Expats in Costa Rica - Yoga Instructor - Silvia in Montezuma

[Music] sylvia erickson has been a long time resident of costa rica and a yoga instructor in montezuma in this interview she will tell us what she likes about costa rica and about getting a job as a yoga instructor in costa rica [Music] well the things i love about costa rica primarily are the people here there's a certain kindness and a sweetness to people and the selflessness that i just didn't have in my culture growing up like an open-heartedness that is unconditional that you don't need to ask for it like if you were walking down the street and you needed to use the restroom you could ask somebody anywhere and they'll offer you you know some rice and beans and some coffee and encourage you to stay and the first couple years when i was here i was always surprised just at how easy it was to solve a problem right like if you have a punctured tire the first person who sees you on the road is just going to stop and want to help you it was a big learning curve for me because i always was raised with this idea that everything needs to be taken care of right now right and things have to happen immediately and you kind of feel that stress inside and in costa rica it's not really like that sometimes you wish it were a little more like that but the fact that it isn't sort of it wakes you up to the idea that okay things can actually take their time not everything needs to be happening right now right so there's a kind of like i guess it goes together well with yoga like this non-competitiveness and of course the nature is what i love about this place like one never gets tired of it you know and it trains your mind to see it anew all the time because maybe there's not that many places to go you know you can't just jump on the subway and go somewhere you're just here right so you're faced with like the same things every day but it's always a little bit different and it keeps you sharp right so the beauty around and the beautiful i mean the green everywhere and the rivers and the times of the year are just slightly different so that's what i love the most about costa rica well in montezuma the vibe for me is sort of magical right so i've had a lot of sort of existential moments here um just from walking in the nature and there's all these different small sort of niches within montezuma you know you have one beach that's really big and broad with a lot of jungle and nature you have another beach that's like closer to the road and more people access it you have the waterfall that's totally different and i love montezuma as opposed to other beach towns because it has a small center so the town center is kind of like it has the one bar there where people go meet and hang out have a drink and also all the stores are sort of there so it has that feeling like if you want to go out to town you can just go you know you don't even need to gather your friends you can just go downtown and you'll find somebody who you know and it's right there on the beach and there's artisans who make their own jewelry and you can find pretty much you know all types of food and there is that little community vibe right and every saturday we have a farmers market and then you'll see a lot of people like-minded people get together you know health-conscious people who live here and it's just generally very quiet it has it definitely has that peaceful sort of wellness vibe here yeah the living options is something that is more complicated than one would think like one can look on airbnb and get to know places and they'll often be especially during the rainy season which is also low season you'll be able to get like a good furnished house you know with glass windows and air conditioning and some rooms you could get that in the low season for six seven hundred dollars a month um whereas somebody who lives and works here like myself you know we try to look for something a little cheaper like 400 350 and those are the spaces that are limited so you know if you're a tourist that who wants to come here and stay and volunteer for six months it might be a good idea to like get on facebook get onto montezuma facebook page and maybe put yourself out there like who has a house to rent because on airbnb and such you'll find places who need you know looking after but they do charge like a foreigner prize the limited options are sort of in the cheaper housing because that's where most of the locals will be at the minimum salary for somebody waitressing is around three dollars somewhere there and then they also get you know the work week is rough it's six days a week usually around eight to ten hours a day so if you have such a budget it's it's difficult to be single because you know you need two parties or to have a roommate perhaps a lot of people live in their extended family or you know the costa ricans who live here they often get land from their families and they might have built a house on it or they live in like a small house beside the parents so things stay within the family but the rent in suburbian places like a little bit away from montezuma where i live i mean you can definitely find a place for maybe two three hundred dollars a month but that doesn't leave you with a lot of money so living here you know one can't the the normal nice things you have at home like being able to take a weekend trip somewhere whenever you want like those things are just a little harder here one really needs to save and food as well so there are markets here you can go to like on friday morning there's a farmer's market up in kobano i'm not very good at keeping track of how much i spend on food but you can get away with doing it cheaply if you buy vegetables and if you go to the butchers to buy your meat or if you if you go to the supermarkets out of town then you know and if you don't buy exotic things that are made for expats like fancy cheeses and cold cuts and stuff like that and you can live moderately with the money you make and of course you know during tourist high season i consider myself fortunate because i get paid per yoga class so i get a little bit you know above average maybe an average of like fifteen hundred dollars a month and there i can live well and i can save i can put away a good amount of money because i also know one thing about budgeting i have to say is that since i live here i notice that i've been frivolous and you live here you become thrifty but in a good way you know you don't spend money on unnecessary things because you see that everything is recycled you know people will use recycled not as in a way of everybody puts their cans in the right thing no but recycled like people will use the front part of a fan like a metal fan that's not being used anymore that's broken they'll make it into their grill right or people will use their tires to make a potted plant inside right or people will use their there's all kind of like funky inventions which are really cool which almost ironically when you go back to the north america or to europe you'll see those things sort of like as an innovative amazing sort of hipster idea and here is just something that that's normal right so and close to i mean you're living on a beach you don't need a lot of stuff you don't need shoes the only thing i really spend money on here is food phone is very cheap as well you can pay 20 a month for for a subscription with unlimited internet so in that way you know you don't even need to find a place that has wi-fi if you have a smartphone and you can buy yourself like a chip to put in it you've got internet so the budget is you have to be a little smart about it these premium videos are available on amazon prime the links are in the description below that's the part that gets a little boring sometimes well i am a salsa dancer i love salsa dancing i met my partner through salsa dancing and there's just the young culture here is not a dancing culture you know it's more like they go surfing or they're into other things but it's not the dancing part of it is sort of like died away there's few people who love to dance so there's we've got reggae night on thursday night that's really nice what i really recommend around here is to try if you've never tried it even if you're scared of it is to try surfing because the beach that they take you surfing is a beautiful walk it's half an hour along wild beaches protected by the government as well and the beach is amazing playa grande it has about you know waist a little higher than waist deep water and the instructors are very safe and they really take care of you and they they really help you from scratch so there's a constant white wash it's not a big riptide and they help they push you into the wave and then you can start from there so i've had a lot of people here with us that do yoga and surf and those two things go together really well so surfing is a thing to try horseback riding there is a man here who does conscious horseback riding he's a horse whisperer and he takes you up on the hills you know in places that you normally would never see if you were just downtown here or any normal tourist routes there is a canopy zip line that you can do which is also a lot of fun which is up the hill a little bit so there's like nine platforms you can go from platform to platform there's a boat trip a day trip to tortuga island actually with my family in law and they take you snorkeling and they'll give you lunch so those are some of the things you can do you can rent an atv a quad and travel around in the dirt roads and have some fun just be really careful those are the main activities to do here aside of course from really long walks one of my favorite things to do is to walk to the waterfall which is also a little bit of a climb and walk to that surf spot there's also a national park so we do have our own national park in the town that's about 10 kilometers from here cabo blanco which is also a really nice long hike around four hours it is the first protected park i believe in costa rica if not all of latin america which around 67 years ago a danish woman and a swedish man they came here and they they fought to protect this forest and which is now the cabo blanco national park well when i first came here i came here on vacation and then i decided to stay longer because there was nothing really calling me to go home so i did get work with if you want to work here and you're willing somebody's going to hire you so either in a hotel reception or you know as a tour guide on one of the tour companies um that's sort of i did most of the jobs that are in town i wasn't legal to work when i first came here right so that's a little bit you know if you believe in the politics of supporting a country and paying the taxes right i was very young i didn't think too much about it but now in retrospect i believe one has to be kind of conscious about it you can't get a work permit here if you're not either retired here and you have a fund of money coming from abroad or you're married or have a child who's born here and there's some other categories but it's not very easy to just come and work and live i've met people who come here and have an online job right from back home and they sit here and work which of course i mean it's really ideal because you're earning money from back home and spending it here and but i also know a lot of people here in montezuma in santa teresa who have like seasonal work in restaurants i recommend that you take a good year to earn a good amount of money and come here and spend it that's how i recommend to do it because you'll just enjoy it much more and you can volunteer here as well you know help like in montezuma we have a project going on in the school you can you know help teach arts and crafts or dancing or math help tutor there's lots of things to do here you can help the turtle sanctuary or help the cabo blanco national park so i would i would suggest one travels like that because i mean money-wise you won't earn a big amount of money here either if someone was retiring here yeah there would be a lot of community to get involved in one has to sort of look around one has to win people's hearts you know and show interest and show interest for the language and there is definitely in montezuma you'll easily sort of find your niche especially if your interests are nature or some new age spirituality or surfing or reggaeton dancing well my relationship with my husband i suppose quite traditional you know we met we were first friends we knew each other and when we were in other relationships and so for the first couple years we just we were acquaintances and in my case i wouldn't say our differences are very cultural right even though in some aspects they are of course different habits so you know aside from the small differences just from being somebody from the south and the north in my case there hasn't been that much this is a different country it might be your holiday spot it might be your temporary sort of finding yourself place but it's also the home of somebody right so if you are thinking of getting in a relationship with somebody here you have to first if you think about that person coming home with you you have to ask the person if that's even in their interest to leave here because a lot of costa ricans don't ever want to leave costa rica which is the case in my case in my relationship but then you have others who want to leave and want to experience something else but this is a country that is you know it's beautiful people love being here friendships here is another thing i've had myself a couple of heartbreaks of when you you know somebody comes here to live for a while and you create this amazing solid friendship and then the person that phase of their life is over so they leave again so in terms of friendships with somebody who's lived here for a while like myself more and more my friends are our local people people who live here with a family here you know my husband's friends and people who have a business here or so you know there's of course like a mix of immigrants here and a mix of people who are from here and my it's important to involve everybody in your friendship it's important to learn spanish to really make friends with people who are here to not only keep your friends in sort of like the immigrant niche of the town i've had thoughts about the future right about buying a piece of land here about you know creating my family making it bigger and but still sometimes i feel in all honesty like a little homesickness towards my home so i'm not really sure where it is if it's gonna work you know somehow a little bit there and a little bit here my dream for the future of course would be to have my own yoga studio and wellness place right so those are more like the thoughts for the future i haven't really made concrete plans like i can't see it so clearly at this point for sure but i don't have any problems being here well i came here and i spoke italian so learning spanish was quite easy i never studied it i just sort of learned it speaking with friends and the people i when i first came here i lived with a costa rican family over in kabuya and nobody spoke english so i spoke fluent spanish about six months later so i never studied it formally but there are really good courses here i know the people who run them and i have seen people speak spanish yet again one has to make friends with people who don't speak english because a lot of people will answer you in english or if you only make friends with foreigners who live here you'll only be speaking english so i've seen both i've seen people learn spanish real fast but i've also seen people here for 20 years who don't really speak proper spanish please visit our best travel gear page on the living overseas dot tv website the link is in the description below when you buy through our link we may receive a small affiliate commission there is no added cost for you and it helps support our channel so that we can keep bringing you free videos so yoga for me along with everything else that is wellness in costa rica well especially montezuma because this is where i've experienced it it's it's a way for people to come and create a very profound and very fast change so we get people from all walks of life we get people who have recently gone through a divorce or a change in their work or just really stressful periods maybe a big loss something life-shifting so a lot of people come here when they're sort of met their tipping edge and i feel like costa rica because of its neutrality and because of its beautiful nature is very cleansing and very nurturing that way so you come here you're in this weather there's no tension in your muscles because everything is humid and warm and soft you eat fresh fruit every day you move yourself through yoga practice and breathing you go surfing you walk these long beautiful walks on the beach to the waterfall so it kind of keeps you in perspective like you're here now this is what you're doing the nature is so close to you you're in it the yoga studios don't have mirrors they don't have walls and you see people just healing really quickly and they you see their change their faces changed you know they're eating fresh fruit every morning they use their body and they're extroverted because you know they're not in their head so much there there's so much to see so the wellness business here is really something that is very thriving and i love it working down here in a drop-in studio because we get every kind of person here so there's a mixture of people who book to stay here for a week and there's a mixture of just people who come sometimes there's people who come from one class and then they want to stay drop everything and stay for a month right so you really see that transformation and that's really one of the magic things about costa rica because i believe that this country has that energy it has this neutrality there's peacefulness there's no there's not so much pain in the land here there's an openness that people experience when they come here and when they practice some people come here and you know they'll drop into one class one doesn't have to be part of a retreat or anything you can just show up and they'll fall in love with it and they'll stay for a month for a week but i've also seen people who are more restless right who come to montezuma and they take sort of one look at it ah small town too small all there is to do is beach walks and and you know being one with nature and that i'll move on right so i've seen that too for sure there's sort of like a sort of like a half half but most people who are looking for a healing experience an experience in nature and a very quiet experience this is where to go so the sound we're hearing right now is a howler monkey they're very peaceful monkeys they usually stay up in the trees they're about this big black and they have this guttural sound sometimes they make it if they're you know mating or if they're if there's a storm coming you'll know it because they'll make sounds if there's an earthquake coming they'll make the howling sound when i first came i thought there were ghosts so i got scared but they're really sweet the positive aspect is the access to fresh food it's really nice you can get fresh vegetables and get really nice ones too at least you know once a week at the vegetable market there's a lot of diversity you can meet all kinds of people from all walks of life here things are easy to do transportation is easy if you do your research right you can get from one place to the other real easily even though the roads are bumpy you know things are connected think people will help you you'll never really be lost because you can ask anybody people are trustworthy so that's definitely the temperature is one of the big pluses you know i come from a place that's overcast most days of the year so just the water is always warm so it's just really pleasant i feel safe here in montezuma you know there will be i've never been a victim to violence or even theft right but there has been moments where you know there have been reported a few assaults right and usually it's not people who live here it's usually people who might come from you know other places a little more you know scarier places in san jose or somewhere they'll come here for the weekend there might be an episode but recently it's been there's no no episodes of it right here in montezuma but one has to use their common sense right like i say the less you have with you is better you don't have to worry about it you don't have to think about it to walk here a night safe which is not the case in san jose so please don't do it in the city but i feel safe here i know where to ask for help if i feel um in danger i ride a motorbike here nothing ever happens the downsides is the infrastructure the the bureaucracy sometimes takes a long time you know the if you social security is it's very nice that there is social security but there's definitely a lack of funds to maintain it at a standard where everybody can get the services they need when they need it you know a lot of things are behind like computer systems in the government right so things take a longer time if you need a an extract of a paper of yours or if you need to apply for immigration right but things i've seen a steady improvement in the last years that i've been here so every time i renew my immigration i see the office has upgrades you know so there is like there is a goal set and you can move to it um another one of the downsides about costa rica is for me a very passionate subject is sort of the segregation between foreigners and the locals and it's very sort of obvious at times that there is this inequality right i think it's really important that people who move here or consider moving here or profit in any way off of costa rica there's sometimes a balance between a business owner might come and say okay i'm doing a lot for the community because i offer jobs right but in my point of view that's not enough right because they're also here and they earn money because the salary this might be touchy subject for some people but they're here they're earning money and the salary is lower than it might be somewhere else right so you're here in this paradise yes you are giving people opportunity and jobs yes they probably are grateful to you but you're still the minimum wage it's not very high like consider how much you're paying consider if you would be able to live 600 a month if that's what you ethically feel like you should be paying to somebody you know if you give them bonuses help them out in some way help the school something but it there's a very sort of like almost uh colonialistic or imperialistic sort of vibe sometimes and some outright discriminatory comments you know people will use languages like that so tico which means it's not really up to standard with something so those kind of things really get to me here sometimes and it is hard to integrate into a culture where things are not as square and as perfect as back home i know it's frustrating also for myself sometimes but we're in somebody else's country right we're not if we can't handle it we have to go the tip that i that i want to give everybody especially people who are just coming here on vacation is to not plan too much ahead of time because you might find now there's booking.com apps there is you know you can plan everything razor sharp and have everything organized but then it happens a lot in montezuma that people come to book two nights and wow it's so beautiful but we have to go somewhere else because we've booked a hotel we've paid for it already so i think traveling in costa rica things are unless you come in like the super high season like december or april most other times of the year you can come and just kind of play it by ear and i would take it easy like you're coming here to experience the pura vida lifestyle you might as well start you know with your own travel planning because and things are very easy going like one doesn't have to book the bus ahead of time it doesn't have to book the shuttle ahead of time one doesn't have to book each hotel it's good to do your research but to do the research that really counts like what kind of money do i need to bring what's the exchange rate right what kind of bug spray do i need to bring those kind of things right so if i would think about moving here i would you know if you're a yogi or if you're a wellness person i would go to a place that sounds cool and go to the local yoga studio talk to some people experience it you know spend a little bit of time make some friends people are always open for for new friendships here and get the vibe for a place and then you can consider it and while you're here you know you might want to talk to somebody if they know a connection of where you could rent a house right i i don't see how it's possible to get like the full picture of how it is before you come here so i would recommend coming and sort of scoping it out so with the yoga jobs a lot of times i see studio owners who get a little frustrated because people come they really want the job they fight for the job and then after a little while you know they they might want to leave again so if you want a job you in most places i've seen they might hire you if you commit to stay a little longer time here we don't really have seasonal jobs offered at this studio a lot of places will offer like a volunteer or seasonal job so you can apply specifically for that i think that there's definitely more yoga teachers than there are jobs and a lot of yoga retreat places they might host you if you bring your own group so that's a good idea to do as well you got to stick around and you got to really integrate you know show them that you're dedicated to your own practice and come to class and if they ask you to sub just do it and maybe after a while that's how it happened for me i taught for free i taught a community class every week and after about a year it just happened to be open and that's when i took the position please remember to subscribe and click the bell so you'll be notified when the next video is up please give us a like and leave a comment it helps support our channel so we can keep bringing you videos like this

Channel: Living Overseas TV

Views: 5,792

Keywords: yoga retreat, yoga teacher, expat interviews, living in costa rica, moving to costa rica, retirement in costa rica, retiring in costa rica, Montezuma Costa Rica, Cost of Living in Costa Rica, Dating in Costa Rica, Yoga Jobs in Costa Rica, Yoga Instructor in Costa Rica, Expat Interview Costa Rica, is costa rica safe to travel alone, is it safe to travel alone as a woman, single woman traveling alone, living in costa rica as an american, living in costa rica 2020, Living Abroad

Id: y_7BNjlSsIQ

Length: 28min 0sec (1680 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020