Living Near Lake Arenal Video With Brad and Beverly Sheatz.

Beverly Sheatz: Hi. My name is Beverly Sheatz. This is my husband Brad and we’re here at our clubhouse in Vistas Del Lago, located on Lake Arenal with the beautiful lake scenery behind us.

Brad Sheatz: We were both in real estate and development in California and Arizona and we originally started visiting here as tourists in 1999 and bought a property here in 2005 and never planned to be here full-time but just really grew to love it and we’re very happy being here fulltime.

Beverly Sheatz: And the more time you spend here, the more you want to stay because the mornings are just amazing. You wake up to monkeys and parrots and toucans and never found anywhere in the States where I could live like that.

Probably about our first year in, it got harder and harder going back and forth because originally we had planned only to be part-time, but as we went back and spent time in the States, we just missed it so much here because there’s just so much beauty and people are just so gracious and we just really have a great community here and just really feel a part of Costa Rica. Our hearts just kept pulling us back, so we became full-time.

Brad Sheatz: We did travel here quite a bit around the country when we were touring, when we were still tourists. Well, when we found the lake, we knew this would be our home. We developed some property here. The climate is just perfect here. It’s a beautiful lake. It’s green all year and we’ve developed this property but it’s much more than an investment to us. We’re building a community here. That’s the fun part of being a developer here around the lake. We have wonderful neighbors here.

Beverly Sheatz: Yeah, really supportive.

Brad Sheatz: Yeah. So we’re really enjoying it here.

Beverly Sheatz: Yeah.

Brad Sheatz: We have 10 homes on the property now and a lot of our customers are planning their retirement here. I was a builder in California for many years and it’s a little different here but it ñ and it took us a few years to find out how to work with the materials that we have to work with here. But I think we really have it down now and we found the right people to work with here locally. So it goes much smoother now and it can be a very good experience for our customers.

Beverly Sheatz: It has been really eye-opening to see people as they come and come to live their dream and we do help them with that process because it is really difficult. I think especially for the women when they come here because they’re leaving behind family, friends, grandchildren and it’s really nice to come to a community where you already have like everyone supporting you and you already have a close-knit group and it’s a much easier transition for people when they already have a support group and we help them to get adjusted opening bank accounts and residency, who to set them up with and building their home, selecting lots.

We just kind of do everything with them for the first few months and it’s great now as we have grown. The neighbors also help out and everybody helps everybody get all their stuff together and get it all done. It has really been really, really nice to see that grow.

Brad Sheatz: We both grew up on the beaches of Southern California so we thought that we want to live on the beaches here in Costa Rica. We found it a little hot, a little dry. We love to go visit and there are a lot of beaches we can get to very easily from here. But we really love the climate here at the lake, Lake Arenal, the volcano. You see it from here on the south and absolutely beautiful, green all year, surrounded by rainforest, toucans and monkeys. Pretty hard to beat. Really wonderful climate here.

Beverly Sheatz: Yeah. We love the fact that it’s green all year because the first time we went to the beach when it was brown, we were completely shocked because it had been so green, like a month earlier.

But here we don’t have that and we really appreciate that it just is green and lively all year and the lake is just amazing. You get a boat out on there, kayaks, and there’s just hardly ever anybody on it. So it’s just open and you can go all over the place.

Going up to the volcano is spectacular. We have great views from here and it’s just really a wonderful place.

Brad Sheatz: One of the concepts of our community here is organic and healthy living. We do raise some of our own vegetables and sheep, chickens, and we just really want to create a safe and healthy place to live here in this incredible environment.

Beverly Sheatz: Yeah, there are things in abundance and healthy living was a big thing for us with so many people coming down and not feeling so great and then once they start eating all the fresh food and no products in your food like you find in so many other countries, it really is phenomenal to be able to get fresh whole food.

There are lots to do around the lake. There are waterfalls. Viento Fresco is right outside of Tilaran and it’s a wonderful hike down. Rio Celeste isn’t far either and that’s the bluest water you will ever see and in Fortuna they have more hot springs than you can visit. So there are just lots of activities. Hanging bridges in Arenal is another great stop and bird watching all over the place. Lots of places to just see all the wildlife.

Brad Sheatz: The activities on the lake and around the lake are endless. People come from all over the world to windsurf here, this time of year. We actually have a pair of jet skis and that’s amazing. The view of the volcano from the water is unreal. There’s horseback riding and just a lot of activities here.

Beverly Sheatz: And then every other Sunday there is a Feria at Cinco Esquinas and they have all organic food and a lot of people come and they bring everything that they make and grow and everybody just gets together. It’s a big social event and you can get just about anything you need there and if you don’t see it, you just ask for it, and they will get it for you. So it’s a great, great time.

Tilaran is a lovely town not far. It’s a 20-minute drive and they have all services available. They have great healthcare, lots of dentists, doctors, homeopathic and traditional medicine, pharmacies where you can have everything done. We have a great masseuse, chiropractor, acupuncturist. So there is really basically everything you need right here.

We had one of our neighbors that did suffer a heart attack and received topnotch care at CIMA in Escazu. He had the best doctors and just was very, very pleased with it. It ended up costing him about 30,000 and if you would have had that in the States, it would have been well over 150 and his insurance actually ended up picking up most of the cost.

So he was very, very pleased with all the care, the doctors, the nurses, the whole staff. They were wonderful with him and his wife who was able to stay by his side the whole time. They were just really, really pleased.

We would like to thank We Love Costa Rica for coming to visit us here today. It has been a pleasure having them and we appreciate the time they’ve spent and we want to thank you for listening to our story and hopefully you will come visit us. Please click the link below for more information.

Brad Sheatz: Pura vida!

Living Near Lake Arenal Video With Brad and Beverly Sheatz.

Article/Property ID Number 5233

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.