We've made a pretty big decision... We are going to immigrate to Costa Rica within the next 12 - 18 months. You might ask, "Why on earth would you do that?" Well, one of the biggest reasons is cost of living; we can live a very comfortable life on $24K a year in Costa Rica. Another reason is lifestyle; "Pura Vida!" - life in CR is relaxed... if you can't get to something today, there's always mañana. Climate; in the province of Guanacaste, the temperature averages between a night time low of 72 and a day time high of 90. The countryside is fantastically beautiful, the people are extremely friendly and helpful, we've always enjoyed our visits there and we want a new adventure.
Margaret's kids have been incredibly supportive which makes it SO much easier for Margaret, I'm very thankful for that.
So, we've made "The Decision"... Now what do we do?!! Learn Spanish! I know enough to get us by when we travel there and many people in the service industries speak English but we'll have to do some immersive language studies for the first few months we are there.
Another thing we realize we have to do is DOWN-SIZE... dramatically! And quite frankly, that's something we are looking forward to. We have had nearly fourteen years together to gather stuff... LOTS of stuff. Plus everything we brought into this relationship with us. Now we've got around 14 months to get rid of it all, or at least a vast majority of it. We will be taking very little with us when we go... pictures, some clothes (not nearly all of them, no need for winter clothes!), our laptop computers, my camera, our fishing gear, maybe some of my hand tools... not too much more, we are trying to keep the "taking" list as short as possible. There's so much of our stuff that we haven't touched in years... and some things we haven't touched since we moved into this house almost 14 years ago... I don't think we'll be needing any of that in CR!
Margaret had an idea to figure out what to take... pretend we have 30 minutes to take whatever we need... what would it be? Hmmmm... do I get to plan for this 30 minutes if not I'll spend most of my time trying to find whatever it is I want to take!
We're not taking a car; after accounting for shipping and customs charges it's just not cost effective. We'll sell our cars here and buy a car once we get there. No need to take any furniture; we'll be renting for at least the first year and many rentals come furnished, besides, furniture made of non-native woods wont last. I am quite fond of some of my kitchen knives, and our Le Creuset pots and pans! Those make the "taking" list.
Should we take our camping gear? We might want to go camping in CR and we just bought that new tent and stove! But in CR it's not difficult to find small cabinas for $20/night so unless we want to go somewhere really off the beaten path it makes more sense to have a real roof over our head (it is the tropics after all) and not have to worry about drying out the camping equipment before packing it away. Camping gear goes on the "not-taking" list...
There's lots of other stuff we will need to get rid of... I'm not really fond of the idea of holding a Garage sale. but one of Margaret's friends does Estate Sales and has suggested we do an estate type sale of whatever household belongings we don't get rid of with other methods - that's something we are considering.
One of the hardest things is going to be finding good homes for our horses, cats and Poppet (a very loving stray dog we found on the street about 7 years ago, emaciated and dragging a 12' steel chain. Poppet still thinks she's starving and will eat just about anything), thank goodness we don't still have goats! We'll take Sage with us of course. Tracy has said she will take our hens and even the roosters - but I don't know if Hugh knows about the roosters yet. They are really nice roosters, Hugh!
Well, I guess I have to publish this blog at some point.... more to come.
