We’ve got a little quandary going.  Our general Costa Rica plan was to move to part of the Central Valley (aka CV), live for a few months and then consider moving to the Caribbean coast.  The when regarding moving to tropical beach paradise monkeyland was ambiguous – it might have been 6 months or a year.  I didn’t think we’d have to make any sort of decision til we got there, but that’s not the case.
Last week, someone we met and have kept in touch offered us their house for …

A week after I posted about my concerns regarding a proposed update to Costa Rica’s residency laws, I feel better about the situation.  Some lawyers in CR have maintained that it would be unconstitutional for the law to be applied retroactively, and that was my great fear – that people would be forced to leave when it came time to renew their residency and meet higher income requirements.  An article yesterday, quoting Mario Zamora (the Director of Immigration who basically drafted the proposal), goes a bit further.  Mr. Zamora is …

Life is about adapting to change and it looks like we’ll be getting a nice lesson in adaptation if the Costa Rican legislature passes some proposals that could make an incredible impact on the resident expat population.  The potential changes center on the income requirements needed for certain types of residency which affect most legal expat residents.
The proposal came up quietly on October 27 (and has not been publicized much at all) and 4 days ago was unanimously approved and sent to the legislature for action, which is obscenely fast …

We’re moving in 3 months (exact date pending some details, like buying airline tickets).  The whole thought of Getting Rid of Crap and Packing Up Stuff is bad enough, but there’s a whole lot of orchestrating to do.  Like buying the airplane tickets, acquiring health insurance, finding temporary housing etc.
Today’s bugaboo is researching travel for our cats.  Our friggin’ cats.  I say friggin‘ because travelling with them complicates things quite a bit.  In 3 months they’ll have more international experience than Palin but for now they are a collective PITA.
This …

Looks like the move is going to happen in January. I thought I could wait, but I can’t. Because… it’s already too cold. It went down to 50 last night and we’d left the windows open. The house was friggin’ cold in the morning. Sometime around 1pm I felt warm enough to put some shorts on. And now I just went around closing all the windows in the house and am sitting here in a fleece jacket. I despise cold. I thought …