How and why did we choose Atenas, Costa Rica?

How we decided on Costa Rica will be a post unto itself in the future, but once we narrowed it down to Costa Rica, how did we choose Atenas of all places?

For those of you who still don’t know where we are on the planet, we are here.

Costa Rica is a small country but there were still many choices regarding where we could live. We considered for awhile to live on the West Coast by the beach but both of us had fallen in love with the Central Valley. We had stayed at Leaves and Lizards (close to the Arenal Volcano) and one of the owners, Debbie, provided us with a contact at a good school in Atenas called Colina Azul. Since finding a school for the kids was one of the top priorities, the rest just fell into place from there. (Well, “fell into place” makes light of all of the research, e-mails, and hair-pulling that went on during the year but anyway…)

Atenas, Costa Rica is a small, friendly, quiet town with an agricultural base, great climate, friendly people, a good multi-national community base and anything we don't have here in Atenas is just a short drive away (we are only a half hour from San José, the capital). Some of the things that we have here:

• 3 major banks (Banco Nacional, Banco de Costa Rica, Banco Popular), with at least 5 ATMs
• 4 larger sized grocery stores (all these accept debit and credit cards) and lots of smaller ones
• 1 gas station
• 1 gourmet food store
• 2 health food stores
• 4 butcher shops
• 4 pharmacies
• A post office
• A library
• 2 gyms
• 4 doctors, a new 24-hour clinic, a private ambulance/emergency service with English speaking doctors and attendants
• Several dentists
• Several veterinarians
• 3 equestrian centers
• 3 cycle shops
• An ice cream shop
• Several Internet cafés

And, there is high-speed Internet available in most of Atenas and outlying areas.

The Atenas climate is world famous (at least for those who read National Geographic magazine). The temperature does not get very hot and never cold. It is the steady, even, warmth and humidity that is perfect for most people. If you like it cooler or warmer, Atenas includes several mountain ranges and you can go up or down a bit until you find an area that is perfect for you. It rains enough here to keep things green but not as much as in other areas where it can rain for days at a time. Here in the "rainy season" it usually rains for a couple hours in the afternoon and is cleared up by dinner time. During the "worst" part of the rainy season here in Atenas (usually in October), it may actually rain almost every day for several hours for a whole week.

One last thing: If you like coffee, some of the best coffee (and least expensive, I might add) is grown and processed right here in Atenas!

Anybody who knows us knows that we love coffee.

Costa Rica tops list of 'happiest' nations

On Léah’s first trip to Costa Rica in April of this year, she asked, “why are the people so happy here?” There was clearly something that struck her about the seemingly out-of-the-ordinary degree of happiness of the locals. CNN just ran a story on that very topic; you can read it here.

Indoor/outdoor living

We are quickly seeing that Costa Rica is all about indoor/outdoor living. In the house that we are currently renting, the division between the inside and outside of the house is pretty much blurred. In Victoria, the kids would always ask if they could head outdoors; here, there is no need to ask because our setup is like being outside all of the time. We just had to remind Naimah today that it is one thing to pee in nature but she shouldn’t do it on the deck. :)

Of course, whenever the outdoors is easily accessible, it is often easy for those who live outdoors to make their way indoors; hence the reason why Mélanie reminded me this morning to check my bowl when I took it out of the cupboard. I definitely wouldn’t want to be eating my cereal with this guy inside:

Villa Picaflora: Bali-style

This is the second time that we have packed up the kids and moved over 5,000 KM to another location. The first time, we sold our house in Montréal, Quebec and moved to Victoria, BC with Léah (almost 3 years old at the time) and Gabriel (merely 8 months old). This time, we packed up Léah (nearly 8 years old), Gabriel (5 years old), and Naimah (nearly 4 years old) to move to Atenas, Costa Rica – over 5,000 KM south of Victoria, BC. As if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, we decided to move to Atenas without ever having visited the town. Hey, if it has been voted as “best climate in the world” by National Geographic magazine, how bad can it be, right?

Since we had never been to Atenas, we needed to find a place to live by using the Internet. This required quite a bit of research and many back-and-forth e-mails with Dennis, our real estate agent in Atenas (who we found on the Internet through a post on Craigslist). In the end, we are very happy with the property that we ended up booking. Here are some pictures.

Ten huge bags actually do fit in a minivan

We have finally arrived in Costa Rica. We spent 2.5 weeks in Montréal with our family and then took a direct flight from Toronto to San José.

It has been a hectic few months packing up our house in Victoria, BC and then trying to fit everything we need into only ten fifty-pound bags. You can’t take too many Barbies or Playmobil items when you are dealing with those limitations.

When trying to limit the items that we were going to take with us, ten bags doesn’t seem like very much but when you are finally lugging them through an airport, they definitely look like a lot. When we were checking in at the airport in Montréal, two young guys within earshot remarked to each other in French that, “they are going to fill the plane with their bags”.

The kids are great travelers at this point (being born into this family, they don’t really have a choice) and the flights were pretty smooth. We were only asked about twenty times, “are we there yet?”, but, you can’t blame them because we were all pretty excited to finally arrive.

We were nervous to go through customs in San José because this time we weren’t merely tourists arriving for a two week trip. However, besides having to lift up our two younger kids for the customs official to be able to match them up with their passport pictures, we weren’t even asked a question.

At the baggage claim, we were happy that nine out of the ten bags made it (a better average than we have had recently just flying within Canada). We had booked a “microbus” in advance to be able to carry five passengers plus tons of luggage but unluckily, the company that we had rented with does not honor reservations so a last minute change of plans had us renting a minivan. Fortunately, we pulled out one row of seats and everything was able to be crammed inside. (Ironically, the one box that didn’t make it allowed this to be possible.) With everyone packed in the car, we set off to drive to Atenas (more info here), a small town 30 minutes from San José that none of us had ever even been to.