After my last post about that first trip to Costa Rica 20 years ago, I pulled up the online map I made with pins for everywhere I’ve lived and traveled since then. Costa Rica has been home for 14 of those years, but there have been plenty of planes, road trips, and a...
Twenty years ago this week I took my first trip to Costa Rica. Over the next six years, I made nine more trips before moving here full time in 2012. But moving here was really just the beginning of learning what life in Costa Rica is actually like. Not the...
Watching the Bad Bunny Halftime Show got me thinking about the version of me who once lived in California. I considered myself open-minded back then, and in many ways I was. But living abroad has stretched that openness in ways I could not have imagined. It has asked...
The colón hit another record this week, sitting around ₡481* to $1 (USD). It’s the strongest it has been in about twenty years, and if your income or savings are in dollars, you’re probably noticing the difference when you convert. And if you’re coming from Canada,...
![The [unwritten] terms and conditions when moving to Costa Rica](https://costaricarelocationexpert.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/terms-and-conditions-of-moving-to-costa-rica.jpg)
Living abroad comes with a set of expectations no one hands you, but (most) everyone eventually discovers. So I put together a few of the unwritten terms and conditions I wish someone had given me early on... the ones to help you move mindfully, respectfully, and just...
Yesterday, I was on Ruta 3 (route 3), a winding mountain road. Because of my disability, I always need to hire a driver if I’m going more than about 15 minutes from home. We rounded a curve and there, right in the middle of the road, was a white-faced monkey. Luckily,...
You know those skits where it’s two people talking - but it’s actually just one person in two hats? Yeah… I made one. 😅 But behind the silliness is a serious topic I get asked about all the time: Can I work here? Start a business? Sell real estate? Teach at a school?...
(Prefer to watch versus read? Here's a 1 1/2 minute video.) Yesterday (May 11, 2025) I came across a Mother's Day post shared by a mostly foreign-owned, exclusive community selling overpriced lots and homes in Costa Rica. I'll give them points for posting in both...
My first holiday season in Costa Rica was a world apart from the chilly, foggy winters of Northern California. By that time, I’d been living here for about seven months. And while it was over 12 years ago, I still so clearly remember several things about my first...
Sharing two meaningful concepts that I encourage you to adopt as you settle into life in Costa Rica. Prefer to watch a video? Watch here. https://youtu.be/YW6sPZtrk3U 1. Life in a collective society. The first concept is the idea of Costa Rica as a collective society,...
This is my little corner of the internet where I share all things about moving to and living in Costa Rica.
