Estimated Reading Time: 5 Minutes Pasta is an unusual type of food to have for breakfast and Ticos usually have Gallo Pinto at that time of the day as you all know by now. You might not know that soccer is almost a religion in Costa Rica. Last Friday, the Costarican National Soccer Team…
Estimated Reading Time: 7 Minutes Jopco Costa Rica does not feel responsible for accidents that happen to their clients in their store. Would you buy anything from them? Haven’t we all heard of the “McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case”? Let me refresh your memory. In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck bought a cup of takeout coffee at…
Estimated Reading Time: 5 Minutes Are you a type-A personality or a type B personality? A move to Costa Rica is not for everyone. Maybe it is not for you? Moving to any other country is not for everyone, and certainly a Type A personality is one of those. It takes a lot of hard…
Estimated Reading Time: 5 Minutes Today’s story is about this Euro savings account that we needed to open. This should be an easy task. But it is not! Banking in Costa Rica is not as simple as it is in other countries. Please do not see this blog as a complaint about Costa Rica banks…
It is tourist visa stamp time for my wife and me. Our 90-day visa was expiring and we needed to make a border run. Therefore, we had to leave Costa Rica and re-enter to renew our visa. That was the only way to keep our U.S. driver’s license and Costa Rican driver’s insurance in force.…
Estimated Reading Time: 8 Minutes I hate winter, don’t you? But, unfortunately, it seems never to stop being cold up north, even the realtors on Google+ complain about it almost every day, and we’re almost in May! It never rains in Southern California is a lie because it does. Although we get hail once every…
Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes Did you know there are two tennis outfits Grecia? When showing property with clients a while ago, I saw a couple of tennis rackets and a basket full of tennis balls in the garage of the Grecia home for sale. We were way up in the mountains of Grecia and…
Estimated Reading Time: 3 Minutes In the United States, Daylight Savings Time (DST) 2014 is on Sunday, March Nine and in most European countries on March 30. In Costa Rica, Daylight Savings Time was used for the first time in the summer of 1979, once in 1980 (from February until May), and in 1991 from…
A Costa Rica real estate client asked me to write about medicinal herbs in Costa Rica. This, fortunately, comes pretty easy to me. That’s because my dad, together with his partner, Hendrik Stins, opened La Buena Hierba in 1986. This was the first real medicinal herb store in Costa Rica, although you could find medicinal…
Estimated Reading Time: 6 Minutes So, we’ve completed 98% of our home improvement project. Friends say that this is the Tico way of finishing things. Honestly, I think it happens everywhere. But allow me to tell you all about it, so you can learn from my mistakes. We have finished the business with my contractor…
Estimated Reading Time: 8 Minutes I’m sure you now want to learn more about the remodeled result of our home. We went through a long and detailed process, but we’re all happy with the remodeled result. We bought our new property in Costa Rica at a price that allowed us to afford all of the…
Planning to import your household container? Then be careful and be patient! Our construction projects continued. And based on our prior inquiries and due diligence, we thought we had timed the arrival of our household container pretty well with our move-in date. The ongoing progress of the work at our house to receive our container…
Estimated Reading Time: 7 Minutes For some reason, new expats who don’t know where to rent, often ask an agent to give them a tour. I never understood why some assume that real estate agents want to drive them around for days, all over the Central Valley. So they can make a commission. I have…
A car accident is never fun nor is it ever convenient. One Saturday a couple of months ago my husband was driving through Barrio Mexico, going to a Little Theatre Group rehearsal. He stopped at a stop sign as required and was thinking about whether he should go straight or turn right (he wasn’t familiar…
Estimated Reading Time: 7 Minutes I have now learned to watch my pants because I was stung by a scorpion. On occasion, the relevance of an event or experience needs to be related while it is fresh in one’s mind. Therefore, I’m taking a brief detour in this blog from writing about our home improvement…
Our house is under reconstruction and it’s moving day! This is the first time in our lives that we move into a home that’s still under reconstruction. I’m not trying to use my blog as a pulpit. So, I’ll try my best not to get too preachy here. But I’ve been meaning to say this…