Remember, it's an adventure.

House Hunters International – Costa Rica (by Cindy)

In May we learned that the house we were building in Costa Rica was going to take another year to complete. We decided that we really didn’t want to spend another whole year in our current Costa Rican location in Escazú. Instead, it would make more sense to spend that year in an area of Costa Rica that was nearer to our new house, so we could more easily visit it during construction, and also a place that had more of the things we found desirable about building on the Pacific side of the country to begin with, proximity to beach and a view, among others.

We had set our sights on the area near Playa Flamingo and scheduled a house hunting trip over the last weekend in May, staying at the Margaritaville resort. In the last post, we discussed some of the challenges staying there, presumably because of COVID. In this post we’ll talk about our actual international house hunting experience.

Wasting Away in Margaritaville, Searching for … (by Cindy)

This is a continuation of our previous post about our move within Costa Rica from Escazú, to near Playa Flamingo. In this post we share our experience staying in the Margaritaville resort in Playa Flamingo while we looked for houses. This just as things entered Phase I of reopening in Costa Rica due to COVID.

We arrived at Margaritaville near Playa Flamingo, the hotel we were able to book a room at for our house hunt on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 27^th. We were booked to stay Wednesday through Monday, June 1^st.

We parked our vehicle in the manned parking lot, and went up the 10 or steps to check in. I searched for a ramp for easy access with a suitcase, but there was none to be found.

We Decided to Move (by Cindy)

We are building a new house near the Pacific coast in Costa Rica. We moved to Costa Rica a year ago, thinking that we would have to wait a little more than a year for our home to be built. Unfortunately, our estimated timeframe was a bit unrealistic – permitting ended up taking more time than expected, so construction didn’t begin on our house until March of this year. Now that construction has started, we receive visual construction progress updates via email. In May we did ask for and subsequently received an updated construction schedule. We were a bit disappointed to learn that the updated date for us to be able to move into our new home was now June 2021. Admittedly the new schedule is probably more realistic in that it takes into account delays due to the rainy season (October is extremely dicey for construction, as it is known to rain heavily during that month), and also extended shutdowns for the Christmas and Easter holidays.

Faced with the prospect of another year in our apartment in Escazú, we decided that maybe it was time to move to another location to wait it out. This post is about our decision to move and to where for the next year.

The Lost Months – An Update on Our Experiences in Costa Rica During COVID-19 (by Cindy)

Being from Iowa, we use Iowa as a frame of reference for our experiences here. For example, Iowa is about 2.5 times geographically larger than Costa Rica, but Costa Rica has 1.5 times the population of Iowa. When the coronavirus hit, we started making comparisons to Iowa about that, too. For example, as of this writing, Iowa has had 23,926 cases of the virus, and 652 deaths. Costa Rica has had a total of 1,538 cases of the virus, and only 12 deaths.

It should be noted that Costa Rica has a good health care system that covers all its citizens. (It abolished the army after WWII and devoted resources to education and healthcare.) Costa Rica also took steps to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, closing restaurants, parks, beaches, museums, etc., and instituting driving restrictions. The country is now in the process of a phased reopening plan, with each phase subject to change, depending on the success of the previous phase.

So, what is like living in Costa Rica during the age of COVID-19?

Catching Up With Buddy (by John)

For those of you who read an earlier blog post by Cindy you may remember that early on during the COVID-19 crisis we became foster (or as we like to say, “forester”) parents to a corn plant (Dracaena Fragrans) named Buddy. Buddy’s proud papa is a neighbor in our apartment complex, John H. John lives in the apartment opposite ours across the pool deck. John is from Tampa, Florida but is setting up an office in Costa Rica and is supposed to spend about 75% of his time here. When COVID-19 started to heat up he returned to Tampa for the foreseeable future and left us in charge of his beloved Buddy.

As Cindy noted in her earlier blog post, we have been providing John with daily or near daily updates as to what Buddy is up to via WhatsApp. Cindy included a couple of our Buddy posts in her post. I thought I would share the entire series from day one through yesterday (6 weeks). Please note: Buddy came to us faceless but developed a face and a personality soon after his arrival. Enjoy his story!

The Trip to Tamarindo – Pre COVID-19 (by Cindy)

The dry season in Costa Rica is generally from mid-November through April and is the high season for tourism. The weather is warm and sunny, and not only do the tourists go to the beaches, this is also the time when the Costa Ricans who do not live near the beach, go to the beach. We are currently living in the Central Valley, which is not near a beach, so decided that it would be nice to go to the beach, as well. In January, before coronavirus, we opted for a long weekend at the end of February, in Tamarindo, a popular beach town on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. (Again, when we booked this, the coronavirus hadn’t blown up around the world, and when we took the vacation, it hadn’t yet reached Costa Rica. Sadly, Costa Rica now has over 500 cases of the virus, and the country has imposed restrictions, including prohibiting public gatherings, and has closed public beaches. More on that in another post.)

We really wanted a beachfront hotel since we don’t have a car and didn’t want the hassle of trying to figure out how to get to the beach, so we made reservations at the Tamarindo Diria Beach Resort, and splurged for an ocean-view room.

Costa Rica, Coronavirus and Buddy (by Cindy)

Costa Rica, like most every country in the world, has cases of Coronavirus (23 confirmed as of this writing). A few short weeks ago it seemed like a problem that was more serious in places much further away in the world but now is top of mind for everyone here. Things have changed so much in a few short weeks. As this is the high season for tourists, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the Coronavirus traveled here too.

San José City Tour – Part 2 (by Cindy)

This is the second post about our half-day tour of San José, where we finally made it to the downtown area.

San José City Tour – Part 1 (by Cindy)

Our neighbor John H asked if we wanted to do a tour of San José one Saturday, and we readily agreed. He pointed us to Tripadvisor and asked if any of the tours listed sounded interesting to us. There were some things I wanted to see, the Central Market, the National Theater and the Gold Museum were a few that we had heard about that sounded interesting. I tried to review the different tour options. Most of the tours had most but not all of what we wanted, and some included other spots. The tours were 4-5 hours, some included lunch, some said they had hotel pick-up, some you had to meet at a street corner, some were earlier in the morning, some accommodated a lot of people, some capped the number, etc. It became highly confusing. I even tried to put together a spreadsheet to make comparisons. After a while I decided on a few choices that I reviewed with (my) John, and then I sent a message to John H with options. He replied that he didn’t want a bus tour alone, but anything else was good.

In the end I decided on the tour that included a hotel pick-up, lunch, and mentioned walking around some of the sites. This (I thought) aptly named tour, San José City Tour, didn’t have any reviews on Tripadvisor, nor information on start time, so was somewhat risky. Still, the tour company did receive positive reviews, so I booked for the three of us, not really sure how it was going to turn out.

This is the first of two posts about our San José City tour, where we mostly are not on a tour of the city of San José.

Jaguar Rescue Center (by Cindy)

We were delighted to find that the Jaguar Rescue Center was within walking distance of our hotel, Le Cameleon, in Playa Cocles. We signed up for a public tour, offered twice a day, and thought it was one of the highlights of our trip.

This is the last post about our trip to Playa Cocles where we relay our experience at the Jaguar Rescue Center.