I live here and I am glad I moved. That does not mean I think everyone should, and the internet is so relentlessly positive about this country that somebody should write the other list.
Read this alongside the case for moving here. If you only read one, read this one.
1. The heat, if you choose the coast
March and April in Guanacaste are genuinely hard. Mid nineties, weeks without rain, the landscape brown and crackling, dust on everything, air conditioning running and showing up on the bill.
This is the single most common reason people leave the coast. They visit in January, fall in love with a version of the place that exists for four months, and meet April as residents.
The fix: visit in April before you commit, or look at the Central Valley, which sits high enough to stay in the seventies all year.
2. Everything takes longer
The part comes next week. The technician says Thursday. The office wants one more stamp and closes at two. Your residency file goes quiet for four months.
None of this is dysfunction, it is a different set of expectations, and it is completely immovable. You will not fix it by being annoyed, by escalating, or by explaining how it works at home.
This is the real filter. Not money, not visas. People who can absorb it thrive. People who cannot spend years quietly furious.
3. Cars and electronics are expensive
Import duty makes vehicles considerably more expensive than the US equivalent, and used cars hold their value in a way that feels wrong. A decent used 4x4 costs real money, and in a lot of places you will want one.
Laptops, phones, appliances and tools are all more expensive. So is imported food and alcohol.
People budget for cheap rent and get blindsided by the car.
4. The humidity destroys things
Leather goes mouldy. Books wave and spot. Anything in a sealed cupboard through green season comes out worse than it went in. Electronics fail earlier. Metal corrodes near the coast, which includes your car and every hinge in the house.
You adapt: dehumidifiers, air moving, not storing precious things in dark sealed places. But you will lose a few possessions learning.
5. You will be further from family than you think
Everyone promises to visit. Flights are expensive, kids have school, and it turns out to be less often than anyone intended.
Meanwhile parents age, grandchildren are born and grow, and you are watching some of it on a screen.
This is the number one reason expats actually leave, and no amount of sunshine offsets it. Being close to an airport helps and does not solve it.
6. Healthcare is good, but the public system involves waiting
The Caja covers essentially everything and is excellent value. It is also a public system with public system waiting times for anything non urgent. The CCSS is not a concierge service.
Most expats end up paying privately when they want to be seen this week, which is fine and cheap by US standards but is a cost people did not budget for.
If you have a complex ongoing condition, think hard about living within reach of San José rather than four hours from it.
7. The bureaucracy is slow even when everything goes right
Residency takes a year or more. Documents need apostilles. The FBI check has a shelf life and ordering it too early means doing it again. Bank accounts are document-heavy. Everything wants a photocopy of something.
The rules themselves, published by the immigration authority, are reasonable. The pace of processing them is what it is. See the residency options for what you are actually signing up to.
8. Water and infrastructure are real questions in some places
Guanacaste is a dry province with a lot of new construction, and water supply is a genuine due diligence item that people skip because it is boring. Ask what the source is, what happens in March, and ask neighbours rather than agents.
Power cuts happen in green season. Internet is good in the towns and patchy off them. Roads that are fine in February are a different proposition in October.
9. It is not as cheap as the internet says
There is a whole content industry built on “live like royalty on $1,000 a month”. It is written mostly by people who do not live here.
Real costs depend on where and how. Beach towns cost more than inland. Air conditioning costs more than fans. Imported food costs a lot more than the feria. I keep an honest monthly breakdown based on this coast rather than a fantasy.
You will probably spend less than you do now. You will not spend a third of it.
10. Some people just prefer the holiday
This is the one nobody says out loud.
A two week holiday and a life are different things. On holiday you are not doing paperwork, waiting for a technician, dealing with a bank, or working through an afternoon in April. You are not missing a birthday.
A meaningful number of people discover, honestly and without it being anybody’s fault, that they loved visiting Costa Rica and do not love living in it.
Come in September or October, rent an ordinary apartment rather than a resort, and live a normal week: shop, bank, get something repaired, drive somewhere at night in the rain. If you enjoy that week, you will be fine here. If you spend it waiting for it to be nicer, that is extremely useful information for the price of one trip. There is more on what those months are like in the green season guide.
Who should probably not move here
- People who need things to run on time.
- People whose main reason is saving money.
- People who cannot bear heat, unless they choose the Central Valley.
- People with very close family ties they have not thought hard about.
- People who want a permanent holiday, which does not exist anywhere.
- People who expect to arrive and have everything work the way it does at home.
None of that is a judgement. It is just cheaper to work out now than after the container ships.
And yet
I moved anyway, and would again. The list above is real and I still think the trade is worth it, for the right person, going in with clear eyes.
If that is you, the step by step guide is the practical next step, and what to know before moving covers the expectations side. If you want to put your specific situation to someone who will tell you honestly if he thinks it is a bad idea, that is what the call is for.
