A lot of my friends here in Costa Rica, as well as many people I’ve met in my travels, are moving to Atenas. More than a half-dozen couples and families in the last few months have arrived in this small town in the Central Valley.
It’s a line you hear a lot on Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast. “We thought about Panama—we almost bought in El Valle. Then we came down to Costa Rica’s Southern Zone and fell in love.
Anna Fishel, 63, was living and working in Colorado in early 2012, and retirement was still years away…or so she thought. “There was a change in management at my job that made it absolutely miserable for me to go to work. I had bought my house in Costa Rica with plans to move in a few years."
Costa Rica has been an expat haven for retirees and others for decades because of its low cost of living, high quality – and cheap – medical care, warm weather climate, bargain real estate, and no-hassle residency.
My wife is a very outgoing person. But when we moved to Costa Rica...things changed. I speak Spanish. Her? Well, she took a few semesters in college. She tried her best...but often got flustered when having a real-life conversation. So it was up to me to act as a translator and talk to everybody: the gardener, the maid, bus drivers, people on the street to get directions, our neighbors, the utility company...you get the idea.
The southern Pacific coast, officially known as the country’s Southern Zone, is the Costa Rica of postcards and guidebook covers. Palm tree lined, virtually vacant beaches. The wild sea with rocky islands just offshore. Deep, thick jungle surrounds you inland. One of the most biodiverse regions of one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, it’s home to howler monkeys, toucans, and sloths and hundreds of other animals...
This video presentation gives an overview of why Costa Rica has been a favorite retirement destination for decades thanks to low cost of living, warm and friendly people, high quality—and cheap—medical care, bargain real estate, tropical climate, and much, much more.
"There was a hole there. There was no place to get good bacon and eggs," says Andrew, who explains that there are many other opportunities in León for quick-thinking entrepreneurs. "There’s still very little here. So anybody who has a big idea— it’ll work." His investment of $5,000 got things off the ground. And although there were some struggles in the beginning—he had no previous restaurant experience and the local bureaucracy proved tough to navigate until he hired a local accountant—his business has taken off.
San José (population: 300,000-plus, with more than a million in the metro area) had traffic, tall buildings, and noise. But after living in Escazú, a suburb just 10 minutes’ drive from downtown, for the past year, I’ve discovered another side to the city. It has the best shopping and dining in the country, including imported items found nowhere else and international cuisine.
Canadian Andrew Blyth first came to León, Nicaragua, seven years ago to look after some properties his parents had purchased. The family had visited back in 2003 and fallen in love with the city. “Their eventual goal is to retire down here and open a bed and breakfast,” explains Andrew.