Costa Rica
is a beautiful, beautiful place. Matter of fact, I think it's a paradise,
however no matter where you live at... they're going to be some disadvantages,
but if you know those disadvantages and you can be prepared for them....
you can continue to live in paradise. Welcome back to another day in Paradise.
It is a beautiful day in paradise and today we are going to be talking
about the top disadvantages of living in Costa
Rica. Now shortly we're going to do another
video talking about the disadvantages of visiting Costa Rica two totally
different topics and while we have been here since
2013 we've traveled all over Costa Rica. We
have seen a lot of stuff we're in the process
of getting our residency which means we have to stamp out every
90 days which is a headache but a whole other topic that we'll talk
about as far as how do you get your residency, what's the
process of stamping out because it's important you know that
when you come here you're not just going to unpack your bags
and relax. Right. There are things you need to know,
but by knowing this disadvantage is you'll be equipped
and prepared because no matter where you live in the world
there are some disadvantages right. Right. So it's important that you are
ready and that's what we're talking about, but before we go there
I want to remind you make sure that you attend every Thursday evening at 8pm
eastern standard time where we can respond to you
live in other words while you're watching that video premiere live
there is a section on the right where you can comment however we want to
encourage you not to comment there and a comment below the video because
the comments on the right they disappear as soon as the video stops and we want
your questions and the answers we give you to
live there always and to help as many people that come.
So if you attend live we can answer your questions because we're on the other
side answering your questions as quickly as
they come in. Rebecca's on her computer. I'm on mine
and we're answering questions for as long as people are active on there okay.
So be sure to attend live Thursdays 8 pm Eastern standard time.
With that said let's go into our top disadvantage.
Number one being. Crime, Is Costa Rica safe?
Crime, so for the most part I feel like it's pretty safe however.
Well why are all the bars on the windows. Well,
you know crime for the most part it is fairly safe I feel it's safe,
however the biggest thing that we run into is
petty theft. It's opportunity crime so as as far as crime goes I don't think
you ever have to worry about getting held up by gunpoint. Has it
happened? Sure. Is it rare? Very rare. Okay. It happens mostly in the
city it's in certain areas the Limon area on
the Caribbean side. We've most have lived in rural areas and
outside of the city so we haven't really had to deal with that
kind of type of crime. Right, I mean no matter where you
go in the world you're going there's going to be bad places
okay. However, in Costa Rica it's very, very
difficult to get a gun okay or be allowed to have a gun so most
people are poor they're not going to have a gun
does that mean they wouldn't maybe threaten you with a knife it's possible.
However the important thing to know is that
the crime it's petty theft that's the reason that you're going to see
bars in all the windows makes it difficult for them to go in and you know
very rarely do I ever hear anyone has been you know had
their house broken into and they stole their stuff.
Now while we're on that topic if you are here
and let's say that you're gonna go home for a couple of weeks or even a week
a month for vacation it's very important because
of that particular petty theft you need to have someone that's going to
watch your house sit your house. House sitting is a big thing
and that's because you know if you leave your house abandoned
they know you're gone and you open up a door for them to
try to break into your house and steal whatever's there all in all.
Petty theft that's the issue you left your shoes, your hiking boots, you left
something on the back porch and they came by night and took it and it's
easy money they went and sold it. Okay areas right,
certain areas have more crime than others.
The Caribbean side the crime rate on Caribbean side
is a lot worse than the crime rate on the Pacific
side okay. The culture is totally different there
so it's important that you know that. We've had our propane tank stolen
several times. That's right and she's had to tell me I
don't know how many times and I think finally when my propane tank was taken
on the fifth time I finally agreed with it to chain it
down so you know every house has a propane tank
and they're cooking with propane filling up the tank is only about 10 or
12 bucks but they're taking the tank because when you get a tank for the
first time the deposit is like 70 bucks it's expensive so people take
the tank okay and they can sell it to somebody
maybe they are refunding it for the deposit I don't know.
however it's an easy steal if you chain it down you don't have to worry about it
that's why a lot of houses you see will have fences and barbed wire
is to keep people from walking easily walking into the yard and stealing
something. Yeah, so for the most part the the crime that we've had to deal with
has been petty theft crime of opportunity.
You know if you don't want your bags if you you know leave stuff unattended. If you happen to be here and you're
on public transportation the bus don't put your bag in the overhead bin
because it's too easy for someone behind you to grab their bag or pretend they're
grabbing their bag grab your bag and out they go with it. So
you want to keep your eyes on your valuables which brings us to
disadvantage number two which is. The Pura Vida lifestyle. Now the Pura
Vida lifestyle, how can that be a disadvantage? Well,
if you're my personality you're the type of person get it and go get it and go
you know everything is on time however it almost
drove me crazy but after being here for over six years
I'm, I've, I'm learning to adapt. The Pura Vida mentality I find that
it's not. Let's see how quickly we can help the customer.
No you know on that note I've gone into the post office
just want to get my package and the person in front of me they're sitting
there chit-chatting and talking and about the family and the kids and I'm
like sometimes a day you know they're in no
hurry. It takes a lot of self-control because
you, you don't want to come into this country and begin to
criticize the people or cause disruption by you know saying
you know could you please hurry up stop your conversation. No you have to
practice some patience. Right I mean you have to
remember you are a guest in their country.
The Pura Vida lifestyle that culture it's been that way
always which brings up you know, What does Pura Vida mean?
It means pure life. Pure life and literal translation means pure life what it
means a lot of different things to the Costa Ricans.
It's used every day thousands of times a day it's Pura Vida
everything you know have a great day Pura Vida.
Como Estas Pura Vida. Everything is Pura Vida. So. It's very laid back and we're in no
hurry and you know so just relax and enjoy.
It's ingrained in the society. That's right. It's very much ingrained in
the society. Same as Mañana. Same as Mañana which is
part of the Pura Vida lifetsyle. Translation of meaning
tomorrow in English but we find that Mañana
in Costa Rica means not today. That's right. It could mean tomorrow,
the next day, next week and if you're a person of punctuality that can really
get on your nerves. Somebody says I'll be there Mañana. So
you're expecting them the very next day and to them they meant I'll go when I see when I can go and you know it's when
they remember and you might have to call a few times. Yes.
So you have to remember that it is laid back.
Everything takes a lot longer but hey that's the reason a lot of people come
here is to get out of the rat race. Right. So it might take a little bit of time to
adjust but once you adjust you know, Okay you
can just really enjoy paradise right. Yes. So that brings us to disadvantage
number three. The import fees. Wow the
import fees can be expensive. Okay, so
keep in mind that when you're trying to buy things
obviously you're trying to buy things that are here in Costa Rica but
sometimes you just cannot find it. Typically if she goes
shopping and I want a jar of peanut butter well
guess what? It's going to be double the cost that it
is in the United States. That's right, so if you want a name brand
like jiffy peanut butter guess what it's going to cost you a
whole lot there are a lot of things like that thanksgiving we just want to have a
traditional thanksgiving meal but a can of cranberry sauce in the
United States you might get three for a dollar on special
here you're gonna pay. It was six dollars a can of crap for
cranberry sauce. Six dollars a can wow so understand anything that's being
imported in is going to cost you a lot. These lapel mics that I'm using today.
Good quality, 189 bucks however by the time I shipped them which was 60
through DHL then I had to pay another 120
because they got stuck in customs and most things will
being imported in. Well this is an invoice that I got
after paying for the custom and import fees for the lapel mics.
The normal fees as you could see right here were 7,793 clones. That's
approximately about 15 bucks okay and that's the usual fees import fees
however for whatever crazy reason I think I just got the green gold price
and I had to pay an extra 36 000 clones for professional
services and 20 000 cloners for storage. Highly unusual I never have to
pay that that was an additional 105 dollars that I had to pay to customs
so it gave me a total down here of approximately 120 bucks
or 68 473 Colones. In order to get my lapel mics
out of customs it can be very expensive so it cost me almost
double for these lapel mics by the time I paid for shipping,
custom taxes and all that yes and it's sometimes difficult to find quality in appliances or computers, you know
those type of things and so you're thinking okay well I'll just order it
and have it shipped in but you may want a second
guess you know. You might want to reconsider
that although yes you can buy a new computer on amazon and have it shipped
in however it's going to get stuck in
customs and if it gets stuck in customs then you
might have to drive two or three hours to a customs location because
they're not in every town and then you have to claim it you'll
have to pay your taxes so it is very very expensive, so that brings up
a very important point that if you're going to buy a
computer don't think that you're going to come to Costa Rica and buy one
you bought a brand new computer however the problem you ran into was.
Well it was in Spanish one thing and the keyboard you know the
the letters were in different places from what I'm used to
and so that was very difficult and even though we paid more money
to have an English language English language put on
it it never did work right even with that.
You know I had a good apple laptop and I'd had it a couple of years it went
bad and I said well no big deal I want to buy the latest anyway
I had to go all the way to San Jose once I got there well they didn't have the
latest. I ended up buying the exact same
type of computer I had that had been sitting there for a couple of years
and it had a lot of problems. So bottom line if you're going to buy
anything your I-phone anything of quality high-tech computers cameras you want to
buy them before you come to Costa Rica or when you go home buy them then bring
them over. So that you can buy quality. The story of
our ninja blender is is a perfect example of that when we
moved here we we had one and we didn't bring it because
I just thought well I'll just buy another one because it was heavy you
know do you want to take up room in the suitcase pay for that to be to
be shipped over. Well when we got to Costa Rica there's
no such thing as a ninja blender and the quality of the blenders I found were you
know we bought one it just didn't not work like a ninja so the next time
we went home bought a ninja and brought it back in
our suitcase. That's right so you do have to keep in mind
that a lot of the things that they have in Costa Rica is coming from China but
you have to understand this is a third world country that's not
a bad thing they've made a lot of improvements since we've been here
however that does mean the majority of the people in Costa Rica are poor
and so they're buying stuff that comes from China because that's what they can
afford so it is going to be a challenge to find
things that are quality. You can but you may have to travel
all the way to San Jose in order to do that. Right, and I find to
to get good quality linens, good quality towels and so forth you
have to go to the city and you will pay probably double what you would pay in
the U.S. Yes, so it's important to understand that.
Which brings us on to disadvantage number four. The internet.
Now the internet is very important for me and for us
because we work online however I think the majority of the people that come
here want internet and it's important to
realize that wow yes you can get internet in most places
especially with your telephone. Most Costa Ricans don't have a computer,
they don't have a need for a computer. It's not like America where
everybody has a computer but everyone has a cell phone and so they've got
cell phone coverage they're doing their facebook on their cell phone
and their you know data plan on their internet with their phone. Okay,
but in rural areas like where we're at today
even your cell phone coverage is not that great and so if you're going to
rely on your cell phone coverage to
email you could possibly do that. However if you want to be able to facetime and
you want to be able to make a skype commission
you need to have reliable internet. Right if you need to have internet for work
which would mean you'd have to have it pretty much consistently reliable. Right. You can't depend on the the cell phone
data plan. Right. because it'll be in and out and you know your
your customers or your boss may not understand why you can't talk to them
at this moment and maybe won't be able to later this evening because the
internet is too slow. Which reminds me before moving
into a house you know we when we first got here we rented a home
that when I called and asked the owner, do you have internet?
oh yes we have internet. You know it's fast good internet.
Well it's about perspective to her it was good it was the internet and it
was sufficient she mostly just emailed. You know so you have to ask the
right questions more so the speed the reliability and
you may just have to go there go to the place first and before
making an agreement to rent and seeing for yourself. Right, it's important
and the best thing to do is just download the app it's speedtest.net on
your phone. You go to the place then you can hook up
to their internet and you can see what the actual speed is.
If you're thinking well okay I'm gonna work from home in my experience because
I've been doing this for many many many years working online.
I know that to get by with a business online
I need to have a minimum of six download with three upload. Okay and so if you do
that you can get by in remote areas you're not gonna find
good internet. It's very difficult we're in a remote
area but in the remote area, you can find people
that are entrepreneurs that understand telecommunications,
understand the internet and what they do is they put up a tower
in town they're buying internet from the country and then they put up a tower in
the mountains and then what they're doing is shooting the internet from one
tower to the other and then to your house. Okay that's gonna
be really expensive. We pay a hundred and five dollars a
month to get six down and three up and most of
the time it's not six down and three up it might be
five and one and a half up and so it's not real real reliable
but we can get by. But just so you know you know in my opinion I think there's
three types of people you're gonna have people that love the beach and if you're
on the beach guess what you probably. That you know that's a touristy
area unless you're in a remote beach but for the most part on the beach
you may not have a problem with internet
because a lot of people are there. You have mountain people like us. We love
the mountains, we love the gorgeous scenery in the in the cool
temperatures however there's a lot of places in the mountains.
There's it's just not close to the city so
you're gonna have a challenge with the internet okay. You have to buy it from a
reseller. Right, you almost have to buy it from a
reseller an entrepreneur because although you can get what's
called Claro internet. It comes off your towers it's you're
not going to be able to work off of that and in the evenings when everybody's
home wow what a challenge because then everybody's trying to access it and it's
very slow and then the third type of person.
In my opinion, are city people I don't think that's most people but are some
people that like to live in the city and if you like to live in the city
most times you'll never have a problem with the internet because in the city
you can get dependable internet and there's two or three
good internet providers where you can get faster interne.t So,
in the city you might get 50 down which is you know
really great in comparison and and very rarely do you get anything
above that. But, anyway just so you know internet is a huge
challenge and they are making improvements even in
the city they're they're putting fiber optics.
They are now installing fiber optic all over the place but that's going to take
time so yes indeed we've seen lots of
improvements since we've been here. Lots. So that brings us on to number five.
Which in my opinion is probably the greatest disadvantage
of living in Costa Rica and that is The Gringo Pricing. The Gringo Pricing.
He hates it. Maybe because you know i'll give the shirt off of my back to
help someone and for someone to take advantage of me and to take my
hard-earned money it just really hurts hurts me to the
core so the gringo pricing is a real thing but I guess first let's define,
What is gringo? okay, What is a gringo? Gringo as I understand it to the Ticos
means anybody that is not from Costa Rica who
isn't a Costa Rican national. Right. You're a foreigner of any type
Canadian British you know. Wherever you're from
if you're a foreigner Costa Ricans will classify you as a
Gringo even though the true meaning of Gringo comes from war times and it has
to do with Americans. Really it's important to understand that
if you are not from Costa Rica you're classified as
a Gringo. Okay. You're often viewed as having way
too much money and that's where the Gringo pricing
comes in because you know it's a lot of poor people
and they feel you know they get an impression of us
from watching television shows and so forth
and most even the poorest people in the us have more than
the poor people some of the poor people in Costa Rica so
what ends up being with the Gringo pricing has to do with services.
Mostly services so the experience that we've had has mostly been with mechanics
because of the roads it's rough on our vehicle so we're often having to get
repairs done. Yeah, so what you have to understand
if you're going into the stores and anywhere where you see a price tag
you're probably not going to have to worry about that.
However, you know as she said we had our vehicle fixed
it's important that when you go to a mechanic make sure you get an
estimate before you agree to have any work done okay
and you're going to be pretty safe so that you get an idea it doesn't mean
you're not going to get the Gringo price because if you don't
know what it normally costs and I'm going to actually do a video
in detail about how to what to look out for when getting work
done to your vehicle. However, you know when we moved to this area I
needed some work done on my vehicle I talked to the locals and I said hey
who's a good mechanic who's someone I can trust
and they say oh yeah go see that guy down the street blah blah blah. He's
really honest you can trust him well I took
the word for it I went down there told him hey I look I just need to get
my clutch replaced and I've had my clutch replaced a couple of times I knew
what it was going to cost me when he got through fixing it when I
got the bill he charged an astronomical amount for
the labor which was highly unusual but it was too late he'd already done
the work I had to pay it. When I showed the list and the price
to my locals here they said yep you got green gold okay
and so while he is probably honest to all of the Ticos
he saw a Gringo and said that's my chance to make some extra money quick
because Gringos have too much money so that's their thinking and so like
Rebecca said even some of the poor people in America
have way more money than the poor people in Costa Rica.
So, just be careful of that and know that hey
they will take advantage of you if you're not careful so just be careful
and if you're careful it's going to be fine.
Right, and it's not all people it's not it's not
everybody you know we've had mechanics do work
and they they were fair they charged just what they would have charged
so. So the important point is that once you get here in Costa Rica
once you get to know the Ticos and you get to find some that are
friendly and trustworthy and I found out that if you
you know you talk to some other Gringos and hey who does your mechanic work
you know they've been here a while they've established relationships with
people they trust and so that will help you to avoid the
gringo pricing. Right, pretty much trying to help you guys out
to not learn from the school of hard knocks like we had to do.
That's right, so there's several things that really make a huge difference
but those are the top five things we're going to talk about a few more
other things but we want to keep in mind. Put your comments down there which one
do you think would be your biggest disadvantage of living in Costa
Rica and type it in the comments and the
questions below but I want you to remind you next week tune in
Thursday at 8 pm eastern standard time because next week what are we going to
talk about Rebecca? Three things everyone must do if you own
a vehicle in Costa Rica. So, whether you have an automobile or a
motorcycle there's three things you need to
know about. So, tune in and we're gonna make sure that we
give you all the information that we know we're gonna answer questions and we
look forward to seeing you next Thursday, Pura Vida.
