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Our Atenas agent, Marian Veltman, received a complaint, “The mangoes are keeping me awake”. This complaint was from a client who had signed an agreement on an Atenas rental home. Strange, I thought, I never have any heartburn when I eat mangoes. I get it from pineapple but not from mango.
When I read the Atenas rental home tenant’s complaint further, I found that the letter also mentioned: “Fruit is constantly bouncing off the rancho roof, which is particularly startling to the heart.”
This is where I started to worry because it seemed we had tenants with a heart condition. So, mangoes are not only rotten for your sleep, but they’re also bad for your heart. Jeez, I thought, I should quit eating mangoes. Then tell you all about it so you’re warned and can’t complain about it later.
It appears that when you rent or buy a home in Atenas, as this complaining client did, there is a chance you may encounter a significant issue with the mangoes in your yard. Unless we cut like 413,659 trees, take or leave a few, because there are mango trees everywhere in Atenas. It’s a miracle that nobody has been killed by a mango yet.
Rain
I like the rain a lot because without rain, we wouldn’t have any mangoes, and I love them. It only seems that in this particular area in Atenas, it doesn’t rain cats and dogs, but it rains mangoes, no matter if you live in a rental home or on your own.
This tenant wrote in his complaint that his wife, “cannot even work in the rancho of our Atenas rental home like she had originally intended because of the constant banging on the rancho roof. I know, he was worried about his “media naranja“. However, here we had another expat who was unwilling to adjust to the way of life in Costa Rica.
How to fix the problem
We were at a loss and unsure of what to do; we had only three options to resolve the problem.
- Cut down the mango tree because keeping the tree free of ripened mangoes was going to be impossible. On the other hand, the mango tree gives the rancho a lovely shade, and the rancho has a tin roof. This is the reason why it’s so noisy when a ripe mango falls off the tree! If we cut the mango tree, there would be no shade, and the roof would get hot. And the next complaint from the tenant will for sure be “she cannot even work in the rancho as she had originally intended because it is too hot in the rancho. The sun shines on it all the time”. So that option was out.
- Ask the landlord of the rental home to change the roof of the rancho with a less noisy material that won’t bang when hit by a mango storm. We can’t put tile on it because the tile will break. The landlord would have to spend quite a bit of money to replace the zinc roof with a plastic tile roof, which is the only roof that won’t make a “banging” sound every time a mango drops. However, the subsequent request would be to replace the roof of the house as well. So maybe not such a good idea.
- Tell the tenants to find a rental home in Poas de Alajuela, which is known for its strawberry production. Strawberries have the considerable advantage of growing IN the ground and not up in trees. But maybe they’ll be complaining about the ashes from the Poas volcano. Or we’ll go back to a “rain” complaint, because it rains more there, and the rainfall is noisy on a tin roof.
Mango is delicious
It’s really a pity these tenants didn’t realize that the mango is an incredible fruit and doesn’t only bring sleepless nights and heart trouble. Ticos eat green unripe mango, in Spanish “Mango Cele”, with salt and lemon. They sell them everywhere along the roads in mango country, such as Orotina and Atenas, just before the mango season.
You can use mangoes for fruit salads, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, desserts, and many other purposes. The other day, I had a fantastic tuna ceviche with mango in La Cebichería, near Multiplaza. If you want to find some delicious recipes with mango, try AllRecipes.com. These recipes might make living in an Atenas rental home much more fun, but you’ll need to pick ’em up and spend some time in the kitchen.
Not every mango is good to eat. My neighbor has 5 trees, and most of the mangoes fall on my side of the fence, and they’re horrible. She doesn’t eat them either it seems. Learn all about mangoes here.
A 7-page complaint
Let’s go back to the Atenas tenant again. This particular client had been renting a home in Atenas for about 1 ½ months and initially sent a 7-page complaint to the landlord, followed by a 2-page email to me, in which they complained about the agent in Atenas, Marian Veltman. Marian, he stated in his complaint, was not capable of addressing the 352 complaints in his letter (I honestly counted them).
The tenant of this now almost-famous rental home is complaining to everyone in town about how badly he was treated. Even though the landlord agreed to return his security deposit (without having completed the lease term). Additionally, Marian has decided to return the commission to the landlord in full for the unused portion of the lease term. Thankfully, this tenant moved somewhere else in Atenas, and soon after that, returned to where they came from.
Many more blogs in the future
Long story short, I now have about 30 topics for Ivo’s blog to warn future expats who want to move to Costa Rica, and specifically to Atenas. All based on his letter and email about how bad it is to live here. All the unacceptable issues you have to live with can turn paradise into a personal hell if you don’t move here with an open mind and adjust. That was a lot for one sentence, but so is a 7-page complaint to your landlord…
Today’s lesson: Wherever you want to live in Costa Rica, you’ll have to adjust to your environment; the environment will not adapt to you.
This blog was initially published in September 2016 and was last updated in 2025. Watch out for our follow-up blogs. In the meantime, if you decide to purchase a home in Atenas or elsewhere in the Central Valley, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d appreciate your business.
