Posts filed under 'Retiring in Costa Rica'
Folks are so excited to be back from our trip to Costa Rica that we’ve had quite a time keeping up with all the good news and all the photos.
We just put together a bunch on the our new Guanacaste landing page. These should give you a much better idea of what you can expect in a weekend there.
We sometimes give the impression that Guanacaste is just another beach resort, but with rodeos and live dancing entertainments shows - not to mention the truly classy neighborhoods - there’s more than enough to fill up a weekend.
The food and the accommodations were top notch as were the speakers and presenters. But the real star of the weekend was the homes. We tried to put even more of them in this presentation so that you can get a better idea of what to expect when you arrive.
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June 9th, 2008
It’s always fun when we get a new addition to a Discovery Weekend. Flamingo Marina Village is almost hidden, in the overall complex of the Flamingo Marina, it’s just 17 houses.
But these are 17 Luxury, fully-titled houses, nestled between the new Hyatt Hotel and Golf Resort and the Rosewood Hotel.
Just 50 meters from some of Guanacaste’s best beaches and smack in the middle of a thriving resort and vacation community, these are worthy candidates for investment or vacation homes or that can draw a significant monthly income, and provide any homeowner with something better than peace-of-mind.
We’re not only bringing experts on investment and finance this time, but a number of people who are tops in the National Association of REALTORS®, some of them interested in learning, and some who will address the issues most important to those considering the investment climate here and with specific regard to conditions in the USA.
Check out the new Flamingo Marina Village page for more information on this development, or the On-the-Ground Costa Rica page for more on this exciting weekend and those coming up.
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May 25th, 2008
Another good reason to get all the information you can before moving - I learned about this organization and website from the CR Central Valley Play Group - is that you also get lots of resources for things you hadn’t even expected. We hear all the time from people who want to know what to do with their free time once they’ve already fallen in love with a new country and a new people.
Volunteering and getting involved is one of the best ways to do that and Helping Hands Costa Rica is looking to be Costa Rica’s #1 Resource for information on how to get involved in the Costa Rica community and to volunteer.
HHCR’s goal is to bring awareness to issues, projects, Organizations & Foundations that exist in Costa Rica. It’s also a place for individuals and volunteers to meet other like minded people, participate in valuable discussions, and find opportunities for helping the community.
With an extensive collection of blogs on relevant topics, an unbeatable events calendar, and forums to discuss all the upcoming and recent events, it’s a worthwhile stop if you are looking to lend a hand to Costa Rica’s growing and changing community.
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May 3rd, 2008
There’s a great new list of properties homes announced at the bottom of the Costa Rica Discovery Weekend page. We’ll be describing each of them and some of the fantastic new places - places like the surfers paradise,Tamarindo and the golf resort area Playa Conchal, Costa Rica - in the upcoming newsletter.
Photo is the Villas at Lagos de Palama de Real, Playa Hermosa.
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April 16th, 2008
As I mentioned in the post below, we are filling out a full schedule for the next several months in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. I got a lot of news about the various incredible and beautiful places we’ll be going.
They are listed on the main Costa Rica Discovery page on Livtopia which has lots of other information on the weekend and the itinerary. But I’ll be expanding on what is unique and special about each of them as the week progresses. Links to those pages will be added to the events page.
Click here to tell us about Your Ideal Home
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March 1st, 2008
My favorite thing about the map above, linked to the source at GoVisitCostaRica.com, is that depiction of the long line of volcanoes between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Yes - many of them are active! Some more than others; get the full scoop on the fiery mountains at the indefatiguable Inside Costa Rica.
Volcano aficionados have declared Arenal the third most perfect volcanic cone in the world. It’s also the most active volcano in Costa Rica. You’ll enjoy sitting back with your cup of tea as night settles in the sky reddens with fire and incandescent rocks bounding down the mountain slopes.
Luckily, we’re hosting our first real “On-the-Ground” Weekend on Costa Rica’s beautiful Guanacaste coast at a good distance from any incandescent rocks. We’re still ironing out details on exactly what properties you’ll get to see if you decide to join us. But click here for an idea of the weekend’s activities.
We’ll be all over the Costa Rica’s other-worldly, almost too-beautiful coast; from Ocotal, one of the premier resort areas in the entire country, up to Playa del Coco and Playa Hermosa and certainly to Playa Panama, the sort of beaches that make Costa Rica famous for, well, beaches! We’ll have all the extras too, including a complete tour of the area, (by land and sea) and of course, everything you need to know to make Guanacaste your perfect escape.
Thinking about coming? The “Ideal Home Survey” linked below is the perfect way to tell us what you’re after, and of course, the Guanacaste OTG page on our website will be continuously updated with more information about this terrific weekend.
Click here to take Livtopia’s Survey
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February 25th, 2008
I spent most of the evening putting together a new tool. In the onslaught of people signing up for a free weekend or a private tour, client services has had a really tough time sorting them into the just the right place and just the perfect weekend.
The My Ideal Home Questionaire is designed to cut to the real heart of the matter, and it’s not for everyone. It’s basically designed for people who’ve already signed up for one of our free weekends in Puerto Vallarta or in some of the other places we’re putting together right now. And there is no shortage of them.
We are moving ahead with Private Tours in just about any place you could dream of, so we’ve designed the survey to better serve the people who keep coming.
If you’re serious about moving to Mexico, or any of the countries we discuss here, or you’d like Livtopia to get back to you with the absolute perfect property, then take the 7 minutes or so that it will take to answer these 20 questions and you’ll hear from us early in the coming week.
Happy Family Day to all our Friends in Canada!
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February 15th, 2008
The date December, 24 2007 (Gregorian), corresponds to the following Aztec date:
Because things are likely to get slow and holiday traffic - on the internet anyway - tends to dip, this post is not only a holiday greeting to you, but to the many superstar bloggers quoted below. All of them are part of the BlogRoll we unveiled a few weeks ago, but they’re also among the most prolific in the blogging business.
To start with, the one truly newsworthy entry from the past week came from the Panama Investor Blog, where they’ve announced that the 90 day visa for Americans is back on. That should put a stop to some of the confusion - at last - and perhaps to some of the moaning and groaning, at least for a little while.
The Tropical Adventures holiday party in La Flor, Costa Rica, made for some interesting writing on the Blog of the Tropical Adventures website. These folks seem to have to explain how their operation runs over and over to critics who believe that without a big benefactor backing them they are just a tourist business in the guise of a volunteer operation. That doesn’t seem to have dampened the spirits of the kids with whom they’ve been working.
The better than year-long saga of Adopting Kids in Costa Rica took another twist. Playa Pelada is one of the only places on the internet, that I know of anyway, where you can really follow the adoption process, in detail, week after week. That’s in addition to the insight into living and growing in Costa Rica that also makes up a big part of Playa Pelada fare.
On to Mexico. The Aztec Calendar illustration above came via The Mex Files, who directed us to this cool Aztec Calendar website. You can figure out how to write or say whatever day, month and year you want according to the calendar. And, no weekend project, this calendar is complete with artwork and a full list of the gods and deities who rule over the world of the Aztecs not even to mention a few decades of study and work that appear to have gone into it.
The folks at Yucatan Living provided another of their Juggernaut Entries with news from all over the Peninsula. Airline news includes a new route from Milan to Mérida, and a new low cost route between Cancun and Campeche. They point out that tourism numbers in Yucatan continue to climb and the number of Yucatecos in the US can be informally monitored by checking the US registrations at el Diario, the Mérida daily.
On the more domestic side of All Things Mexico, the Living in Mexico blog provided a great update on what’s coming up in their organic garden. And Home-Sweet-Mexico provided some 10 decorating tips for dealing with the ubiquitous and quirky short-cuts that Mexican Builders and Landlords often leave us to deal with.
If you want real holiday news though, try dragging an enormous commercial popcorn popper around to the Posada processions in your small Mexican pueblo. The folks at Viva Veracruz give that story and a lot more.
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by for a terrific year of blogging and traveling and dreaming and making things better for everyone.
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December 24th, 2007
The question is: Can a move to another country offer a cost of living so much lower than the cost of living here that leaving is a positive solution?
I believe the answer is yes. I also believe that thousands of older Americans will be crossing the border in the years to come.
This from Scott Burns, A radical retirement plan, published late last month in the Austin American Statesman, among other places. Burns’ breakdown of expected cost-of-living and income adjustments after retirement from an annual salary of $75,000 and lifetime savings around $100,000 is telling. And he does a useful analysis of the numbers that make the article well worth a look.
Suppose you can find a place where the cost of living is about 75 percent of the cost in the United States — some beach town north of Puerto Vallarta or south of Manzanillo. What happens to your standard of living when you move to Mexico? It rises to the equivalent of about $42,400 in the U.S.
You’re probably not alone in being aware that you may be headed for a big crash in income and meeting cost-of-living expenses at retirement.
Funny thing is, Burns’ explanation of looking for a cheaper place to live ends up sounding not very radical at all, unless perhaps you really have never been out of the US. We talk to a lot of people who plan to retire primarily on a Social Security income with hopefully a bit more coming in from some other source. And there really are places, in Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and the DR, that we can show you that will cost a fraction in day to day expenses for what you might pay to live out your years in the US.
I wrote just the other day about Americans finding better deals south of the border, in Mexico and elsewhere that from the radical Wall Street Journal. And the list of articles that I don’t write about, or barely write about just keeps getting longer.
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December 21st, 2007
Part of the reason it’s been so quiet here is because we’ve been working extra hard on the 2008 calendar of free weekends, which was no small feat.
It means we’ve put together enough hotel rooms and enough speakers to make sure we can cover all the locations, and there are already some surprises!! You’ll have to check the page to see the one big surprise!!
But beyond that it is worth saying, maybe it is even obvious, that the calendar is not yet complete. We’ve got a few locations yet to add and certainly a lot of dates, because every location will have a few possible dates.
But that said, right now we are talking about 14 locations and expecting that number to jump to 15 before very long. I can’t give secret 15 away yet, but it is inland in Mexico, possibly with the very best climate anywhere in the world (?)
- Los Cabos/La Paz
- Puerto Vallarta
- Mazatlán
- Mérida
- Campeche
- Cancún/Isla Mujeres/Playa del Carmen
- San Miguel de Allende
- Juan Dolio DR
- Northern DR
- Guanacaste CR
- Central Valley CR
- Panamá City
- Boquette Panama
- Surprise Location
We’ve also set up a basic schedule that covers all of the events in ever city and we are sending that out to anyone who registers. I’ll be making it available on line in a few days too. It gives you a good idea what to expect, when to arrive, how the speakers and experts will be arranged and I think generally allows people to make the most of the weekend.
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November 15th, 2007
Well worth a few minutes of the time of anyone considering a Voluntour or Eco-tour type trip, as many of our readers do to Panama, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic, is the exchange going on between Scott Pralinsky, Executive Director of the Casa Milagro Foundation at the blog Crazy Jungle and Rob Meyer who writes the blog GoBudgetTravel.
You can follow the whole argument which starts with Rob’s post on the Ethics of the Voluntourism Industry and continues with Pralinsky’s lengthy and thoughtful reply at the bottom of the same post. (I caught it off the feed from the Crazy Jungle blog.) And Meyer followed up again with another reply suggesting a coordination of similar organizations across countries or regions or worldwide.
But a good step toward such a coordinating effort (or at least toward reducing your own risk of ethical lapse) was certainly taken in Pralinsky’s list of questions (below) which are good across the board whatever the country or the nature of the tour and volunteer work you’re thinking about.
- Does the volunteer organization operate as a non-profit, or are they merely a tour operator?
- Does the organization respond in a timely and friendly way to your requests for information?
- Are they willing to let you speak with past volunteers to get an idea of what their experiences have been like?
- What kind of services does the organization have in place in case of an emergency?
- Is the organization from the country they are supporting?
- What is their refund policy?
- Will they customize your volunteer experience so you can get the most out of your time there?
- Does the organization accommodate any special needs you have (physically or dietary-related)?
- Are they set up to support family or teen volunteering?
- Are the employees hired from the communities in which they serve, or do they bring people in from other countries?
- Do the employees of the organization also participate in the volunteer work?
- Are you supported once you arrive, or are you just “dropped off” to fend for yourself?
In some ways, the “industry” being confronted is one that has sprung up to capture the good intentions (and Euros) of travelling students waiting to return to university, and I can’t help but think that the inflated-price brokerage industry that Meyer is critical of is geared more towards Europeans than Americans. Canadians, Australians also perhaps. But whenever you’re paying for something, it’s best to look into the details of what you’re paying for.
(The illustration is from the Tabblo “Studio Stories” at Tropical Adventures.)
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October 24th, 2007
This article on Costa Rica in the new BusinessWeek really doesn’t hold much back, (except for the photo which I borrowed from the LA Times piece that I talked about earlier). It was just too good.
On a week-long trip through Costa Rica, I met dozens of retirees contentedly living the pura vida—pure life—a relaxed, comfortable, and affordable lifestyle in a beautiful and welcoming country. On the Pacific coast, where the year-round temperature averages 83 degrees, the main attraction is the outdoors: beaches, deep-sea fishing, and scuba diving.
The migration from North America has sparked construction of luxury homes, condominiums, and resort hotels mainly aimed at baby boomers. One is the Four Seasons resort on the Papagayo Peninsula, which offers rainforest-canopy tours and hiking trips to nearby volcanoes. Next July, AOL co-founder Steve Case’s resort-development company, Revolution Places, plans to break ground nearby on a 650-acre complex featuring two hotels and 320 homes selling from $2 million to $10 million.
That’s just a few paragraphs from the middle, because really, I don’t know who reads BusinessWeek online unless someone like me sends you there. But the whole article is worth a glance if you’re serious about considering a trip. Likewise worth considering is Ann’s comment from the other day, as is
