While Costa Rica’s beaches certainly are spectacular, I’ll take my mountain town of Atenas any day over the beach as my home in Costa Rica. In fact, my husband, Rolando, and I had been living and working on the central Pacific coast for four years before we moved to Atenas.
Costa Rica's stunning natural beauty, happy and relaxed way of life, and warm tropical weather draw many people to relocate there. People are happy. They laugh. They make it a priority to spend time with family and friends. Even so, when Jack Crook and his wife, Jodie Cook, retired and moved to Costa Rica in 2013, they knew they wanted to find something to keep them busy.
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Ever since I was 19 and I took my first trip to Hawaii, I knew I wanted to live in a tropical place,” says Diane Farquhar. Now in her 60s, Diane nd her husband Cameron have found the perfect place to live out their tropical life—for a much lower cost than Hawaii.
When Linda Ledbetter and Bruce Brasington chose to leave the U.S. for an international life in Costa Rica—the former cruising couple had five key criteria that were non-negotiable for their new home.
When you ask Michael Elder what drew him and his wife Karen to retire to Costa Rica’s Central Valley, the answer is very simple. “We just wanted to go somewhere different,” he says. “It’s not that we wanted to leave anything, like too hot or too cold.
When you move overseas, there are few better ways to integrate into your community than through volunteering. Lending your time to a good cause can help you meet and make new friends, be they local or expat, and get to know the area.
My favorite day of the week is Friday in my country town of Atenas—although since moving to Costa Rica, every day is pretty good. On Fridays, I pile all of my five dogs into the car and head early in the morning for the farmers’ market, followed by a lively off-leash hike on a forested mountain trail near town.
Costa Rica is great any time of year. After all, there’s a reason it sees 2.6 million people visit annually. But possibly the best time to explore Costa Rica is a secret season—the first two weeks of December.