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Maravilla,
all of that is very encouraging to read. I also am mostly a vegetarian and have simple needs. I don’t care to eat out much and I get all my entertainment at home via my computer..no TV. This has been a recent discovery for me. All the programming that interests me is on the net for free, including first run movies.

But, as a North American, I have trouble imagining life without a personal vehicle. I love to sea kayak and a car is essential to get me and my kayak to the water ( I don’t want to live at sea level any longer..too hot) I suppose there are other interests I could take up but I think I might still feel stranded without a car. I have never in my life time relied on public transport so that could prove a difficult addiction to break.

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Your all discussing the wrong topic here if your concern is about survival. I have no idea how much peak oil is left, how severely we are poisoning our environment or whether or not technology can solve those potential problems. But I DO have a strong sense that there are way too many people on the planet and that is what is aggravating the above issues.

Theories put the maximum sustainable population at between 7 billion and 14 billion inhabitants, depending upon how much technology can mitigate.In other words,at the lower estimate, 7 billion, nasty consequences begin manifesting. You can imagine what those would be. Put too many rats into a cage and you can watch how nature resolves overpopulation.

The superstitious religious and the nut job right wingers don’t like the more humane and pragmatic solution which is forced birth control BEFORE conception, such as the Chinese practiced. Instead, these people talk about god’s mandate to multiply or how we have unlimited room and resources. You can identify both from their slogan “drill, baby drill” .

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I remember Scott Oliver once listed his monthly expenses and it amounted to about $2000. From his post, his expenses include business meals and other costs most people wouldn’t have. SO I suppose if one owns a house, a couple grand a month should suffice for a couple to get by quite comfortably. I am counting on that, anyway.

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Most Soc Sec checks will not be enough to sustain anything near a North American life style in Costa Rica from what I have gathered on many trips and articles. I know of one gentleman who is living in CR on a $1200 per month check and he seems OK with it. But he does not own a car and I am guessing not many other amenities either.

I have always planned on some additional income beyond a soc sec check. There are ways of doing this if savings do not suffice without breaking any laws.

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[quote=”maravilla”]oh, sprite, that is so sad. i’ve been following your dream for three years, and it’s very disappointing to think it won’t play out as you had planned. i’m sure you will figure something out. good luck.[/quote]

I appreciate the sentiment, Maravilla, but I don’t see this as a sad situation. It is just a dream delayed a bit longer, a plan that has had to be revised, another accommodation to life’s surprises. And I still have this forum to visit. Every once in a while, I read something here in which I can participate and that makes me feel a sense of being tied to Costa Rica in some small way.

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[quote=”vonder”]What’s holding me back is that moving to Costa Rica was a dream for my husband and I. I lost him last March. Raising two young children alone in a foreign country is what is now really holding me back.[/quote]

Nothing stays the same for very long. I am sorry for your loss and empathize with the difficulty of the task you have at hand. I wish you good luck.

In my 59 years I have never seriously made any plans which reached more than a few months into the future…until I fell in love with Costa Rica. When I was younger, I moved far away from what had been my home on a whim and it turned out for the best. But that was within the US. Moving to Costa Rica at this stage of my life requires the guaranteed income for which I must wait.

Now I have watched the economy thoroughly slash and burn my plans to move to CR on my schedule with financial security and comfort. I am left with a nicely sized and beautiful piece of property in CR on which I no longer have the funds with which to construct a dwelling. I am now hanging onto what is left of those plans and considering how much less comfort I am willing to accept as a trade off for the benefits I see in living in Costa Rica. I am determined to pull this off but, as I said, nothing stays the same for very long.

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Ticos have a right to elitism just as much as the rest of us….:-)

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I don’t know if your view of the world is more valid than mine or not. Perhaps I am naive and foolhardy or perhaps you are paranoid and fearful. Perhaps it is just a matter of priorities; possessions are worth the segregation. All I know for sure is that the vast, vast majority of people do not find it necessary or perhaps even desirable to live behind walls in this country. I am casting my fate with the people here who decided a long time ago they didn’t need an army. Either this society is healthy and whole and safe to live within or it is diseased and dangerous and must be kept at a distance.

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It sounds crazy to me….moving away from your country with concerns about safety so that you end up living behind a wall with a xenophobic mistrust and armed guards segregating you from the larger society and culture. Besides the pretty scenery and somewhat less expensive cost of living, what is it about Costa Rica that is left to enjoy once you cut out the people from the picture? Maybe gated communities are thought of as big cruise ships permanently docked from which day excursions can be safely made.

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Chariotdriver,

Everything depends upon how much money you have and how adaptable you are. Are you fluent in Spanish? Do you tolerate monumental inefficiency? Can you be as humble and patient as a thankful student in the face of learning the Tico culture? Can you get used to living with less access to material things? Can you learn to love the worn down Tico streets and buildings like an old faded, soft pair of blue jeans?
I am not sure using Costa Rica as an escape from a potential world wide societal melt down is going to work for many people unless they would already be suited to living in that kind of environment.
Also, if you wait till the poop hits the ventilator to make your move, it will, of course, be too late. If you make your move now in the anticipation that things will get ugly everywhere, then you might be able to set up a more tolerable living situation in Costa Rica but that would be chiefly due to the fact that you would be living in the country side away from rioting cities. You could do that in the good old fascist United Corporate States of America and not have to adapt to a foreign culture. (Of course, the USA is looking more and more like a foreign culture to me these days and I was born there.)
Dealing with hard economic times AND adapting to a foreign culture sounds like it would be pretty difficult. And I have no clue as to how Ticos might change in their attitudes towards more wealthy gringos if things get tough in Costa Rica.
Good luck thinking this one through in time.

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An older expat writes a blog. He addressed this issue recently. A local bar near his house suddenly became noisy with a new owner. He appealed to his landlord who apparently took the issue to court….and for a short time, the noise level slackened. But the noise eventually returned.

The expat believes this is due to the parties involved finding out that a gringo is the real complainer. He believes that Costa Rican officials tend to avoid making favorable applications of law for gringos.

Whether or not he is correct in his assessment, you must remember that you live in a culture which has very different ideas as to what constitutes bothersome noise. If there are neighbors who do not share your strong aversion to the traffic noise, you may be facing hard row to hoe.

James Gandolfini, the actor who played Tony Soprano, lists his least favorite sound as traffic noise. I share that dislike and when I purchased property in Costa Rica, I made sure it was several kilometers away from the PanAmerican Highway. I have noted the truck noise can be unbelievably loud along that route.

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I think you are missing the bigger picture, GRB…
Placing the blame on certain flavors of government and presidents is exactly what the Owners want citizens to do.
This promulgates the false belief that changing presidents and political parties might fix the problem. The point is that the Owners are the ones who manipulate economies and governments and, thereby, entire populations. This is how wealth and power is funneled into their hands. This is pure fascism.

The latest dismissal of a regulation which supposedly limited corporate political contribution is also a farce. That money found its way to its targets even with the regulations only now it will be even easier. There is less pretense on the part of the Owners because there is less need for it now that there is little citizens can do or would do to turn things around. And as long as US citizens are relatively well off compared to others, rebellion is not on the table….it is not even in the room.

And if the US economy worsens bringing standards of living down (which seems probable) and citizens become more restless, it might be useful for the owners to have more efficient and faster means of controlling government and media. Legal, unlimited corporate contributions is a quick way to do this.

I used to get angry at flag wavin, right wing patriots. I believed they were responsible for voting all the stupid wars and capitalistic aggression against workers. Now I see that their votes were as useless as the progressives and independents. This whole thing has been a farce for quite a long time now.

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Who knows how many citizens are aware of our true situation?
Even if it is an overwhelming majority, which I doubt, would it matter? What could anyone do to change it?

People simply cannot manage belonging to groups with over 25 members. Our innate sense of community and human morality dissolves somewhere after the point when we no longer know all members personally. Once a group grows too big, it becomes a mob and we succumb to gross, brutal tools of manipulation such as patriotism or religion or some political ideal.

I think the best thing any American can do is to look after himself and his family as best he can. I don’t know how possible that may be within the United States. What I find encouraging about Costa Rica is that there is still a naive sense of community due chiefly to the fact that there are so many tiny villages everywhere throughout the country.

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The study has to be biased. How can they rate Mexico nearly as safe as Costa Rica? I know drug violence is a local issue in Mexico, but because of that problem, they are facing a potential failed state situation. How would you like to be living in some sleepy Mexican village when the government falls and chaos spills into the country side? They have a fully armed military which has been known to go renegade and join up with drug organizations.

Costa Rica is a secure state compared to the rest of Central America. I don’t care how many cameras and sunglasses are stolen from tourists and nationals, it is nothing like the violence we are seeing in Mexico and the instability we see in Honduras.

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Calistkatari,
I think what interests you is confrontational, argumentative conversation. Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered leaving topic yourself to challenge anyone else. SO..stay on topic yourself and look for something in the topic with which you can disagree. Personally, I love to argue…especially with conservative expats living in Costa Rica.

Edited on Oct 26, 2009 18:52

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