WHY We Chose Costa Rica for Our adVENTURE!

If you read "50 Reasons WHY Costa Rica", our gift to you when you subscribed to Postcards From Paradise~Our Costa Rican adVENTURE, you read there are many reasons people choose to visit and live in this awesome country. The list just touched on a few, and our personal reasons included just about all of those, plus some that are more personal--including why I am writing this book.

Let me begin by saying that our son, Chris, has been traveling to Costa Rica since 2009, visiting the different provinces and staying for three to six months in different places around the country on each trip. Every time he'd come home to the United States, he'd have stories to tell about adventures with people, the wildlife, and places he'd been. Because of his work in architecture, and because Bob and I co-owned a residential design/build firm in the San Francisco Bay Area for Chris's entire life, up to 2011, our conversations often included Chris trying to persuade us to invest in property in Costa Rica, and build one of his many designs created with Costa Rica in mind. We are a family of entrepreneurs, with decades of experience in both the design industry and building industry. The idea was always intriguing, but the timing never quite right, and what did we know about building or doing business in Costa Rica? We don't even speak the language very well! Bob and I had never even been to the country. And where would we get the money for such a venture? So, for years, we'd hear the stories, dream about the possibilities, and also worry about our retirement, because as owners of a small business for 35 years, we didn't have much saved for retirement, and we were looking at trying to survive on Social Security in one of the most expensive areas to live in the USA. Then magic happened. We decided to leave Silicon Valley where we'd lived in the same home since 1976, built our business, raised our family, and were integrated into a community we loved. We put our house on the market in 2015, sold it within a few days, at well over the asking price, and made the move to Nevada City, a quaint, rural town in the Sierra Mountains of Northern California. We found a beautiful home and we also bought a rental property in neighboring Grass Valley, and began our new life in a wonderful community of artists, musicians, and friendly welcoming people.

In 2018, Chris was injured in a couple serious accidents while living on the East Coast, and he moved in with us to recover. During his recovery, and all the conversations about his future and ours, our entrepreneurial family genes started influencing our thinking to turn toward designing and building, again. Our rental property had appreciated quite a bit, and we had equity to tap into for investment. We spent several months researching possibilities, locally: flipping, buying land and building, investing in another rental property. Nothing penciled out; way too much work for too little profit.

Then Chris brought up the Costa Rica idea, again. We said, "Show us the numbers", so he worked it out and sure enough, the Costa Rica dream looked like the right idea, after all. Kind of scary. Kind of risky. Kind of an adventure! Something new and FUN!

Our Costa Rica adVENTURE was born, and so was the idea for the book. It's been a year since we started the adVENTURE in Costa Rica, and we've had some ups and downs and hurdles to overcome. Chris is living full time on the northwest coast of the Guanacaste Province, and managing everything with flip-flops on the ground. We've made friends along the way, and we are learning a lot about living and doing business in Costa Rica.

I'll be sharing some of the story in these blogs, and want you to ask questions, too. I'm working on the book every day, and this is your chance to be a collaborator, or just a fly (or a gecko) on the wall, while we continue the adventure. Your questions or personal experiences might just find their way into the pages of the book, either anonymously or perhaps as a featured story within our story.

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Pura Vida!

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