When the food is awful, you say guácala. But when it’s great you say esta riquísimo! The word guácala means horrible, disgusting, distasteful, yuck, dreadful, gross or nasty. Even if you’ve never had anything like it, and they serve you a Gallo Pinto, don’t say guácala. Just tell the host or anfitrión, no, pero muchas…
It’s amazing how many people have enjoyed our bi-weekly Live in Costa Rica blogs 2019. What’s even more important is that blogs written 6 years ago get so much attention. Imagine that #10 was written in 2012. The #1 blog even had 32 views per day during 2019! I still enjoy writing Ivo’s blog and…
Estimated Reading Time: 6 Minutes Do you think you can survive doing business in Costa Rica? Well, it’s easy for some, but for others, it’s more difficult than they think. Of course, nobody wants to talk about how difficult it can be to do business in Costa Rica. But here we do because we want…
Buying in the wrong place can change your life tremendously. Honestly, I’ve met people who have wanted to hang themselves, because of it. I’ve written a blog about that before. Unfortunately, I get listing requests from people who purchased in the wrong place all the time. Of course, they are desperate to sell! You have…
Estimated Reading Time: 5 Minutes Which type of expats in Costa Rica do you belong to? I saw an interesting survey about types of expats worldwide on InterNations. In 2018, Costa Rica scored # 7 on the best expat destinations. That’s pretty awesome if you see that we’re #7 out of 68 countries. Of course,…
Yes, there is a marijuana friendly real estate broker in Costa Rica: me. I saw this article about Denver residential real estate agent Bob Costello. He launched a Marijuana friendly real estate broker advertising campaign in January 2014. That’s when the state of Colorado legalized marijuana for recreational use by adults 21 and over. Great…
Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes Let me tell you all about kissing and greeting in Costa Rica. Not that I’m a kissing expert… But I do know that people kiss a lot more in Costa Rica than you might be used to. The title of this blog should really be “how do people in Costa…
Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes We were victims of a professional, well-planned home invasion. It is everyone’s worst fear of any crime because it happens in your home while you are there. The criminals were in our home for over an hour looking for a safe and money that was not there. This is not a…
policemenTheWhen you move to Costa Rica, you should know how to recognize the different police forces, know what they do and recognize them. As you all know, Costa Rica has not had an army since Pepe Figueres abolished it on December 1st, 1948. The country needed a police force that came under the command of…
Estimated Reading Time: 7 Minutes Can you learn from other expat recommendations and their experiences? Of course, you can, those expat recommendations will help you tremendously to learn what they did right and wrong. So it won’t happen to you. A couple of weeks ago, I published an article Why Bill does not consider Costa…
Estimated Reading Time: 7 Minutes Bill, a subscriber on Ivo’s blog, does not consider Costa Rica for retirement anymore. Future retiree Bill (I changed his name), has been a reader since January 2015 and has read 30.5% of our weekly blogs. This is more than the average subscriber. His email, asking me to unsubscribe him.…
GoDutch Realty’s real estate agents all check property title before listing a Costa Rica property for sale. But, we still like to share our knowledge with buyers and sellers, so you understand better what we do for you. Many of you do not speak or read Spanish and it is not too easy to know where…
Estimated Reading Time: 8 Minutes Some want to work in Costa Rica, and it seems to be very attractive just to jump on a flight to San José and get a job in paradise. Is it that easy? There are over 275 high-tech multinationals in Costa Rica. Can you get a job with them? Or…
Estimated Reading Time: 5 Minutes If you decide to keep your AOL email account even after you move to Costa Rica, you will ask yourself soon why nobody gets in touch with you anymore. If you keep using your AOL email account, you will stop hearing from your beloved family members, your former neighbors and…
Estimated Reading Time: 5 Minutes Those who know me personally, know that wearing flip flops to work is normal for me. Every day. I also wear shorts. But, I do dress up a bit when I have clients who have never met me before. I live in a country where wearing flip flops to work…
When moving to Costa Rica or just visiting you will need to change money for your day to day expenses. Often, clients ask if it is difficult to change money and if it is really necessary. The legal currency in Costa Rica is the Colon. Nonetheless, U.S. dollars are used for more expensive items like…