In case you missed it, be sure to read Part 1: The Build Up. Part 2: The Reality.
The Dreamers vs the Doers
Here in Costa Rica I still see a chunk of North Americans living here who are stressed and not completely happy. Many are running away from their lives and running from something they don’t want to face back home. In fact, a common question amongst ex-pats down here is, “what are you running from?”
Others are traveling yogis living out of a shoe box getting odd jobs to try and make things work. After a year or two, they run out of options and go back home.
There are also many retired people who live here. But I didn’t want to wait until my kids were grown up to live my life.
I’ve also seen many other retreat center owners who don’t know about business or sales and marketing. And then they struggle working endlessly to make ends meet. I didn’t want that either.
My dream was to be financially successful with young children living abroad in Costa Rica following my dream and contributing to the wellbeing of the world. Was that too much to ask??
I googled “profitable retreat centers for sale in Costa Rica.” I didn’t want to build my own from scratch. Too long. I didn’t want to start a business from scratch either. We had saved up enough that we could make a good down payment on a piece of property.
Many properties came up in my search. I started calling and researching. From the very beginning, this property called “Tierra de Suenos” caught my eye. So did some other properties. I started talking to the owner of Tierra de Suenos and their asking price was too much, so I stopped considering it.
But the owner kept writing me and insisted that they could work with us and insisted that we come down and visit. So I took my family on a trip to Costa Rica, with a 2 yr old and a 10 month old.
Our Welcome to Costa Rica
We arrived at the airport in the evening in Costa Rica and needed to rush our kids to bed. Within the first few minutes of leaving the airport, both Callie and I felt independently from each other that we were going to be living in Costa Rica. Callie felt the warmth of the air (from growing up in Edmonton.) I saw the drivers were quite decent (compared to Peru and Egypt) and felt this was a place I could raise my family.
We visited the first center for a few days and it was great, but not quite right for us. Truth be told, the main reason for coming was to look at Tierra de Suenos, even though we had other properties to see.
As we left the first property, we jumped into our rental car and within the first 20 minutes of driving in Costa Rica, we had a flat tire. We ran over a nail. Ugh!!
We jumped out of our car and grabbed the jack to fix the tire – right in time for the afternoon downpour. In the midst of fixing the tire, the tropical downpour started. And it wasn’t like Vancouver rain which is a slow drizzle. Within a few seconds we were soaked to the bone. And we had a 2 yr old and a 10 month old waiting patiently for us inside the car on the side of the Costa Rican highway.
We got the tire replaced and jumped back into the car. Just in time to get stuck in traffic with an accident in front of us during the downpour. We were only 20 min away from our next destination before having the flat tire. We waited 45 min in traffic to get past one spot.
After that, we promptly got lost. We ended up turning around multiple times, asking for directions. We learned the hard way that Costa Rica doesn’t have real addresses. Their actual addresses are 50 meters north of XYZ landmark, like a school or bank. There are no numbering, no street names and no signs.
I thought Google Maps was working for me, but it just doesn’t work in Costa Rica. And on top of that, a creek was flooding over its banks making one road impassable that was a principal road to our destination. After a few hours of driving in circles I popped into a McDonald’s parking lot for some sanity and familiarity.
We called some people where we were staying and said we asked them to come and get us or we weren’t going to be able to arrive. So after another 30 minutes, they came and got us. Luckily, the hamburgers kept our kids from crying (oh, the things you’ll do as parents to keep your kids from crying.)
More Adversity
We were staying at a friend’s house for a few nights before driving over to Tierra de Suenos. I was loving my time there and enjoying their hospitality, but Callie was a ball of stress with the children. Both of them usually slept with cribs, and there were no cribs at their house – just two queen sized beds.
Eliana kept rolling off the bed at night and falling onto the tile. So we placed pillows all around her bed. This helped brace her fall, but didn’t help us to get any more sleep as she kept rolling off the bed. Callie was also adjusting to new food as were the kids. The kids were also off their schedule with traveling, so Callie was worried about getting our kids fed and sleeping.
In addition, the big rainstorm had washed out part of the aqueduct stopping all city water from coming to the area. So we couldn’t flush the toilet where we were at and our hosts had to come clean it out every day for us – which added to Callie’s stress.
Callie felt that if we got a flat tire in 20 minutes of driving in Costa Rica, got lost the next 20 minutes after that, then how would we complete a 5 hour drive with 2 small kids in a foreign country? To her, it seemed impossible to get to Tierra de Suenos and she was ready to drive straight to the airport and go back home to Canada to get our kids back into their routine.