“Hi. My name is Will Raap. I grew up in California, have lived in Vermont the last 30 years or so, built my business there, built my community there.

But during the winters, I would often come to Costa Rica because that’s where my wife’s family was from. So for the last 10 or 15 years, I’ve been involved in trying to make this part of Costa Rica in Guanacaste a better place to live for me and for people I know.

So one of the things that really has always interested me is this idea of our role in making the world work better and a model that I’ve used is that of thinking globally and acting locally, partly because if you look at the challenges we face on the global level, whether it’s climate change or water resources or food security or community well-being, those things are really most effectively approached in my opinion at the local level. Even though we need sort of the macro change to be supportive of us, the real impact we can have is at the local level.

So for 30 years, I’ve really focused on that in Vermont, mainly on energy-related things, food security and sustainable agriculture, business that really supports local community and the well-being of healthy communities. That’s a priority I’ve had in Vermont.

What is so cool about Costa Rica is that it holds a lot of the same values. So if you live in a place like Vermont that holds the concept of living lightly on the land or having healthy communities, that value set really supports you to do good work.

Same value set exists in Costa Rica in many ways. You have a government that’s committed to recognizing special places in biodiversity on the planet and supporting those ideas.

You have a government that’s committed to the idea of educating people and providing healthcare. This same idea can create the opening for developments and businesses to be created that have an impact.

So if you’re not just interested in the economics of a development or a business, you’re also looking at the effect of that development or enterprise on place, on the community, on the area it is. Vermont has a big impact in that world and I found that so does Costa Rica have the opportunity to have a big impact there.

So we’re located in a watershed, a river valley called the Nandomojo. There’s about six or seven villages in our watershed and when we decided to develop a project here, we felt an obligation to be part of this community that we’re involved with; not only as an economic development project but also as an environmental enhancement project.

So much of what we’ve done in the design of this project actually relates to responding to the challenges we’ve seen here. So there’s deforestation happening in our area of Costa Rica. We’ve planted thousands of trees.

There’s erosion of top soil and and streams in the area. So we really designed the project to protect the landscape, to hold the water on site, to perk the water into the underlying aquifer. The whole concept of the roads has been designed to fit the landscape as well as to avoid any kind of additional erosion problems.

Where the water exits the project, we’ve put an organic farm. Why? Because the sediment that comes during the rainy season, we can catch there. We can use that as fertility for growing organic food. Organic food not only provides healthy nutrition for the people who live in the project but it also provides an example of the kind of local business that Costa Ricans can be involved with, should they choose to work their land.

So one of the things that we’ve done here is created a micro lending program where we provide loans to Costa Ricans who own lands, where we’re helping them get started growing vegetables and eggs and producing honey, because if we can re-establish a local land-based economy, then we’re creating a core part of what a healthy community is all about and the unemployment rate in Guanacaste can be high.

We’re trying to bring it down. We’re trying to create an economic stimulator, if you will, for good things to happen in our area.

At the same time, people who might be interested in living in a development that’s part of the place that’s safe and secure, that’s environmentally smart, that’s connected to the place, the community that it’s located in, are all aspects of the design and implementation of this program.”

There is something for everyone at Tierra Pacifica with affordable condos for sale from about $150K and you can easily walk to two beautiful beaches plus there are lots for sale should you wish to have your own home built by a proven U.S. builder and, if making money is your goal, you might want to consider buying one of their spaces in the Tierra Pacifica Commercial Center.

Becky Clower who is our Recommended Realtor in this area. Becky grew up in Buffalo, NY and graduated from Arizona State University. Becky is fluent in Spanish, thanks to her mother who is a Tica.

You can see Becky’s awesome video about the region from Playa Avellanas to Playas del Coco in Guanacaste by clicking here.

If you would like to chat with Becky about buying a home, condo or land on which to build your own dream home, please help us to help you by using the simple form below:

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.