Episode 04 - Let's Talk Costa Rica

Embark with Rita and me on a remarkable expedition, as we reveal the secrets of stretching our retirement dollars in sun-kissed locales. Our latest podcast episode whisks you away to the coasts of Playa Coronado in Panama and then to the rich biodiversity of Costa Rica, where a new visitor policy could signal our next home. Special guests Roy McGinnis and Julie Tallman, veterans of international living, join the conversation, sharing their first-hand impressions of Costa Rica's inviting climate and lifestyle—painting a vivid picture for potential expats like us.

Our travels are not just about the destinations, but the journey in between, and in this chapter, the roads of Costa Rica lead us to unexpected delights. We discuss how a balance between tourist attractions and local culture can enhance the expat experience, reminiscing about the tranquility of a spa day in Fortuna that epitomizes the 'Pura Vida' way of life. There's something about the Costa Rican atmosphere that invites one to slow down and savor the moment, a lesson we're learning to incorporate into our own retirement.

As we ponder the future, we compare the charms and challenges of retiring in Costa Rica versus Mexico, including how to relocate horses across borders. But retirement abroad isn't just about the logistics; it's about 'rewirement', embracing the complexity and excitement of this profound life change. Stay tuned to our unfolding adventure, filled with practical advice, heartfelt reflections, and the joy of discovering how life abroad can redefine the golden years of retirement.

Transcript

Jim Santos: 0:23

Welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita. I'm your host, Jim Santos, and in this podcast series you can follow along as my wife Rita and I work out our crazy plan to outfox the real estate market in the US and actually increase our retirement nest egg by spending the next three years or so living abroad and exploring the world. Are we bold, forward thinking pioneers or just plain nuts? Let's find out together, shall we? Episode 4 let's Talk Costa Rica. Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Travels with Jim and Rita. I'd like to start by thanking everyone for their support. It's been very gratifying the way the audience has been growing. The podcast is now being heard in six different countries, so please keep up the good work, provoke the show on your social media and let's keep the ball rolling. Today should be fun. I'll be catching up with a couple Rita and I met at the International Living Boot Camp in Denver, colorado, last year. They're interested in life abroad and they're at the looking around stage. They recently visited Costa Rica, which is on our ever expanding list of destinations, so we'll be getting their impressions of the country, the first and update on our progress.

Jim Santos: 1:44

We're still in Panama, but we have made the move from Panama City to the private beach community of Playa Coronado. I'm happy to say that we did finish our month in Panama City under budget, spending a total of $2,746.17 out of our $3,000 budget. That total also includes a transfer from the city to the coast, so we think we did pretty well. Now it's going to be a lot harder staying within that goal here at the beach. The main reason is that our accommodations are much more expensive. We're paying just over $600 a week for this condo, so $2,400 of our target $3,000 is gone right there. I do need to point out once again, though, that this trip to Panama was not part of our slow travel plan. We set this up back in July, planning a winter escape. Getting away for 10 weeks to somewhere warm in the US Florida, for example looked like it would cost us between $10,000 to $15,000 just for a small apartment, and really you can't count on the weather in Florida during the winter months. I remember a January week we spent in South Beach that had a few days in the 40s, so instead we decided to spend half of that amount on a Panama getaway, and that part has worked out fine.

Jim Santos: 2:53

Here on the coast is much more laid back than city life, a little cooler too, with daytime temps in the mid 80s rather than the low 90s. It's very quiet here as well, and we can fall asleep listening to the surf instead of traffic. It's an interesting area. We have a great view of the beach in one direction, but mountains in the distance in the other two directions. Everything is very green, very lush, with plenty of flowers as well. I'm pretty sure we'll survive another 5 weeks here just fine, even if we bust the budget a bit.

Jim Santos: 3:24

Alright. Now onto our topic today Costa Rica. In planning our slow travel, costa Rica is already on our radar, partly because of their new policy that allows visitors to stay 180 days, just on your passport. Costa Rica has a stable government, a varied ecosystem that they cherish and protect, and we'd have our choice of Caribbean or Pacific beaches, central highlands or the modern city of San Jose. There's a variety of climates, all pretty much well within our comfort range. Joining me today to talk about their recent trip to Costa Rica are Roy McGinnis and Julie Tallman, currently in North Carolina. They're thinking about living overseas and trying to decide where to go and what kind of international lifestyle to go after. As I mentioned, rita and I met them at the IL Denver conference last year, where they introduced themselves as fans of the International Living Podcast that I host. I'm happy to welcome them as fans and our guests on Travels with Jim and Rita Roy. Julie, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us.

Julie Tallman: 4:25

Thank you. Thank you, Jim.

Jim Santos: 4:27

I'm excited to talk to you guys. It's been a while since we last met. Since then, we've been to Eastern Europe and we're in Panama now. What have you guys been up to?

Roy McGinnis: 4:41

Costa Rica most recently.

Julie Tallman: 4:44

So we when are we. The trip to Denver was very educational for us. It really allowed us to explore not only countries but to talk to people that could help us pinpoint areas in countries. We narrowed down our list of five countries that we were interested in to seven while we were in there.

Jim Santos: 5:10

It's supposed to work the other way.

Julie Tallman: 5:12

Yes, but there's a lot to get excited about when you're looking at this. We just decided, we both independently said where do you think we should go this winter? And wrote it down on a piece of paper, and we both came up with Costa Rica. What better place to be in January?

Jim Santos: 5:32

So it's January that you were there.

Julie Tallman: 5:34

Yes, we were there just January 2024.

Jim Santos: 5:37

Okay, so that's, I believe in their dry season, and actually what are the coldest months?

Roy McGinnis: 5:44

they call it the dry season. But you know, we got some misty rain. It was a little Irish feeling there Several days, but it wasn't a deluge or anything.

Julie Tallman: 5:55

Yeah, and what we also learned is that even in their wet season, a lot of the the rains that happen tend to happen during the evenings and overnight. So it gets dark at about 6, 6, 6 30 pm and that tends to be when the rains come in. And it happens a lot overnight. And it it doesn't mean that you're necessarily stuck inside all day.

Jim Santos: 6:22

Yeah, a lot of the tropical areas, the. The difference between the dry season and the wet season is only the frequency, but you're gonna have dry periods during the wet season and rain during the dry season as well. So when did you go? In Costa Rica specifically, jeff. Time to look at a couple of places in the country.

Roy McGinnis: 6:41

We did. We went to. I guess, if you count San Jose, there were five places, but I'm going to let Julie recount them, because she always remembers the Spanish names better than I do.

Julie Tallman: 6:53

So when we were, when we were at the conference, they said it was suggested to us, based on what we were looking for, to check out the area around San. Let's see San Isidro de El Henarel, which is right at the base of the Chiripo Mountains, there to the to the south of San Jose and Toward the Pacific, about an hour away from the beach. So we spent several days there and a beautiful air B&B kind of mother-in-law apartment in a gated community.

Roy McGinnis: 7:35

That was kind of kind of our introduction to the altitude and it wasn't that high, it was only about three thousand thirty one hundred feet, but that makes a big difference in Costa Rica as to what the weather is like, right.

Julie Tallman: 7:50

Yeah, so it was, you know, just really stunningly beautiful and a lot of like waterfalls in the area and, you know, quiet, a lot of incredible bird life. That was our first just sitting around and watching the toucans, and I know Roy had his bird app out and was recording all of the different birds that were in the on the property there. So we spent three days there and and and walking the you know kind of gravel country roads and saying hi to the neighbor cows and Did some horseback riding.

Julie Tallman: 8:28

And we were in a small community that had a it actually had a what would you call it guardhouse at the very start of the X pack community it wasn't gated, but somebody manned that at night and and it was, I Would say, probably about 20, 25 homes in the community and but you know it's kind of right up our alley.

Roy McGinnis: 8:51

We're a little different, I think, from a lot of expats that you know. When we think about going somewhere, we don't really think, oh, let's focus around a city or even a big town. We live in a rural area now. We have horses. That's kind of what we're looking for. So it was. It was really nice. We, we just had a great time. The people were wonderful, our hosts were wonderful, but it did lack a few things. We, we did horseback ride while we were there, and which is what Julie really loves to do and I like to do, but she's really the the expert at it. And the other part of what we're looking for is a place where I can fish and really garden.

Roy McGinnis: 9:30

And there really was a place to fish there. So we ended up the last day we were there, going with our host and hostess down to Domenical and we try to fish some in the ocean and that was not was not great either.

Julie Tallman: 9:46

Yeah, so then our next three nights. We spent three nights there and then we went to the Domenical area for three months. Yeah, first, our three months would have been lovely three nights.

Jim Santos: 9:58

Thinking ahead there, I think that's right, I'm.

Julie Tallman: 10:03

So we were there for three nights, mostly just to do a little tourism, because neither of us really are necessarily thinking that we're going to Park ourselves at the beach. We both like a bit cooler weather and, but that said, roy had never been to Costa Rica and it would be a crying shame not to go to the ocean, right if you and Costa Rica. So we did that and had some wonderful excursions. We went out to onto the Oso Peninsula, the peninsula to the Corcavado National Park, which is the only National Park in Costa Rica that requires that you have somebody who's licensed for that park to take you there.

Julie Tallman: 10:45

So we went by boat and spent the full day, had a really neat interaction with Mama humpback whale and her baby on the way. Yeah, she hung out with us for a while and kept holding her baby up with her face and kept flapping their flippers. Everybody kept saying Hola.

Roy McGinnis: 11:05

Yes, I think about you. Know, costa Rica is, even if you don't see All the myriad of animals and plants, you still see a lot, right, and the park we went to contains two and a half percent of all Biodiversity in the world. Costa Rica has five percent of this park alone has two and a half percent, so pretty amazing. We, you know, we hiked Across a little creek and then into the woods until a huge tree fell and then our guides decided we needed to go to the beach Because they thought we might be squashed. Yeah, but it was great. We came back and at the little Landing zone is where we saw the McCalls and several other beautiful things there.

Jim Santos: 11:49

Yeah, yeah, you know, for people who haven't looked into Costa Rica much, it's, it's not a very big country. It's about just short of 20,000 square miles, so it's actually smaller than West Virginia, you can picture that but it has the greatest biodiversity of any Latin American country. I.

Julie Tallman: 12:08

Yeah, yes, that is. That is my home state, so I can definitely picture that. And, that said, it takes a long time to explore all the little corners of West Virginia too. So, I think you can spend a whole lot of years discovering and discovering in Costa Rica.

Julie Tallman: 12:25

So after that, we I wanted to focus on the the lake area like you're now up near Aranao and so we went to a town just north of Aranao called Nuevo Aranao.

Julie Tallman: 12:41

There was a town called Aranao at one point that is now at the bottom of the lake, that they created there, and when they did that they relocated everybody up to this town called Nuevo Aranao and is on the let's see, that would be the east and north northeast corner of the lake there and it's got about 4,000 people in the town or right around the town there and 20% of them are expats and Several. You know, when we pulled in, I used to live in the Pacific Northwest and it really struck me a lot like being near the Puget Sound when we pulled in, because it's a big lake and you get views from a lot of places and you pull in and the the homes are so cute and so tidy and the town itself has, you know, set a handful of groceries, two or three grocery stores, little mini-marts. They've got probably Eight restaurants or so just right there in the town and then some others scattered around nearby roads and we sort of fell in love with that particular area.

Roy McGinnis: 13:53

It's the. The lake is, of course, for me, promising because of you know, fishing possibilities and we didn't get to explore it that much. It's a fairly good size lake. I mean, it'd be like a really large reservoir here in the States and Kind of have to have a boat. We fished. I fished a little bit from the shore but it gave us a feel, for, you know, as we kind of felt things out, we were getting there at the beginning of the windy season. I guess you would call it it. The north part of the lake is the.

Roy McGinnis: 14:23

Was it kite surfing Mecca of the world or something where people Eastside yeah yeah and and of course wind and fishing don't go together, but but still we had a great time, a lot of great people and really kind of fell in love with the area.

Jim Santos: 14:40

How were you getting around in Costa Rica? Did you take buses, republic transportation or did you rent a car while you were there?

Julie Tallman: 14:47

We rented an SUV and you really do need almost have to yeah.

Julie Tallman: 14:52

Yeah, especially with kind of just wanting to explore. And we were really lucky. We actually flew into San Jose and I found an Airbnb where the gentleman who owns it and runs it keeps two cars that he rents. So they picked us up from the airport, we stayed with them that night. They made a stoner and we rented their car for two weeks and then we returned back, gave them their car back, they made a stoner and they took us back to the airport.

Roy McGinnis: 15:18

It was very seamless and you know a lot of the stress is, you know, being at the airport trying to get the rental car, trying to find out where you're going, and we have any of that.

Jim Santos: 15:28

How were the roads?

Roy McGinnis: 15:31

I found them. I did all the driving and and I found they were really pretty good. I mean, we got off on a side road a couple times when they drive through a creek, you know but it was always playing. It wasn't like the locals didn't think about it. I don't think we really had any trouble at all.

Julie Tallman: 15:50

No, they were. There were a few times when you wanted to be sure you weren't rattling your dental workout or something, but it was in general like you expect the worst, I think, because you hear about it and from where we were, I really felt like the roads were fine. When we rented the car, the gentleman that we got it from asked where we were going and then he asked if we were going over to the Caribbean side, and when we told him we weren't, he looked very relieved.

Jim Santos: 16:22

So you basically explored some of the Highland areas and then some of the northern areas and then the Pacific side. Just a bit.

Roy McGinnis: 16:31

Yeah, and then we are. We kind of broke it up into four three-day stays, plus the first and the last day at San Jose and then. So the fourth three-day was at Fortuna, which is where of course the volcano is and it's a little more touristy, but not in a A cloying kind of way. It was. It was nice a lot of restaurants, lots of kind of younger crowd, a younger vibe, lots of spas. We ended up our last day, our last full day. We decided, well, let's indulge a little bit, because we've been kind of going as an exploratory trip, like for moving, and we were trying to Stay a little bit away from you know, just doing the typical tourist things. But we ended up going to a hot spa there and it was so affordable. We paid I think it was $45 a piece and we got the ride horses for a couple of hours. We got to go to the end of the. I would call them more than hot tubs.

Julie Tallman: 17:37

They were thermal hot springs, but they were Certainly elevated to sort of a resort level in the way that they were presented. They would, they pipe them in into Really nice cool areas throughout this area and they had a swim up bar and we could have ziplined all for that for that price.

Roy McGinnis: 17:57

But then at the same time there was a similar place nearby where it was much more expensive. Some of the expats it kind of warned us away from it and we looked up rooms and the other I don't remember the name of it, but another spot. It was almost a thousand dollars a night. So we didn't do that, yeah, but fortuna was great. We barely had time to even scratch the surface on all the different places to eat and Even just walking around while we were there. But we always found bakeries. That was our thing. We would be looking for a local bakery. A lot of really good food.

Jim Santos: 18:37

What did you like the most about Costa Rica?

Roy McGinnis: 18:42

For me, the parts I like about any place are the kind of wilder places, the greener places. I'm slightly into the introvert zone and I like the fact that we could get away and and even when you didn't like, we ended up at a. We went, found a river that was fed by a hot spring. That was basically a local place and Free and we went there and there were quite a few people but it didn't feel like it feels here in the States where there was just clamoring. You know it was it's very calm and very family kind of oriented and felt very peaceful. So that's a big thing for me, as I had torn retirement is finding a place where it's it's kind of laid back, and that's that was a big thing for me.

Jim Santos: 19:29

Thank you.

Roy McGinnis: 19:29

Yeah, I.

Jim Santos: 19:31

Yes, thank you.

Julie Tallman: 19:34

Yeah, and I think what Roy is really talking about is that Porta Vita lifestyle and you definitely feel it there and it's very difficult when you sit down in this warm, comfortable weather and hear all of these birds and see them flying by, and have this light breeze on your skin and to not just relax and to take your time. And in America, you know, in US, we rush from thing to thing and you know we really like sort of live to work a lot of the times and you could really see that shift towards kind of, you know, working to live and relaxing and really enjoying the moment that you're in instead of rushing into the next one.

Jim Santos: 20:19

Did you see anything on your trip that was kind of a deal breaker for you or something that turned you off to any particular area?

Julie Tallman: 20:26

You know, I think for both of us we are not fans of crowded and congested areas, and so our drive from Domenical Domenical itself felt very expensive. We were both wanting to avoid places that we're just trying to lay on the US prices. So there's that. That would keep us away. It wouldn't keep us from visiting, but it would keep us from living there, and on our drive through Haco and up to Aranel there was a tremendous amount of traffic and we were very, very happy to get out of that, and we're not in a hurry to get back to it.

Jim Santos: 21:10

You were only in San Jose for the one day.

Roy McGinnis: 21:13

Well, the first day and then the last day we were there, we actually didn't really go into San Jose. To be honest, the last day we ended up going to an area near there where they make carts, ox carts, and then store for kind of artistic things. But we didn't go into San Jose. We're not really city people, we were just there for convenience.

Jim Santos: 21:35

Yeah, we're not really city people ourselves either, but we just spent a month in Panama City and the conveniences was very nice and of course we're a little bit further along in age than you two, Rita and I, so proximity to good hospitals and all is also kind of important on our list.

Roy McGinnis: 21:57

We did find out things really accidentally. We met a couple of expats. They'd only been down there about two months in Aranel area and they visited for years and they finally pulled the trigger on it and moved. And he was telling us that and we have not looked into this, but this is his word that they got their insurance for the year, kind of the elevated, you know, expat insurance. It was $1,600 for the entire year, which kind of covers everything. And that was a real attraction to us as we're well, I'll say we as I'm getting older. You know, here in the States that kind of thing can really break you if you have any kind of a big, big medical thing, and there it just doesn't, everyone testifies that the doctor spend time with you, that if you have the insurance, the extra insurance, especially, that you just come away not feeling like you've been, you know, raked up the coals financially.

Jim Santos: 22:55

Do you have any plans to return to Costa Rica, or are there other places you want? To check out.

Roy McGinnis: 23:01

Yes, we're thinking we may go to Mexico. Next One of our factors it's a little different, as we have horses and you know getting horses to Costa Rica would be fairly expensive. I mean it could be done, but getting horses to, say, mexico, if we find the right spot, it's actually drivable and there are companies here that do that.

Roy McGinnis: 23:22

Yeah, so we're going to look at Mexico next. But you know, we're kind of starting to already feel. I mean, Julia said to me a couple of times I could just go right now. I could go to Costa Rica right now. So, yeah, it's a great draw. I really didn't know what to expect. She had been there before, years ago, and for me I thought, well, there are plenty of places. I could end up, you know, living in Costa Rica and being happy.

Jim Santos: 23:46

So where exactly are you in your retirement search? Or I guess it doesn't necessarily have to be retirement either. But how many years in the future are you projecting ahead here?

Julie Tallman: 23:58

You know we were saying three to five years, but I think we're both edging on the three and if we can find something not feel like we, you know, if we find something in absolutely fall in love and just feel like it, it checks all of the boxes.

Julie Tallman: 24:15

We may be willing to do it sooner, but the exploration part of it is really fun. So you know, we, we did sort of discover in Costa Rica that we liked being in a rainforest, which was kind of a surprise, and my skin I have such dry skin and my skin completely healed to degrees that it hadn't in years and years, even when I was traveling to warm places, and it it, you know, it was like, okay, we don't want the drier part of the country, we don't want to be in that portion of the Guanacaste region, and it also helped narrow down where we wanted to be in some of these other countries that we're looking at. So we're just trying to be proactive and maybe go spend at least two, two week periods initially every year, and then I'd like to grow that into the point that we could really explore something for like three months.

Roy McGinnis: 25:11

Well, and I'm more of a nuts and bolts person with the financial part of it and everything that Julie is, and so I'm trying to connect where we are and where we want to be.

Roy McGinnis: 25:24

you know, because, as you know, you too, having spent some time lived in Ecuador and, and now where you are, there are a lot of little moving parts, you know, and a lot of the things that we're doing, a lot of that for us we have not done. So we're looking forward to figuring that out and honestly, I hope that we can retire within the next two years.

Jim Santos: 25:47

Yeah, it's amazing how that window starts getting smaller and smaller.

Julie Tallman: 25:51

It will be a rewirement.

Jim Santos: 25:55

Yeah, you mentioned Mexico. Rita and I are planning on spending a month there in in May. I believe it is what what any particular area of Mexico you're considering?

Julie Tallman: 26:05

Actually, yeah, there's an area that's down next to the Guatemalan border. That area is very green and you know it's not too far from the ocean, so you get a fair amount of rain there. We've been to San Miguel Day a yonday. I love it there, and that's where we'll be.

Julie Tallman: 26:30

Okay, yeah, and I have really wanted to explore Oaxaca. But I do think you know we're going to pay close attention to climate when we make our selection and try to find somewhere that has a temperate, hopefully kind of year-round spring sort of climate, based on elevation, but still have enough, you know, moisture that we've got a sort of a veritin to experience year-round.

Roy McGinnis: 26:59

So I think I like to do besides fish as garden and I'm truly moving into my old man stage here. But I've liked it for years and you know it's obviously tougher in a place where they have dry and wet seasons. So we're going to try to figure out if there even is a place in Mexico. We've looked into a few small areas but so much of Mexico is dry that I think we were able to rule that out.

Jim Santos: 27:27

With the horses as a consideration. Does that mean you've ruled out any of the places like in Europe or Southeast Asia or anything exotic?

Julie Tallman: 27:38

You know, neither one of us have, at least to date, become infatuated with Asia so much. But we are definitely looking in Europe and actually there's so much good land for horses and so many you know equestrian areas there drawn certainly to Portugal. I love Spain. Spain's one of my favorite places. I've been to the Spanish riding center South of France.

Roy McGinnis: 28:05

We're looking at that a little bit.

Julie Tallman: 28:07

Yeah, the Dordogne, region.

Roy McGinnis: 28:09

Yeah, I mean, we can have horses at any of those places, but we can't have our horses in those places.

Jim Santos: 28:16

Yeah, yeah, if I could throw out another one for you to add to your list. You might want to take a look at Uruguay sometime.

Roy McGinnis: 28:23

We have thought about Uruguay and we in fact that was one of the ones we kind of added when we came to Denver and then we got to looking at just the distance of Uruguay from kind of everything.

Jim Santos: 28:34

It's a long way. Yeah, it's a two day trip.

Roy McGinnis: 28:37

Yeah, I have six kids and I have six grandchildren, so you know it's kind of daunting imagining them coming there or us even returning to the States more than, say, once a year from there. So it's probably still someplace we'll visit. We may get swept away and decide that it's worth it, but I think it'll be one of our last places we visit. We're going to go to Portugal, probably after Mexico. Panama is still on the list, although a little north of where you guys have been. Spain, South of France.

Julie Tallman: 29:11

And also and you were the one who could fill us in on this, jim I've been to Ecuador and loved it, so Ecuador is on my list.

Jim Santos: 29:21

Yeah, we really loved our time there, and although we lived at the beach, we spent a lot of time exploring around inside the country too. And actually there was a time we were considering buying a plot of land and Kodakachi and building something there.

Julie Tallman: 29:35

Oh, wow.

Jim Santos: 29:36

You have had these beautiful views of in Bambura on one side and Kodakachi on the other side. Wow, would have been just incredible. So, yeah, there's a lot of interesting places there.

Roy McGinnis: 29:47

And one of the things that I didn't know. I mean, I told Julie, I said I don't know if I want to go somewhere where the nights are always 12 hours, you know, and it's just the same kind of as far as daylight. But when we got to Costa Rica, which is also very close to 12, 12 kind of situation, the sun came up I want to say 540. And we both were, we woke up and we were awake and it was just awesome and we spent all of our sunlight hours actually enjoying it and doing something. And then, when it got to be 6, and it was time, you know, to eat or whatever, it didn't seem. It didn't seem dark to me, which is what I was kind of concerned about. So that's the thing for Ecuador that I'm now open to, that. You know it's 1212, right?

Jim Santos: 30:35

Yeah, that was kind of interesting for me too, because where we were in Ecuador the difference between the longest day and the shortest day was only 20 minutes Right. So you get really used to between 620 and 630, the sun comes up and goes down at the same time.

Roy McGinnis: 30:51

Right, right.

Jim Santos: 30:53

It just seemed really relaxing to me after a while. We came back to the States once to visit the kids in the summertime and couldn't believe how tired we felt and it was still daylight out. You know, it's like eight or nine o'clock, it was still daylight. It's like what's wrong?

Roy McGinnis: 31:09

Well, here, especially this time of year in Western North Carolina, we're still at oh gosh, I don't even know how much daylight we have. It's probably what? 10 hours maybe at this point. So I love the long, long summer days, but not so much the winter, so I guess it's just a trade off.

Jim Santos: 31:29

Yeah, my theory was we evolved in the equatorial planes of Africa, right. So there's something about that 12 hour cycle that just feels natural.

Roy McGinnis: 31:38

It did feel natural to us. I'll admit it. We didn't take any time to adjust, we would just immediately run into it.

Julie Tallman: 31:44

I did not feel robbed of daylight, it was wonderful.

Jim Santos: 31:48

So you do plan on returning to Costa Rica. Is there any particular place that you want to return somewhere, or are there new places you want to explore?

Julie Tallman: 31:55

There's a couple of places I'd like to check. I would like to go back to Arinal. I actually made a connection with a realtor. We looked at some property there. She's been in touch and then the area that is it? John David, is that his name? The area that he is in?

Roy McGinnis: 32:14

in the Central.

Julie Tallman: 32:15

Valley. That is far enough away from San Jose that I don't feel like I'm in a metropolitan area. I would also like to check that area out.

Jim Santos: 32:24

We have friends who have a farm in that area. Now they've bought a plot of land and they're just starting to build their home.

Roy McGinnis: 32:31

We were. Julie is a realtor and so we have our thumb on kind of the pulse of you know prices here in Western Los Calados which are kind of elevated because we're a retirement area. But we were really pleasantly shocked at the price of houses in Costa Rica, you know. I would say 50% of what they would cost here. A lot of them they kind of really nice. It was not all of them, but we went and looked at one that was you know five acres and three bedroom greenhouse, a solar panel on and on.

Julie Tallman: 33:11

And it was the volcano view of the lake.

Roy McGinnis: 33:13

Yeah, it was under $400,000, and here it would have been 800 at least, so that's very promising.

Jim Santos: 33:20

Yeah, you're the same problem I do, roy. My wife was in real estate for 30 years, so anywhere we go, we're looking at properties, we're looking at a. Montana city and looking at places we walk by now here on the coast.

Julie Tallman: 33:33

Right, yes, once a realtor, always a realtor.

Jim Santos: 33:37

Got to be buying and selling something.

Roy McGinnis: 33:39

Yeah, that's it.

Julie Tallman: 33:42

It's really interesting when we, when we drove from the Minical up to the lake area, we did go through Guanacaste and of course it's, you know, just the beginning of their dry season there. I do understand that they had a drier year than normal and the lake levels were down as well to attest to that, but it was remarkable the difference in the vegetation within a very short range from being like tropical rainforest, where we stayed, to something that felt, you know, like you wouldn't want to drop a match.

Roy McGinnis: 34:26

Yeah, Well, I lived in Southern California for a while and it was kind of that feel, you know, just the dry season you could tell that it had been. There was vegetation, but you know the leaves were coming off of everything. So, yeah, we just passed right through that area and not interested in that area.

Jim Santos: 34:43

Yeah, it's interesting in the central and South American countries even the smallest ones, though, like Ecuador, is the same. You can just drive an hour or two and be in a completely different climate.

Roy McGinnis: 34:53

Yeah, yeah. Especially when you add all the elevation, you know you're losing altitude and that changes everything.

Jim Santos: 35:02

And then one side of the mountain might be wet and the other side dry as well. So I guess that's a. It's a good thing, then. The Costa Rica now allows you 180 days on your passport. Yes, so it gives you plenty of time.

Julie Tallman: 35:17

It's interesting.

Jim Santos: 35:18

Yeah, We've been talking with Julie Tallman and Roy McGinnis about Costa Rica and some of the other destinations they hope to sample in the future. Julie Roy, thanks again for taking the time to talk with me today and keep in touch about your travels.

Julie Tallman: 35:32

Thank you so much. Jim.

Jim Santos: 35:52

That's all for now. Thanks for listening to Travels with Jim Enredo. So what happens next? Well, honestly, we don't have a clue. Remember, in the immortal words of spinal tap, it's such a fine line between stupid and clever. Be sure to like and subscribe so you can find out along with us which side of the line we are on. You can find my books and audio books at jim santosnet, or email me with any comments, questions or suggestions at jim at jim santos bookscom. If you're looking for more information about life overseas and travel in general, remember I also host the International Living Podcast, available through the internationallivingcom website and all major podcast platforms. Until next time, don't forget we travel not to escape life, but for life, not to escape us.