By Ivo Henfling
 

In my first years of living in Costa Rica, I was always surprised that Costa Ricans have an amazing quality that most of us don’t have: patience. Over the years, I have learned there is more freedom of speech in Costa rica than in many other countries.

Costa Ricans have a huge quality that most of us foreigners don’t have. They can stand in line at the bank in Costa Rica for hours, no matter how long it takes or how bad the service is, they can stand stoically in line forever. I don’t know if it’s my Dutch up bring or that I am just an impatient person, but I generally cannot put up with it longer than 10 minutes. My wife does most such things that need standing in line. She is Costa Rican though she seems to starts complaining too. Even my 24 year old son is getting impatient. Impatience seems to be contagious. But if we get to change those things, everything would be just like we were back home again. It’s all about balance, and that is what we look for when relocating to another country.

By Ivo Henfling

Most Costa Rica realtors are afraid to write about topics like home invasions, robberies, squatters, expensive prices in the supermarkets and many other negative things you will read and hear about Costa Rica and most other places you might be researching to retire to. Most of you who follow my blogs, know by now that I am not. I just think people should be aware of what is going on around them and it will make them be a tad more careful.

The shooting neighbor

To start this blog, I want to call your attention to something that happened a couple of weeks ago: a good neighbor heard some noise ourside, found out his neighbors were being robbed and shot one home invaders dead, wounded another and saved his neighbors. Oh my God, I hear some of you say, how can anyone live there? Is it that dangerous to live over there? Where is this place?

By Ivo Henfling

Fantastic ideas and lots of dreams, they might all come true one day.

A very dear client, who years ago had planned an assisted living facility in Costa Rica, sent me a link that gave the recently released Cost of Care survey from Genworth Financial looked at the average prices of home care providers, adult day health care facilities, assisted living facilities and nursing homes across the USA, and unsurprisingly, found that there are staggering variations between states but all very expensive to Costa Rican standards.

Years ago, my client bought with his wife and several partners, a beautiful 300+ acre farm in the middle of nowhere from their preferred GoDutch Realty agent, with the fantastic idea of starting an assisted living facility on this land. Costa Rican governmental permitting and other circumstances slowed down their project and even before they got to completing it, their panorama changed completely.

By Rudy Matthews

My son plays on the Alajuela youth soccer program. He is 11 years old and really looks forward to Saturday practices and games on Sunday. There are eighteen players and he has two coaches.

I have never been around Costa Rican parents a lot and the team has given me a chance to observe and get to know the parents more. Most of the parents do not have cars and you will see them walking to practice with their son or getting off a bus and in some cases a taxi.

The point is they make it to practice with their son one way or the other.

By Ivo Henfling

As some of you know, I bought a condo in Jaco from a developer who did a good job in Escazu, Joshua ten Brink of Desarrollos Naturales. When the crisis hit, the bank thought that most of Joshua's buyers were not capable of closing, so they didn't give Joshua any more money to finish his project. Desarrollos Naturales and the bank are fighting each other, both forgetting that many people have all their savings tied up in this project and only thinking of their own interests. Joshua didn't want to tell me who all the other real estate buyers were, so I started my own private little war against him to try to get in touch with the rest of the people. I have done so online, just like I am writing this and many people have found me.

By Isabelle Jones

Last Thursday, our 20 year old son Taylor had a medical emergency in San Jose due to a seizure. That day, we found out that the medical emergency care in Costa Rica is very good and affordable, if you can get to the hospital in time.

A good friend needed help in getting his new ID number to reflect on his new drivers’ license, so even though we live in Atenas we were in San Jose for this diligence. Howard, my husband, Taylor and I were driving from the license office to a school in Heredia, an accident and protest on the highway to the airport made us go a different route than normal. Our son had complained of a severe headache that morning but he took a couple of Ibuprofen and wanting to make sure he ate well, we were just discussing stopping for lunch.