine!) instead of having to find them by using search, and finally, a whole NEW search engine will be installed. Some pages will download faster.

Another new thing… the site is now just too big for me to handle and increasingly, I am getting more detailed questions on a bunch of topics where I am not expert. For this reason, I am looking for volunteers to edit and maintain a specific subject, like maybe the pages on Surfing, Religion, or others, so if you have knowledge of a specific topic about Costa Rica, please contact me.

I cannot post the URL (web address) as I do not want the search engines to visit the Beta location, but if anyone wants a sneak peek… let me know.

The hands down #1 topic of these emails is people asking me for my advice on moving to Costa Rica. Popular questions are:

* Where are the North American communities?
* Where are the good places to live?
* Constant questions about buying property here…
* Where is the best place to buy? Live?
* Where to visit when coming here to decide about a permanent move
* Where can I get a job?
* Plus a TON of emails from scared baby boomers world-wide who are just now saying to their spouses, “Holy SHIT Martha (or Clyde), there ain’t no way we can live on our social security! We gotta get outta this place!”

So, in this Post I am going to cast some pearls to you folks!

First, let’s take a look at a telling statistic, (and for those of you who do not believe in statistics, please do not consider a career in the insurance industry).

About 40% of ALL those who relocate to Costa Rica, LEAVE within one year.

Now think about that! These people packed up their lives, some quit their jobs, all said adios to family and friends, and many brought property and land in Costa Rica only to return “home” in 6 months with their collective tails twixt their collective legs to explain what idiots they had been for not planning the whole process better! Actually, that last part is a lie. They really return home and blame everyone and everything EXCEPT themselves for the failure of their grand experiment. Human nature… go figure.

In any case, the point here is that Costa Rica, or any other foreign country, is NOT for everyone. When you leave your home country to live here, every single thing you do (now), every single day, will change. You must be prepared for this. The sum of all these changes is perhaps best engendered in the general topics of Culture Shock or Cross Cultural Adjustment. Only a fool does not believe these are real issues that will affect your ability to live in and enjoy a foreign country!

That brings me to “the big lie”, OK… maybe that is too harsh, so I’ll rephrase that to “the enormous misunderstanding”. It is:

You do not need to learn Spanish to live in Costa Rica.

In reality, it should say “You don’t need to learn Spanish to exist in Costa Rica.”

Yes, while you can certainly exist here without knowing Spanish, but time and time again I hear the frustration of those who cannot communicate with others on a daily basis. I see their frustration in stores, restaurants, in government offices.

So now you say, “I heard that almost all Costa Ricans speak English?”.

Why YES, they DO… so long as you are living in a hotel, at the airport, staying in a bed and breakfast and doing nothing all day but visiting the butterfly farms! That is not living. That is being a tourist!

When living here, you will be doing exactly the SAME boring everyday things as you do now! You will be dropping off the dry cleaning, picking up a prescription, visiting a doctor’s office, stopping at the hardware store, renewing a drivers license, visiting the bank, etc, etc. and NEWS FLASH: With the exception MAYBE of the doctor, almost NONE of those people in those places will speak one word of English (or French, or German, or whatever), and then the frustration builds.

Real Estate

Lately, real estate has been a hot market, and more and more I am meeting people who have either purchased land or other property (sight unseen!) or come here for a two week vacation and return home separated from their money. I bunch of them got screwed. Some don;t even KNOW it yet! It is an almost SURE way to pay too much or simply buy in the wrong location!

As a visitor here, you will have NO idea what is a fair price to pay nor will you be able to negotiate this as you have no knowledge of the enormous differences in real estate and the laws here in this country.

Well, you think, I’ll make sure the realtor checks the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Well, there IS no MLS in Costa Rica.. No comps. Nada. Further, the laws here are so very different! There are 100 ways to get taken even if you know what you are doing. Can you spell “sucker”?

You may well also buy in the wrong location because you just don’t think about how different things are in Costa Rica, how many places there are to live here, the differences, and how those differences may affect you.

Let’s take just one example dealing with location.

You are a retired (or nearly retired) couple who want to live somewhere near the ocean. A reasonable desire, but here comes the conflict:

A 60-something couple has different needs than does a younger couple… right? The first one that comes to my mind is medical care. As we grow older, stuff starts to break. It doesn’t mean we are ready for the old folk’s farm… but it does mean you need to be at least reasonably close to a hospital or a medical complex and have emergency ambulance service close by.

The conflict? There are few if ANY hospitals anywhere near most of the beaches and for sure no trauma centers. They are hours away in the Central Valley. As for ambulances, in most Cruz Roja (Red Cross) ambulances in the beach areas, you are lucky to see a bottle of oxygen, much less the nearly “hospital equipped” vehicles prevalent in the USA.

Another common question is, “Where do all the ex-pats live? (meaning the English speakers). People want to live with others of their nationality. I understand this, but there is a downside. When you live in one of those gated, gringo strongholds, you may well pay at LEAST 50% more for housing (and that is conservative!) and at least twice to three time more for food, clothing, and nearby restaurants, than if you lived elsewhere in Costa Rica. Why? You are viewed as wealthy whether in fact you are or are not, and for sure, the average Costa Rican is going to ask higher prices for everything.

In fact, if you live in those places, you’ll end up paying about the same as if you lived in Miami!

I can go on perhaps with 50 other examples… but nearly all these issues can easily be resolved, lessen your chances of an ugly surprise, and vastly lessen your chances of falling in the 40% who leave.

LIVE here for at least 6 months and preferable a year, before you make the final decision to move.

Don’t sell everything. If needs be, put it all in storage or rent your existing home while you leisurely and intelligently make this incredibly important decision.

Travel the country and see all the beauty there is here. See if you like it! In that year, you will experience life and living in this country… a HUGE difference from just visiting. Then when you make the big decision to buy land or move here, your will be playing from a position of strength! If you decide against it, then you have not lost much and in fact have learned about not only another culture, but about yourself as well. A no-lose situation!

People are always amazed when I tell them that after all these years, I still rent. I do not own property in Costa Rica. Why? The three biggest reason are:

1. As there are no tax advantages to ownership and property taxes are non existent (and also not deductible anyway), why pay the outrageous interest rates to own a home here?
2. I could pay cash, but I can earn more in the US stock market than I can on the appreciation of the vast majority of real estate in this country**. Where does my money do better?
3. At least once every 4-5 weeks, my wife and I find someplace else we would like to live in this incredible country. One week it the mountains, the next week it might be Tileran in the highlands! Because buying property in Costa Rica is FAR easier than selling it, by renting, we have the ability to move anywhere at any time, and when we retire in 2-3 years… we will! Also, our money is not tied up. We are liquid and free to do as we please.

(**Note: The exception may be certain beach front locations that are appreciating greatly, but as we have no desire to live in that heat and humidity, far from the hospitals, infrastructure and cultural activities in the valley, I am not about to buy property on the beach. I also have no interest in speculating on property values. Finally, my businesses require the technical infrastructure currently available only in the San Jose area).

That’s it! Costa Rica is a marvelous place and offers a lot, but it is not for everyone. It is a totally different culture and I assure you, THEY are not going to change! So before you write me, think clearly about what are your wants and needs. Come visit (and NOT for 2-3 weeks), and you’ll be ever so much better off for the effort.

One final note to those who want to work here. In general, you CANNOT. Only citizens and permanent residents can legally work here (just like the USA), so if you are thinking about coming here to find a job… it might be a good idea to rethink that.

First, they made us watch a lame video, but they soon made up for it by letting us taste the three different types of roasts. They are: claro, medio, y oscuro, otherwise known as light, medium, and dark. In my opinion, the medium roast was the best, but hey, that’s just me. Then they forced us all to wear hard hats, so of course we had to take lots of pictures of everyone looking like fools. Once we calmed down, they took us through the factory (if you could call it that, it was open-air) and showed us the whole process. It basically goes like this:

First, the beans are separated into three different levels of quality. This is done by filling massive vats of coffee beans with water. The best beans sink to the bottom, and the worst ones rise to the top. I gathered that this process is repeated multiple times. Second, the beans are dried. There are two different ways of doing this: sun drying, and machine drying. The sun-dried beans are of a better quality than the machine dried ones. It takes well over 100 days to sun dry beans properly, so this can only be done for half the year as it rains almost every day during the other half of the year. The machine drying process only takes 24 or so hours to do, so you can bet that most of the time you’re drinking machine-dried coffee. After that, they roast the beans in a big cylinder. It takes approximately 17-20 minutes for lightly roasted beans, 25 minutes for a medium roast, and 30 minutes for a darker roast. Then all the beans flow out of the toaster, where they are moved around in circles by a cool looking machine in order to cool. After that, the beans are either ground and packaged, or just packaged, and then shipped.

After the tour, they gave us the most delicious cold coffee drink I’ve ever tasted! I had 4 cups, and then I got the recipe. It is as follows:

2 cups milk
1-2 tsp. sugar
1-2 oz. espresso
1-2 oz. flavored syrup (they used mint, yum!)
and a little bit of ice cream

Mix ingredients together and blend! It’s REALLY good, I promise.

We actually didn´t see anything at all of note because a giant cloud had descended on the top, rendering our trip completely pointless. The trails were less than exciting, consisting of short paved loops through forest that left even my young knees in pain. We covered the whole park in about an hour, leaving us with with two more hours to kill until the bus left again. So yeah, that was about it. If you go, check the weather first and figure out a way to get there earlier than the 8:30 bus, that way you can see something besides thick fog.

Case in point, I spent the weekend relaxing on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen!

Manuel Antonio lies around the middle of the Pacific Coast, just outside of the town of Quepos. We passed the weekend on the public beach, Playa Espadilla Norte, or North Espadilla Beach. Playa Espadilla Norte lies just outside of Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, which features a forested reserve and more pristine beaches. We decided to hold off a visit to the park until another weekend when we could devote an entire day to exploring its trails, beaches, and lookouts.

Getting there was relatively easy compared to getting to Dominical. We were lucky enough to get the last seats on the direct bus to Quepos from San José, which shaved about 2 hours off of an otherwise 5 and a half hour long trip. This bus only leaves twice a day, so be sure to check the schedules and buy your tickets the day before or you will be left to take the longer ride on the other bus. This bus first stops in Quepos and then continues along to Manuel Antonio, which is about half an hour past Quepos. Once you’re in Manuel Antonio, there is a bus which runs to Quepos every 20 minutes, making an afternoon of shopping quick and easy.

For those of you who are interested, Costa Rica’s only official nude beach lies just north of Playa Espadilla Norte. It is inaccessible an hour before or after high tide, so make sure to plan accordingly. It lies on the other side of some nasty looking rocks, so take some shoes. It is also frequented mostly by gay men, and so is recommended only for the open-minded.

My friends and I stuck to Playa Espadilla for the entire weekend, which was more than beautiful enough to hold our fascination. Since it faces the Pacific, we saw spectacular sunsets over the horizon each evening. There are plenty of open-air restaurants near the shore, and if you pick the right table you can watch the sunset over a plate of delicious fresh-caught fish. Manuel Antonio is an expensive area relative to the rest of Costa Rica, so don’t expect to find the afore-mentioned $1.50 pinto deal.

My favorite detail about the beaches of Costa Rica is that the Ticos don’t play beach volleyball- they play beach soccer! Bring a ball or a frisbee if you come to visit.

For the most part, I can understand the general gist of what my professors are saying, but I lose a lot of the finer details. For example, I’m aware that I need to write a paper for my Ecodevelopment class on evolution next week, but I’m really not sure how long it has to be and whether or not we’re expected to cite a lot of sources. I also generally understand that while my professor seems to support evolution, a large majority of the students don’t, although I couldn’t understand their reasons. I know a lot of people here are Catholic, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear anyone cite the bible.

This brings me to my second point, which is that while I can generally get the gist of what the professors say, I can’t understand anything my fellow students say. If they stop and make a special effort for me, I can get it, but if not, I may as well be asleep. I’m not exactly sure why this is, maybe my professors use more educated language while the students rely more on slang. Maybe not. I know for sure no one taught me how to say, “cool,” “that sucks,” or even the seemingly simple, “stuff” in my university Spanish classes. Don’t even get me started on the up-to-the-minute slang. I’m generally limited to lame phrases such as, “How good,” or, “that’s bad,” “He’s not very nice, is he?” I do know that “mai” means, “dude.” Great! Now I can say, “Dude, that cabbie was not very courteous,” instead of the more accurate, “Dude, that guy was a frickin’ (BAD WORD EDITED), where does he get off saying stuff like that?!?” What I need to learn how to say is, “kiss my butt mai!”

Before I left the States, everyone told me I´d be eating Gallo Pinto until I left. That is not the case. I´ve only had it twice since I got here, and both times were at my request. Instead of yummy flavorful Gallo Pinto, I get white rice with every meal. This is what I had yesterday, it should offer a good idea of what my usual daily menu is like:

Breakfast (same thing every day):
Strange looking white bread with stranger looking yellow maragerine,
Strange looking white cheese, (it´s actually good, I´m just tired of it)
and an under-ripe orange. (Today, it was a crunchy peach. I´m not exaggering at all, it was crisp)

Lunch:
Sliced hot dog cooked in ketchup, (just to add a side note, the ketchup here is more like sugary paste than ketchup)
White rice with a single slice of red bell pepper,
and cooked plantains. (ok, cooked plantains are really good)

Dinner:
White rice with tuna in it.

Now this is not to say that Costa Rican food is bad. On the contrary, many of my companions daily describe glorious sounding meals. The rest complain that they have to eat Pinto all the time. To this I say, give me Gallo Pinto any day. At least the rice isn´t white!

Let me just preface this by saying we had absolutely no reason to choose Domincal over any of the other beautiful and closer beaches. It was a random decision made by a random group member that everyone blindly followed. So in retribution for allowing ourselves to be herded like cows by an inexperienced shepherd, we had to endure hours of cramped standing in a bus that was winding through hills over roads that were often bumpy and unpaved. Of course once we arrived, we learned that there was a quicker and easier route through a different city that would have allowed us to sleep in until the comparatively late hour of 6 am.

Once we arrived, we were able to secure rooms in a hostel for what began as $5/per night and wound up being $8/night (This of course actually excluded me, because I slept in my handy dandy Hennessy hammock in the tent area for much less). They offered outdoor bathrooms, showers, and a moderately equipped kitchen, but no hot water.

It was one of our friends’ 21st birthdays, so of course it was required that we all take shots with him. No one even thought to bring shot glasses, so we took turns passing around a giant cooking ladle. It definitely added to the fun.

The beach was beautiful. It is a black sand beach, with relatively big waves (for the U.S. anyway, I can’t compare to other Costa Rican beaches yet). I still haven’t learned to surf, but I think that may be my next fun project. We went body boarding, which was still a lot of fun, but tiring. The rip tide was pretty strong, so I would only recommend it for strong swimmers.

My big adventure of the weekend was to attempt to acquire and cook enough food to feed 21 people. My friend Adam and I had heard of a fish market close by, so we decided it would be a fun trip to walk there and get fresh fish and maybe stop at a fruit market along the way. As it turns out, “close by” and “fish market” are relative terms.

We proceeded to walk 6 kilometers (approx. 3.5 miles) along the highway with the sun beating down on our backs until we found a sign for the fish market. The fish market, it turned out, was the house of a local fisherman. He had a little freezer half filled with one kind of fish. I asked him what they were called, but I couldn’t understand him so I just smiled and nodded. They were pretty large fish, with big ol´ dead eyes staring us in the face. He handed us the massive fish whole, and which point we were obligated to beseech him to filet them for us, as neither of us had a knife or the know-how to do it ourselves.

We prepared ourselves for the return trek, and headed off. We wondered if we could have bargained with him a little more over the price, and then proceeded to feel a little guilty about this as it was pretty cheap compared to U.S. fish and he obviously had more need for the money than us. Along the way, we stopped to pick of a BUNCH of fruits and veggies for dinner, and by the time we got back we were beat. Luckily, we returned to people who were willing to cook it all for us, so we finally got to rest. I still have battle scars on my feet to attest to the long and gruelling 7-mile hike Adam and I took so we could all eat like kings.