Costa Rica’s Central Valley has one of the best climates in the world.

If the have been watching the evening news the last couple of days you will know a large part of the U.S. is experiencing extreme winter weather. From Washington state to the east coast things are a real mess.

My sister lives near Seattle and says she hasn’t seen so much snow in over ten years. She has been housebound and sounds fed up with the cold weather. I saw an interview with a lady at one of the U.S. airports and she was hysterical  after having spent 48 hours sleeping on the floor while waiting for the weather to improve so she could catch her flight. Similar scenes and desperation have been repeated 1000 of times over the last few days. However, this is not the case in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica’s Central Valley has one of the best climates in the world. In fact, National Geographic magazine said the town of Atenas does have the best climate in the world. It is virtually springtime year round in the Central Valley. I don’t need heat or air conditioning where I live. I rarely have to sleep with more than one blanket at night. We get a lot of rain during the rainy season but most mornings are warm and sunny. While the people are freezing their rear ends off up north we are enjoying sunny days here.

Costa Rica’s excellent year-round climate is one of the main reason people come here to retire. Other factors which draw people to our country are its unparalleled beauty, friendly people, stable government with NO army or enemies, fantastic affordable health care, a lower cost of living and incredible lifestyle for LESS money. As we say there is everything for someone and something for everyone here. One retiree remarked, “My days are so filled with interesting activities, that every day seems like a lifetime.” The national motto “Pura Vida” or “pure life” in English says it all about the kind of life you can have if you choose to spent your retirement years here.

You can open an account with one of the private mail services in order to be able to purchase items form the States.

If you choose to retire in Costa Rica you can’t hop on a plane every time you need something from the States. Everyday more and more items from the U.S. are available in Costa Rica. Nevertheless there are many things you still cannot get here. What many foreigners and Costa Ricans are doing is opening an account with one of the private mail services in order to be able to purchase items form the States.

Really the process is very easy. All you have to do is go to the offices of one of the private mail companies like Aerocasillas and open an account. What they give you is a P.O. Box in Miami where all of the merchandise you order can be sent to. This method of shopping on-line stores really has caught on and grown so much that Aerocasillas has over 130,000 clients who use their services.

Business really picks up around Christmas time, especially among Costa Ricans. They purchase hard-to-get gifts on line and have them shipped to Costa Rica. I recently went to one of their offices to pick up my mail and the placed was packed with Costa Ricans picking up the merchandise.

If you retire here you can get almost you need by using this service. You won’t have to use your hard earned retirement money to travel to the States to go shopping. I have personally used Aerocasillas for over 10 years and am 100% satisfied. Before this service existed I would  to the States a couple of times a year to visit relatives. While there I would try and stock up on everything I couldn’t get in Costa Rica. I even brought a couple of televisions with me on different trips. This not the case anymore. I have seen people order large flat-screen televisions and have them brought in by one of the private mail companies. I even saw one person pick up a couple of large bumpers for his car. Small items like books from Amazon and DVDs are some of the ore popular items people purchase on line and have shipped here.

San José and the malls in Costa Rica was packed by the Christmas shopping.

I was watch the evening CBS Evening New on satellite yesterday and the reporter showed how empty shopping centers were in the U.S. I guess she was trying to prove that people were cutting back on their spending due to the recession there.

In Costa Rica things seem to be quite the opposite. Downtown San José is a madhouse. The streets are packed with wall to wall people doing their Christmas shopping. Judging by this beehive of activity you’d never know that there was a world financial crisis.

The malls here are so crowded it takes up to 45 minutes to find a parking space. In order to avoid the Christmas rush at the malls you have to get there early in the morning. The afternoons and evenings are impossible because of the hoards of shoppers.

Yesterday I went to the Hipermás supermarket.  In case you don’t the Hipermás chain is one of the groups of supermarkets owned by Walmart of Central America. Each Hipermás store resembles a giant warehouse.  You’d think you were in a Walmart in the U.S. Retirees will be happy to know they can find many products from the U.S. in these stores. Anyway, yesterday I visited the Hipermás in San Francisco de Heredia and like downtown San José and the malls the place was packed. Costa Ricans and others were stocking up on food and other items for the Christmas festivities. The store was giving away so many free samples of food that one could virtually eat a complete mean while shopping. They were giving away small cups of wine, cake, pastries, cooked meats and much more.

Lately Nicaragua has been in the news a lot and it hasn’t been good. The country seems to take one step forward and two steps backward. First, president Ortega has been trying to establish closer ties with Russia. He wants  to improve relations to the level that they were at when the Old Soviet Union existed. Most recently Ortega met with the Russian president Demitri Medédev in an effort to develop closed ties. Ortega also allowed four Russian battle ships to anchor off the coast of Nicaragua much to the displeasure of neighboring countries like Costa Rica. He has also aligned himself with Venezuela’s mercurial dictator Hugo Chavez, which doesn’t exactly help the country’s international image.

However, what has really hurt the country is the U.S. Suspending $175 million in aid because of alleged fraud in the recent municipal elections. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti.  The country certainly can’t afford to lose this much needed aid. Previously the European Union had suspended $32 million in aid for the same reason.

It seems that the country’s ruling party is more interested in staying in power than establishing a true democracy and now will pay the price. Unfortunately the country’s poor are the ones who really suffer and not its leaders.

For decades the country has been the victim of earthquakes, hurricanes and a whole string of unscrupulous and incompetent leaders. Now Ortega is in power for the second time and leading the country down the path of self destruction again.

Who would want to retire or in a place where political turmoil and subsequent instability have been the norm for decades. There was talk a few years ago about Nicaragua and Panama replacing Costa Rica as Central America’s prime retirement havens. Never! Given the events I just mentioned and the rocky road that will follow. Almost a half million Nicaraguans have fled Nicaragua’s batted economy to Costa Rica to find work. I don’t blame them because the average monthly income in Nicaragua is less than $100 dollars, if you can find work.

No doubt about it those who retire in Nicaragua can live more inexpensively than Costa Rica, but look at what they are getting for their money. Anyone in their right mind would be foolish to invest in such an unstable place.

Many years ago I studied as an exchange student in Mexico. I was lucky enough to live with a Mexican family and really fell head over heels in love with the country. After returning to the States I made it a point to visit Mexico every chance I had. In fact, I ended up spending about ten summers exploring the country and taking graduate courses in Spanish. My dream was to move to Mexico.

Many retirees also found Mexico the ideal place. Over the years thousands of Americans chose to make their retirement home south of the border. All of that has changed radically.

There is a virtual civil war between rival drug gangs fighting each other for control of the lucrative drug trade and the Mexican government trying to stop it. The wave of violence has spiraled way out of control. In Tijuana, for example, there are shoot outs in broad daylight with many innocent people being caught in the crossfire. Reporters have been killed by the drug cartels for trying to expose the people behind this crime wave. Kidnappings are also perpetrated by these same criminal elements.

This year more Mexicans were killed as a result of these drug wars than all of the U.S. Soldiers in Iraq during the last six years. This makes Mexico more dangerous than Iraq!!!! I know of a Costa Rican couple that was robbed twice I one day by different taxi drivers while visiting Mexico City.

Retirees are not immune from this widespread violence. Who in their right mind would want to live there?

Costa Rica is a much alternative to Mexico and therefore continues to be the most popular retirement haven south of the border. Panama and Nicaragua are making some headway but will never offer the choices nor quality of live that Costa Rica has. There are more Americans living in Costa Rica proportionately than any other country outside of the U.S. They can’t be wrong!