Costa Rica Living

immigrants

The Costa Rica Business Experiment. Morphing to Adjust with the Tides.

A personal post about a dream that turned into reality and then into a different dream. Because in life you've ...
mule banana

Proposed Limon International Airport in Matina, Costa Rica

Did the MEL Group purposely choose the same name as the aviation giant out of Suffolk U.K. or was the ...

The Little Trooper that Could – Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

Selling our 1990 Isuzu Trooper wasn't an easy thing to do and not for the reasons you might suspect. I ...
bird mosaic

The Art of Trade in a Simple Lifestyle

Can trading versus purchasing simplify your lifestyle? Short Answer: Maybe. This is our latest transaction. When I want something my mind ...
Bus Doctor

Life in Limon – Dealing with Costa Rica’s Government is Easy and Fun Here

Renewing a Costa Rica drivers license, changing residency status and getting a vehicle inspection are all things that are easier ...
beautiful wood house

Creating the Kitchen, Finishing the Bathrooms and Keeping the Bugs Out

We are saving money by using a few Tico tricks, a bit of American ingenuity and improvising.We are currently working ...
breadnut seed

Breadnut (Artocarpus camansi) Commonly Known as Castana in Costa Rica

Chestnuts in Central America? The breadnut tree, which is in the Mora family, produces a large oblong shaped fruit that ...
APM Container Facility Moin

Moin Port in Limon Costa Rica and the new APM Container Facility

Possible Investments in Limon Province and Anticipated Growth This article was originally published on November 1st, 2013 in A.M. Costa ...
Pepsi Flags confetti

CARNAVAL Costa Rica in Limon!

Three of our articles about the Carnival (Carnaval as it is known here) in the port city of Limon Costa ...

Arenal Observatory Lodge in Arenal National Park

Arenal Volcano, the youngest volcano in Costa Rica and easily the most active is surrounded by Arenal Lake at its ...
squares of colored wood

Waste Not, Want Not – Making the Most of our Wood and Rental Equipment

Our house building project officially began in March of 2012 when we bought enough electrical cable to make it up ...
Jazz band

Joel La Rue Smith Trio performing at Costa Rica’s International Jazz Festival

Joel La Rue Smith brings his former jazz students to Costa Rica as part of an international cultural envoy. This ...
tree starts costa rica

Interested in Reforestation? Free Trees – ICE’s Vivero Program

How to get free trees (including tropical hardwoods), from Costa Rica's electricity provider, ICE. We applied and were approved for ...
Handmade Rock Bar

Two Types of Bars, Wood Walls and Natural Supports

Our cottage in the woods - Building a two-story house on our farm in Limon Costa Rica. We have pictures ...
Wood House Costa Rica

Why We Chose a Painted Metal Roof, Using Bamboo Poles & Water Problem

Why we chose painted metal roofing, how we used bamboo to help with building, and combating water stains from the incessant ...
Coconut meat

Caribbean Rice-n-Beans, Coconut Rice and Beans

How to make Caribbean Rice n Beans using fresh coconuts, garden vegetables, and herbs. We visit restaurants that are owned ...
Wood House Skeleton

Building Project Costa Rica – Part 4 – Tools & Torque

Our Building Project - Images of the progress since the last post (permission to project start), how very important a ...
First Days Progress

Building Costa Rica – Permission to Project Start

Building Costa Rica - Obtaining Permission to Project Start Part 3 The waiting is over. We are finally starting our ...
Signs for Aerial Tram Atlantic

Rain Forest Aerial Tram Limon Costa Rica

Our Rain Forest Aerial Tram Day. What we thought of the place. Every once in a while we are lucky ...
Supermoon Costa Rica 2012

Latitudinal Adjustments – A Summary of Our Move to Costa Rica

Our move to Costa Rica This summary of our move to Costa Rica can be found at Living Abroad in ...
Getting Gravel from Truck

House Building Costa Rica | Road & Septic Cost

House Building Costa Rica Part 1. After buying the farm we needed to build our house. See Part 2 or Part ...
Farm in Siquirres

Buying a Farm or Property in Costa Rica? Things to Think About

Things to think about before you buy a farm in Costa Rica Not everyone comes to Costa Rica with a ...
view of Moin Port

Port of Moin

Port of Moin now and how it might change in the future. We live about 30 min West of the ...
Photography Exposition

EXPO FOTO COSTA RICA

2012 | Photography Exposition at the Antigua Aduana building in San Jose Costa Rica As a photography company in Costa Rica we ...
Naranjilla Fruit

Naranjilla Fruit

Naranjilla Fruit (Solanum quitoense) How it grows and how we use the fruit for juice Naranjilla (na-rang-E-ya) is a medium-sized, ...
Selecting Cafe Plants

Growing Coffee Plants

Growing Coffee - Choosing the best plants for our altitude and soil type. The terrain here in Costa Rica varies ...
Faroles in the Dark

Costa Rica Independence Day September 15th

Independence Day San Miguel Limon - Building a farol for the celebration Faroles or Lanterns are made by Costa Rican's to celebrate their ...
Fresh Corn Cobs

Fresh Corn Corn Bread or Costa Rica Pan de Elote

Pan de Elote is Costa Rica Corn Bread using Fresh Corn from the Cob Growing corn in the rain forest is difficult. Growing ...
10 Degrees Above INBio

Biodiversity Park INBio parque

Biodiversity Park INBio in Heredia. We went for a mushroom festival and came out with so much more. A mushroom festival was mentioned in a local paper ...
Matapalo Beach Costa Rica

Matapalo Guanacaste Family Photos at RIU Resort

Matapalo Guanacaste, getting there during a violent strike in Limon. Arriving to find a seemingly friendly resort which is draining ...
Dwarg Tropical Orchid

Flowers Costa Rica that Exist on Our Farm in Limon

Flowers Costa Rica - A sampling of the many flowers we have here in San Miguel. The first plants pictured are ...
Tropical Gnatcatcher Baby Bird

Tropical Gnatcatcher

A Tropical Gnatcatcher Bird This is a sad story. I saw what appeared to be a little bird fall from ...
Common Tody Flycatcher Bird

Common Tody Flycatcher

Common Tody Flycatcher Bird In order to give guests a better bird watching area in front of the cabins we ...

Starting the New Business: Costa Rica

Starting a business in Costa Rica I remember talking up our business plan to anyone that would listen back in early ...

Farm Food Ceviche Banano – Banana Ceviche

Banana Ceviche - how to use green bananas to make a fresh chilled soup Ceviche is a cold soup normally ...

DIY Beehive Stingless Bees

DIY Beehive for Stingless Bees We have been wanting to practice bee keeping for a long time. In the U.S ...

7 Super Shots

7 Super Shots We received an e-mail from Erin at Delapuravida.com nominating us to participate in a blog/photography game started ...

International Arts Festival San Jose, Costa Rica

The International Arts Festival San Jose, Costa Rica. A long day but totally worth it. I had a hell of ...

Ma-ma-ma – My Mamones

Mamones Fruit or Mamon Chino Everytime we take a walk around San Miguel we come back with armloads of whatever ...

Buy it or Make it?

Buy it or Make it? Do we have to buy everything or can we just make it ourselves? Barry and ...
Father Baby Tanzanian tanzanians Africans

Going Beyond the Tourist Experience – Stay with a Peace Corps Volunteer

How to get the very best vacation on a budget. Stay with a Peace Corps Volunteer. If you are interested ...

Country Living in San Miguel

Country Living in Costa Rica - Clinic Visit & Rollerskating  You probably already know that we live in the country ...
The Amber Glow

Will Work for Beer?

Will Work for Beer - Finding Work in Costa Rica What if in some magical dreamland the "Will work for ...

Value of $4.50 in Costa Rica

Value of $4.50 in Costa Rica for an U.S. expat in 2012 There are a lot and I mean a ...
Wet Three Toed Sloth

Three-Toed Sloth Rescue in Limon Costa Rica (VIDEO)

Three-Toed Sloth Rescue Video in Limon Costa Rica A Thunderstorm Knocked Stinky, the Three-Toed Sloth from a Tree We recently ...

New Shoes for the New Year in Costa Rica! (Video)

New Year's| Celebrating a New Year in Costa Rica December 7th completed our first year here in Costa Rica. The New ...
A Tamale on Plate

Making Tamales for Christmas in Costa Rica (Video)

A video on making tamales for christmas in Costa Rica. How we did our part by getting leaves from the ...

Beer Runs to Panama

Beer Runs to Panama Everyone in Costa Rica knows that everything is cheaper in Panama. Liquor and Beer are 40% ...
Araza Fruit seeds

Araza Fruit, Araca Boi (Eugenia stipitata) – Smoothie ingredient

Araza Fruit, Araca Boi (Eugenia stipitata) Identification & Uses Araza a really sour, yellow, softball sized fruit that has a thin ...
Building Guest Cabin

Construction Project in Costa Rica – Building the Guest Cabins.

Construction Project number two is going well This is phase 2 of our building guest cabins project down here. It ...

Graffiti in Costa Rica’s Capital City – San Jose

Graffiti in Costa Rica - A Walk through San Jose One thing that I don't see often out in the ...

Home for the Holidays?

An Expat's Experience visiting home for Thanksgiving. I recently returned from a 18 day trip to my hometown in the ...

Don’t make me watch!

I of course am talking about Firefly, the one season television series from Sci-fi. Barry watched it last December when ...

Rio Destierro in Costa Rica

Rio Destierro Barry has been wanting to photograph this river for 3 years now. He's gone and set up and ...

You Want Coffee? A Talking Parrot.

The talking parrot who wants his morning coffee. We have been finding all kinds of interesting life here on the farm ...

An Age Old Question – Starting a New Life in your 40’s

Starting a New Life at 40? What was I thinking? We stayed overnight at a friend’s house recently so that ...

Let the river run

This is Rio La Perla in San Bosco, Limon, Costa Rica. The river runs from Turrialba volcano down to where ...

Pineapples

Pineapples are a big business here in Costa Rica. The big companies use chemicals, to keep pests down, that are ...

An Abundance of Limes

Photo's of our lime trees and how we use them for juice, pie and after dinner drinks. We have 6 ...

Our Cacao Trees and How We Make Nibs

Cacao trees, fruits and how we roast the beans to make nibs We have approximately 25 cacao trees here on ...

Cacao Blooms – Start to Finish

The Cacao blooms are attached to the trunk of the tree. It seems to me that this is a natural ...

Our Cacao in bloom

We have about 25 cacao trees along our creeks here in Costa Rica. We have been playing around with the ...

Two types of Sloth – Man and animal (VIDEO)

There are two types of sloths, one man and one animal *Looking back at this video is hard. It has ...

Inside a Hermit’s house continued

I liked these two images together because of the contrasting messages. The eating utensils, although dirty, show some sense of ...

Inside a Hermit’s house – In HDR

When we bought our farm here in Costa Rica there was an existing house on it that was occupied by ...

That’s a smokin’ stroke you got there.

Remember the guy we were trying to give away? Well, he had a stroke this week. He is currently in ...

Re-born on the 4th of July

Residency in Costa Rica This Fourth of July was a very interesting day for us this year. Immigration scheduled our ...

Residency approved and Free to a good home

Well the big news this morning is that I received word that my residency in Costa Rica was approved! This ...
Brown and White Calf

A cow and a truck – A love story with updates

 A cow and a truck, a love story - Updates on our move to Costa Rica I have so much ...
New Road to Farm

Does the road mean progress? Well I do believe it does, I do believe it does.

Building in Costa Rica. Our all wood cabin and our new gravel road. This is our new road and our ...

Processing HDR differently

Processingy HDR differently. How it looks on the same tree. This is a tree on our farm in Costa Rica ...

Spooky Things in Costa Rica

Spooky Things in Costa Rica. Our first few months were a bit scary. Ewww, this video shows the scary side of ...
Prayer Station

Prayer Station

We came upon this prayer station on our return trip from Cartago, Costa Rica. It is on a well paved ...
church ruins cartago

St. James Church Ruins Cartago, Costa Rica The Legend of the Headless Priest

St. James Church Ruins Cartago, Costa Rica, a historic relic. The Headless Priest Legend According to a popular legend, there ...
Natural Water Slide Costa Rica

Swimming with Birds & Monkeys & Building the Cabin

Swimming with birds & monkeys & Building the cabin in Costa Rica Enjoying Nature in Costa Rica while building the cabin, our video ...

New Apartment in Costa Rica

Our New Apartment in Costa Rica and getting permission to cut a few trees. We moved to an apartment this ...
Costa Rica License Plate

First Days on our Costa Rica Farm, Starting the Cabin Construction and Machete Sharpening

Our first days living on a Costa Rica farm. We were staying on a friends farm and learning everything including Spanish ...

Butter, Bounty and the Toucan – Our new life in Costa Rica Begins (VIDEO)

Making Butter, Collecting Fruit and the Birds - Our new life in Costa Rica Begins We arrived on December 7th ...
heliconia flower

Why we decided to fly, not drive to Costa Rica

Fying instead of Driving and Shipping our stuff to Costa Rica This is an update on our trip. We were ...
Plans to move to Costa Rica

Driving to Costa Rica – Fitting it all in

Driving to Costa Rica. Fitting it all in. Hi all. This video shows how we put an entire house full ...

Falling through the floor of your dreams

Falling through the Floor Our last blog post included some video discussing how well our residency application/meeting went but not ...
Costa Rica License Plate

The Hovlands get Fingerprinted – Applying for Residency in Costa Rica (VIDEO)

Applying for Residency in Costa Rica In early August we went back to Costa Rica to apply for residency. We ...
Love Shack

End of July The Starplate Loveshack

End of July Building the Starplate Loveshack It is the end of July 2009 and this is our loveshack that ...
Plans to move to Costa Rica

Updates and Transitions – Preparing for the Move to Costa Rica

Updates and Transitions - Preparing for the move to Costa Rica All kinds of fun stuff going on since the ...
Costa Rica License Plate

Costa Rica Residency – Getting it

The steps to take for residency in Costa Rica *FYI - this information changes all the time. This our experience ...
Plans to move to Costa Rica

Truck Security – Batten Down the Hatches

Truck Security. How to prepare for a long trip. Batten down the Hatches This video shows the security system that we ...

How the Costa Rica idea was born

How the Costa Rica Idea was Born - What made us choose Costa Rica as the place to live? It all ...