Allow me to introduce you to our new ex-pat and guest blogger “TicoNuevo”. Ticonuevo and his wife arrived in Costa Rica this week to start another leg of his journey.
Therefore, they are now both an ex-pat in Costa Rica.
TicoNuevo has exchanged probably a couple of hundred emails with the GoDutch real estate team. This blog series is the result of his desire to share his experiences of retiring in Costa Rica firsthand.
Thank you TicoNuevo and TicaNueva sharing your experiences with others.
I am now giving the keyboard to TicoNuevo, I am sure you will love his story because he is a much better writer than I am.
I thank Ivo Henfling for the opportunity to contribute my experiences to his incredibly interesting, helpful, and always entertaining GoDutch Realty blog. His observations and insights provide a tremendous service to newcomers. Ivo’s blogs were extremely helpful to us before we both became another ex-pat in Costa Rica. It is my hope that I will also be able to deliver many interesting and informative segments now and then.
How it started
I have started this initial entry as my wife and I are waiting in the airport lounge. We’re ready for the final leg of our flight to the beginning of our new life in Costa Rica. Our friends we’ve left behind have been calling it our “new adventure.” I’m content with just calling it “retirement.”
My contributions to this blog will cover subjects such as
- Why we are here,
- How we made this decision,
- How we got to where we are,
- What happens from this point forward
- Our experiences during and after our move.
I am certain our story is unique, but not unusual.
Not Easy
The complexity required to implement our “adventure” of becoming an ex-pat in Costa Rica was undoubtedly more complicated than some of you will experience. Take some solace in the steps we had to undertake to get ready.
- We sold our business,
- Trained the new owners,
- Sold our home,
- Sold three cars,
- Completely reorganized our financial world,
- Downsized everything we owned into a container and six check-in bags,
- Shipped our dog
- Retired in the space of fewer than three months.
However, be prepared. Immigrating is definitely more complicated and stressful than a move across town, state or province, or even cross country.
First a vacation
It all started for us many years ago. My wife, then a corporate travel consultant started speaking enthusiastically about taking a vacation in Costa Rica. At the time, I knew almost nothing about the country. I probably couldn’t have accurately pointed it out on a map.
Our first and only visit to Costa Rica was a little over a year ago. Time rolled by with many business trips to other parts of the world and this holiday.
Different
Some folks may say that one two-week trip to this country is not enough to make such a momentous decision. It’s not easy to leave the country of your birth and head for a new life in a foreign country. And this foreign country has a different culture, a foreign tongue, a notable bureaucracy, and many national traits and habits far different from the ones we are used to! That’s a big deal!
It is certainly a decision not to be taken lightly and, I believe, we did not do so. My wife and I are fairly experienced, independent travelers. In previous careers, we were regularly exposed to many “different” cultures, ethnicities, and foreign perspectives.
We spent a week in a casita of recent ex-pats from our hometown area in a small community in the Central Valley. Also, on our first trip to Costa Rica, we included many forays to the “domestic” areas of the Central Valley. Additionally, we also had the normal “touristy” activities you would expect.
Investigations
When we returned home I began making serious investigations on the Internet about Costa Rica. In all, we spent easily 300 hours looking into this country online, making inquiries, making friends, and getting advice about specific questions and concerns we had.
Today with our dog now in the cargo hold, we are headed back to that same casita for a two-month stay while we look for more permanent accommodations and work out details for our integration into Costa Rican society and a Costa Rican way of life.
I hope you’ll follow along as I recount some of the lessons we learned while becoming an ex-pat in Costa Rica, revelations uncovered, courses rerouted, obstacles overcome and impressions generated during our journey.
And, I hope Ivo will also feel free to correct any of my inaccuracies, give counter opinions, or offer additional insights to my comments.
The Author
The author of this blog, Ticonuevo, is a US expat who moved to Costa Rica. He and his wife used the services of GoDutch Realty to purchase a property in Costa Rica. In his blogs, Ticonuevo describes his own experiences of taking the step of moving to Costa Rica and getting a new life started.
