Product Description

In October, 2000, the author and his wife moved from California to Costa Rica to begin a new life in a new country. Martin had a theory that retiring to a foreign country would present so many challenges as to make it impossible to fall into a rut, to become bored, and eventually depressed as happens to so many retirees. It appears as though his theory was a correct one. At Home in Costa Rica: An Adventure in Living the Good Life is the story of how Martin and Robin gradually adapted to their new country, and tells a fascinating tale of the trials and tribulations of learning a new way of life and a new language, of making unusual friends, of building homes, of rehabilitating animals, of surviving the machinations of alien institutions bureaucracies, of adjusting their first-world pace and needs to those of an emerging country, and much more. Told in an anecdotal style, based on letters they've been sending home for three and a half years, At Home in Costa Rica is filled with funny and touching stories about re-learning how to live in one of the most beautiful, peaceful, and stable Democracies in the world. The book is ideal for anyone who has either gone through this wonderful and at times trying process, for anyone who is contemplating living the expatriate's life, or for anyone who enjoys reading about life in other countries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #268526 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Customer Reviews

Great Book about making the change
This is a great book talking about a couples experiences making the move from the states to Costa Rica. Building two homes. It talks about the upsides and the problems they encountered along the way. I found it very entertaining. Kind of brings you back home to Costa Rica. Enjoyed hearing the stories of daily life in paradise as well as the pitfalls along the way. The book gives you a real feel of this couples experience of adapting to a new country. Not a retirement book but one that is very entertaining for those infatuated with life in Costa Rica.

Pura Vida!!

out of date and limited information
The book is an interesting read if one skips over the lengthy sections devoted to bat rescue but it is very limited in terms of useful information and it has not been kept up to date - not updated in past 5 years. It is based on letters they wrote to friends in the states and this influenced the level of detail provided. This was not later added to so the amount of "how to" advice or even what to consider or what to avoid doing is largely absent.

A much better book, in its 9th revision, is the book Choose Cost Rica by John Howells. In Howells' book he provides detail about the logistics of moving to Costa Rica, getting furniture there or buying it in country, phone service, internet access, and staying in touch with the states, and so forth. Even the overview is much broader and more detailed with information on rainfall by month by region and temperatures for example which is really helpful and better than the tourist oriented books and websites that lump everything together.

The books on retiring seem to give an overview of different regions which is also where the Rice book falls short. He starts off with their building a house along the Pacific coast but no information on other areas he and his wife considered or what trade-offs were involved or even in hindsight what they would have done differently with their move to Cost Rica, building their first house on the coast and their second house in the central valley.

useful but overpriced relative to other guides
The book is interesting in that it describes the experiences of a couple settling in Costa Rica and working to integrate themselves into the country and its culture. The information provided is very general in nature as it was compiled from letters the couple sent to people in the USA and little effort was made to expand on any of the topics by doing research. For example they mention that after several years they decided to move from the house they built at the coast to a farm that was closer to the hospitals and shopping areas near the capital and that they selected a architect based in San Jose. No information is provided as to how they selected the architect or having built a house on the coast what mistakes they would not have made if they had known more and sharing that information with the reader.

Many pages are devoted to the author's wife and her experiences with raising a infant bat and later with the subsequent care of other bats which I found neither all that interesting and irrelevant to a book that purports to provide information for people interested in moving to Costa Rica. It seems to have been added as filler which had there been an editor would have been edited out of the book.

The author undoubtedly has a great deal of useful information that would be relevant for others contemplating or actually making a move to Costa Rica, even if it is on what not to do, but this information is still largely in his head as he has not bothered to commit this to paper. There has also been no effort to update information that was accurate in the 2000-2003 timeframe, such as in getting permanent residency, availability of telephone and internet access services, medical care, insurance, etc. but has undoubtedly changed in the past 6-10 years.

It is unfortunate that Don Rice has been either unable or unwilling to update this book and to edit out sections that are not of general interest to people planning to live in Costa Rica. Its relevancy has diminished with each passing year and provides less and less value for the reader's dollar.