We Got Robbed! | Answering YOUR Questions About Living in Costa Rica

you guys have been asking us a lot of questions about what it's like moving to Costa Rica living in Costa Rica building a house in Costa Rica and living in an Eco community in an intentional Eco community in Costa Rica so we are going to be answering those questions in this video [Music] we get this question a lot actually from family from friends from you guys out there why did we pick Costa Rica so we've traveled to 60 plus countries around the world yeah how did we settle on this one tiny little country it was like a respective nature quality of food being able to grow things there it was the fun and the excitement of the country there's beaches all over the country there's waterfalls all over the country there's Adventure all over the country the Latin culture we which we both love right we both speak Spanish so so we love that and it's also not too far away from home from like Toronto or Canada five hour flight or just over direct mixed with now there's like a whole Community element to Costa Rica just made us pick it as home what kind of timeline are you looking at for your Airstream home it will be done September yeah so like in a month and a half now yeah and we started in May beginning of June yeah it was 15 weeks from breaking ground to completion it's cool that we get to design a house it's a pretty amazing process it can be frustrating and it can feel expensive because like you're kind of paying for everything up front rather than like having a mortgage and then well that's what we're doing little by little by little some people do still take out like a mortgage or a loan but I mean you start seeing all the costs of everything right of every single thing in the house yeah so yeah it it can feel more expensive but it's not how much does it cost for a lot and to build a basic house in Costa Rica that entirely depends on where you buy your land if you're buying it close to the coast you know you could be spending uh a hundred thousand dollars for like half an acre of land and that's just the land and there's nothing else around there's no facilities there's like probably not neighbors there's nothing you still got to build a house then if you want to be like further away land gets cheaper and cheaper further away from the coast further away from like major cities or highways but it's going to be like tough to get to that land now if you buy in a community you're going to have way more services so like in our community we have Fiber Optic internet all the community aspects we have the farm built in we have huge swimming pool we have a Rec Center we have we're going to be building a restaurant there's there's like a workspace so there's all these extra things our land was a hundred and thirty thousand us that's for half an acre but it also comes with all this extra stuff it's pretty good value in in my mind and I mean I've heard of people you know getting a little tiny one bedroom in a piece of land like half acre for like 60 000 but again you're like away from everybody you're like in the in the jungle off of a bumpy dirt road um so it really varies just like it probably varies where you live right now it costs between 60 dollars to like a hundred and twenty dollars let's say per square foot now it can be even cheaper than that and in fact our structure was cheaper than that because it was pretty bare we we weren't putting walls we weren't building bedrooms most of it was empty space so I think we paid about 45 dollars a square foot if you go on the high end yeah if you want like you want marble you want everything beautiful you want thick glass you want teak wood and yeah you want everything stuff it's gonna cost you 120 150 a square foot do you think it's possible to live in Costa Rica without knowing the language yeah of course possible yeah I mean yeah it's especially in Costa Rica there's a lot of people that speak English we know people that have been there for like 20 years and they iOS yes if you have like a friend there that's a local it's much more complicated to share ideas or to crack jokes it's just way easier if you learn the language I also think it's if you're going to live in a place where the the language is different from your own the first the first language um that it's it's a respect thing to learn the language you're living there you want to be as immersed in the culture as possible Right like why else are you moving to another country like you want to be part of it I mean part of it is being able to speak the language that they speak there also Kai is becoming like semi-fluent in Spanish it's incredible how quickly she's picking up the language not just learning the words and understanding the words but her accent is like and her rolling of the art is just like how is the safety in terms of crime Costa Rica is generally a very safe country they don't even have a military in the country when we're driving around we you know don't really see homeless people I feel like I see more homeless people you know in Toronto or going to New York or California like in these First World countries in terms of crime it's more petty theft there's not really like dangerous crazy crimes that you see you know here in in North America this is also based on our personal experience and what we hear from friends and other people I've never felt unsafe in the country and we've been traveling all over including San Jose the capital which tends to be Capital capitals of different countries tends to be where most of the crime is happening um walking around there I've never felt like in danger we did have a situation where someone did break into our Airstream and take something they took a generator because our Airstream was empty and the only thing that was in the value was our generator they didn't break anything they didn't break any windows or anything um but they got in and then took the generator and left yeah but now there's great security and we're gonna have a security system of our own so um I think that's really important because like as see I mentioned petty theft is a thing we know many people who have had people break into their houses when they're not there and take things a lot of places you know they have good people and bad people and things happen everywhere yeah Costa Rica's overall a safe place uh the medical attention we haven't had many issues arise where we needed serious medical attention we've heard from our friends in Costa Rica that have generally it depends on what hospital you go to there's some really good hospitals and then there's some like run-down hospitals so make sure you do your research you know where to go in case of an emergency I mean the best hospitals tend to be in San Jose yeah we're about like 40 minutes when there's no traffic away but I mean if something major happens like a snake bite we gotta get to that we gotta go to San Jose hopefully we don't have to deal with that um but in terms of like we I've got a lot of dental stuff done which is very affordable there and they're very good at it we've done some medical stuff for ourselves for Kai yeah Kai had some rashes on her and like immediately went to the doctor they did tests they called in you know someone to do blood samples we got our results right away immediately there is government-funded public health for local Costa Ricans or even expats that are now residents and want to pay into it it's called Kaka so you have a monthly fee and then you get access to health care but there's also like the the Private health care which is very affordable we're not residents there yet so whenever we have an issue we have to pay to go see the doctor or pay to get a checkup or pay to get an x-ray and it's really not that much yeah I mentioned I was at the doctor for an hour and a half for like a checkup and it cost me 35 000 Colones which is about 60 70. Canadian how much does the solar cost that we are going to be putting on our Airstream jungle home that's a good question I'm going to save that for another video because I don't have all the final details yet of what we're going to be putting in how many batteries how much cable I'm gonna need how many panels I want so that's a great question and I'm going to do a whole video just on solar how do you travel with Atlas to Costa Rica he's actually a support animal so I'm able to bring him on the plane with me I deal with anxiety so I have been able to make Atlas a support animal but he's also under the weight limit for a lot of airlines to be brought aboard anyway I would just have to pay an extra fee to have them there I think it's like between 50 to 100 for an international flight to bring your dog on board if he wasn't if he wasn't a supporting animal yeah yeah so um then you would have to be like in a carrier the whole time whereas now he can just like sit on my lap if he wants to or just On The Ground by my feet how big is our Eco community and how many families it's 180 Acres there's 144 Lots how many different countries are there again 30 over 30. yeah that's amazing right there's going to be so many different cultures and influences and languages and celebrations yeah yeah colors of people and and it's just it's going to be a really spectacular Community now moving to my phone because some more questions have come in recently in the meantime I had a few questions that people sent me one was like what's one of your biggest highlights of living in Costa Rica and what frustrates you the most highlights of living in Costa oh my gosh the food the fruit that being able to grow anything because Costa Rica has 12 microclimates you can literally grow like anything there the endless Adventures it's it's a small country but it's got everything you could drive to the ocean you can drive to the mountains you can see a volcano you can go ziplining you can go white water rafting you can relax on the beach like it really is endless um the downsides things that can kill you in Costa Rica like snakes so that's something that I have to always think about and she like our daughter can't run into the bush like she can here in Canada it's not the same or our dog like I'm constantly like okay you can't go here you have to put your shoes on here like it's just it's just a different way of living there I'm frustrated at how like slow things take sometimes yeah it's kind of like I know it's not an island but it's like Island time right it's things take way longer than they should going to the bank that's easy two hours you got a ticket number and sit in a queue and that's frustrating right is there any downside so far to living in a community-based environment I mean there's going to be extreme opinions in any group of people but in the community you kind of have to listen to all those opinions and and hear everybody out and sometimes it can be a little much everyone has their own extremes or their values their values that they want to live by it also it makes you a better listener it makes you a better Communicator it's been a learning experience but it's also been so beautiful and the people that we already know part of the community um it feels like family it truly feels like family and it's exactly more actually than I could have imagined living in an intentional Community like this is what we wanted and it it's even more than what I thought it would be there are a ton of questions that we aren't going to get to in this video I'm sure it's long enough but we'll save these questions for another q a video and if you have any more drop them in the comment section Below in this video so that we can use them for the next one thank thank you again for those who did ask the questions

Channel: Kristen & Siya

Views: 28,721

Keywords: costa rica, living in costa rica, downsides of costa rica, moving to costa rica, ecovillage, eco village, eco community, hopscotch the globe

Id: uSw9re6yY9Q

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023