July Business Trip to Costa Rica

On July 4^th we left for Costa Rica for business, not vacation time, to get the process underway for building and applying for residency.  Why residency?  (And no, we are not giving up our US citizenship, only applying to become legal residents of Costa Rica.)

This is what we see when driving to our nearest town, Pejibaye.  It is an amazing drive though the mountains, very picturesque but at times very narrow road.  I had to remind myself the first trip that there is no snow and ice to worry about on these mountain roads.

 

There are many reasons to become a resident but here are few off the top of my head.

·         You don’t need to leave the country every 90 days as you would with just a passport.

·         We can participate in Costa Rica's excellent health care system.

·         If there are any problems with the law, such as an accident, things go much easier if they know you are legally a resident and can be easily located.

·         We won’t need to stand in Passport Control when entering CR.  Yahoo!!!  The line is horrendous, at least a thousand deep each time we have gone there.

 

We needed to go to the US Embassy for paperwork filing, a police department for fingerprinting, get our pictures taken and open an account with a CR bank to deposit money to show we can take care of ourselves and won’t become a burden to their system.  (If you have Social Security or a Pension, this is not necessary.)  Now our CR attorney will have all the many documents we had to accumulate here in the States translated into Spanish.  He will file the paperwork and the process is underway!  It will take about a year for us to receive our Cedula, legal resident certificate.

 

When you hire someone to help you with this process they walk you through it so you aren’t floundering out there on your own.  We had a set price of what it cost and they picked us up and took us where we needed to go.  It wasn’t really all that hard, just seemed daunting until we made it through everything.  It took 2 days to accomplish, aside from the work we had to do at home getting a police report and notarized copies of legal papers.

 

John picked these Mandarin Lemons across the road from our lot in Serenity.  They looked and smelled like oranges but WOW! what a punch when I popped a section in my mouth!  I squealed very loudly!  But they made a great drink back at the villa using cane juice they gave us in our distribution of produce and eggs for our stay at Osa Mountain Village, Serenity's sister community. 

 

After our time spent in San Jose (CR's capital) for the above meetings we spent 5 days at Osa Mountain Village meeting with the developer about Serenity Gardens, meeting our architect, meeting builders and talking with residents of Osa about all the little tricks they have learned.  Such as, we will be able to call back to the states and you will be able to call me for free if we get Magic Jack.  You don’t need MJ, only us!  How cool is that?!?!  (I will also be available by email too, we will have internet.)    

 

The biggest news from the developer is that one road in Serenity will have commercial power, not just off-grid power.  And we have a lot on that road!  (It was the lot we wanted to build on first so it works out fantastic!) This means there won't be delays due to lack of off-grid power in starting our house.  Permitting and obtaining machinery for off-grid power has taken much longer than they were first lead to believe.  Not a real surprise but nonetheless disappointing.   So we will have a house at Serenity Gardens with full power, we are elated!  I am excited, John is pleased.  Who knows, we just might stay in this house!

Our view from the lot we will build on early next year.

 

John has been asked to be on the energy team for Serenity Gardens to help move along the off-grid system.  We have been offered free housing (a new house in Serenity by a lovely river!) to come down as soon as possible.  This means we can be on-site to build our house!  Perfect!

Currently we are thinking January 1^st but really don’t know.  We have so much to do here to get the house ready to sell, sell most of our belongings and pack.  It really is a huge undertaking when you have not only a home but a farm too.  With my foot and torn tendons messed up for over 3 months, I have accomplished little.  I can’t even keep the gardens weeded!  My front cottage garden looks like a jungle.  I can’t even look at the side garden.   I had such big plans for this summer’s perennials beds! 

 

This is the front of Serenity Garden Eco Village.  There is a river along the rocks but you can't see it very well.  I have sturdy water shoes ready for us to try out the river.  There will be a pool at the Community Center but the river is just so pretty!

A house at Serenity, the Octagon House.   Very cute, very nice inside, but too small for us.

Now we are back home and I am just starting to walk again after having my foot reconstructed and tendon repaired.  Getting around Costa Rica on crutches was a pain but going through the airports as handicapped is simply divine!!  We were whizzed through long lines and even upgraded to first class on our flight home!  What a special treat that was!   Sure would like to experience first class again!

Brahman cattle are common in Costa Rica.  Isn't she cute?!?  Love those pink ears!

Found our Costa Rican Car

This week we purchased our car for Costa Rica.  It is cheaper to buy one here, ship and pay import taxes than to purchase one in CR.  Cars in CR are very expensive. Plus here we had the help of cars.com, a wider selection and can speak the same language.  We felt much more comfortable with buying here. 

We needed an all-wheel drive vehicle since we are going to live in the mountains.  Plus we wanted something with good MPG.  John has a 4 wheel drive pickup but we wanted a car since it will be our only vehicle.  John’s 2008 Dakota pickup is going up for sale (only 28,000 miles!); my van is a lease going back early 2014. 

We got a 2012 Honda CRV.  Foreign vehicles are common in CR, not the Big 3 vehicles.  Very uncommon to see US made cars in CR.  So to take, say a Chevy, one would have a hard time getting parts and finding someone to work on it.  We sure will miss the ease of use of a mini-van, love my mini-van!  Have bikes will travel!!  And anything else you want to haul, so easy!

But we wanted high gas mileage.  Good Deal on the CRV!  You know that old story of buying a used car from a lil’ol lady?  Well, we really did get a hardly used car from lil’ol lady.  An 87 year old lady had it, turned it in early and only had 7,785 miles on it.   

The CRV will go in our shipping container of household goods, the last thing to be loaded in a 40 foot container.  It will take from 4 to 6 weeks to receive the container down there and be processed.  So we either live here without the things we need, or live down there without the things we need.  We haven’t figured that dilemma out yet but I am sure we will tackle it with humor.  (And with a little bit of stuff!)

Diane

Pictures from first visit

Visiting a volcano, Caribbean in background.

This is our favorite lot and will build on it when we are living on site.
The front of the house with big deck will look out on this valley.  Breakfast on our deck looking over this valley!
  I can hardly wait!
 

We bought two lots, this one will have our first house.  Although you can't see it, off in the distance is our nearest town, Pejibaye.  It is about the size of Holly and a 25 minute mountain drive.

Since we can't be in Costa Rica to build a house, we decided to buy two lots, both about 3/4 of an acre.  We will live in the first house while we have the second house built.  The second house will be the house we keep.  We will either sell the first house or rent it.  Our lot is at 2700 ft above sea level, so it isn't as hot as when you are at the beach.  Mornings are from 55 to 69 degrees, days 70s to high 80s.  Serenity Gardens is near the South Pacific, you can see the ocean from the Community Center; which is at the top of the mountain.



Starting our move to Costa Rica

Years ago John and I became interested in Costa Rica after a farm member raved about the medical care his wife received in Costa Rica, the beauty of the country, the friendly people, and the FRUIT!  He loved the fruit!  So I researched it and I remember sitting at my computer telling John, "We would essentially be living in the jungle, can't do it!"

But we were still intrigued and made arrangements for a vacation in Costa Rica.  Two weeks before we were to leave (took 6 months for the vacation to arrive after we reserved flights!) I found the web site www.serenitygardensecovillage.com.  I called John at work all excited and we both did all the research we could for the next two weeks about Serenity and it's sister community Osa Mountain Eco Village.  

Although we had reservations at another place for the first week, we took 4 days to stay with the residents and developer at Osa Mountain.  Serenity didn't have a place to stay as the roads were just starting to be put in and no houses yet so we just would visit Serenity but stayed at Osa. 

We took the next week going back and forth...yes, no, yes, no... should we move to CR?!?!  Every day we would wake up around 5 or 6am, discussing things, thinking about it, going over everything we could think of.  We had another week in CR and during all our tours and outings we had our eyes and minds going full tilt, wondering if Costa Ricans liked Americans, could we live with the culture change, could we adjust to the shopping, banking, food, roads, etc.  We would have to learn Spanish, although in Serenity and Osa Mtn. mostly North Americans live so English will be spoken in our little Eco Village.  But could we really learn Spanish?  John and I felt we were going through life just fine not knowing another language and now we were creating a lifestyle change that would make the hard work of learning another language mandatory, at least enough to go to town! Yiks!

But those 4 lovely days in southern Costa Rica at Osa and Serenity were so intriguing and John would be able to retire!  We could travel!  We finally decided that we were at an age that if we wanted an adventure we had better go for it or lose the opportunity. 

So here we are...
Selling my dream home (this was to be our retirement home, we designed it around our needs and wants. Really thought I would leave this house kicking and screaming!)

Selling our stuff (we will ship a large container of household goods we don't want to part with)

John wakes up worried about all his tools, what does he take? what does he sell?

We have to jump through hoops, many hoops, to apply for residency and hire a CR attorney.

We have to choose someone to help us move our stuff in a container.

We have to find a All-Wheel Drive car to take to CR.  Used cars there are so expensive that buying one here, paying for shipping and import taxes is still cheaper!

We have to choose a CR builder.

Design a house with someone in CR!

Allow someone to build our house without us there!!  How scary is that?!?!?

But most of all, leave our family and friends and hopefully convince them that we have a guest room waiting for them for a lovely tropical vacation in Costa Rica that will be super inexpensive since the guest room is for free!


 Serenity, we
will have hydro-electric power