The percentage of Canadian “boomers” is higher than the U.S., not that the actual numbers are. Canadian baby boomers are a huge group: proportionately 50 percent larger than the U.S. boomers. (Canada has an approximate population of 33.3 million and the U.S. has about 301 million of which there were 76 million boomers). For every five U.S. expatriates in Costa Rica, there is probably one Canadian. My prediction is that Canada will be a large investor in Costa Rica in the near future.

Furthermore, the Canadian dollar is now on a par with the U.S. dollar. Because of this, you can expect more and more of the equity in the booming Canadian real estate market will shift to popular retirement places like Costa Rica. The U.S. has been hostile to some Canadian investors.

Why wouldn’t a lot of equity from housing in say, Vancouver where the least expensive house costs $600,000, shift to Costa Rica ?

For the past 25 years I have been helping people relocate to Costa Rica. During that time I have had the opportunity to observe where people settle and how they fare in different areas of the country.

About 80 percent of my clients stay in the Central Valley in areas like Escazú, Santa Ana and Cariari, Heredia and Alajuela. Most of them have selected these places because of the amenities they offer such as good housing in the paths of progress, proximity of private hospitals , emergency health care and private ambulance services, high-speed Internet, good shopping, entertainment and other intangibles. The majority of people are happy and found what they wanted in Costa Rica.

The remaining 20 percent of the people moved to the beach, remote areas of the Central Valley or other parts of the country. About ten percent of this group adjusted well to living in more isolated situations. They are a special breed who don’t need the stimulation and comforts found in the Central Valley near the major cities. I have several friends who live in the beautiful Dominical four hours form San José and just love the laid back lifestyle.

However, one thing I have observed over the years is that a good number of the people who more to the outlying areas really get bored. At first they think that will be happy being “away from it all.” But after a while the lack of stimulation and variety of things to do starts to wear on them. They quickly realize that they made a mistake and chose to move closer to major towns and cities. Often they find exit strategy difficult because they have purchased property in areas out of the path of development.

I even have a Costa Rican friend who is a realtor and move to a beach in Guanacaste and almost went off the deep end. She stated, “Everything is a pain in the neck here. I have to drive 20 minutes just to go shopping and there is absolutely no local entertainment.”

Conversely, there are a few cases where people who tire of living near cities and choose to move to the countryside. However, this scenario is the exception and not the rule.

When Wayne Bishop visited Costa Rica 12 years ago, he was wowed by the country’s natural beauty, but he was even more taken aback by its investment potential.

“If you had any entrepreneurial nose, you could see the raw opportunity there,” he said. “Most developments have been mom-and-pop operations. … There’s an opportunity for them to be properly planned, Western style.”

So Bishop, co-founder of Minneapolis architecture firm Walsh Bishop Inc., spent the next several years looking for land on which he could build a Western-style resort. In 2000, he and some co-investors, including the Marvin M. Schwan Charitable Foundation in St. Louis, broke ground on the first phase of Peninsula Papagayo, a project anchored by a golf course and a 210-room, five-star luxury hotel.

That’s just a fraction of the investment he and several other Minnesotans have made, or will make, in the Central American country.

While he declined to share names of the Twin Cities developers and investors he’s working with, Bishop said there are several.

“I’ve been inundated with calls from Minnesotans that have land and are looking for my advice,” said Bishop, who sold his interest in Papagayo to the Schwan Foundation and is working on several additional Costa Rican developments of his own. (The Schwan Foundation was established by The Schwan Food Co. founder Marvin Schwan, but is not part of the Marshall, Minn.-based company.)

“We’re at the beginning of a huge land boom,” Bishop said.

Several other Minnesotans are taking part:

• Blaine Kirchert and Rich Pakonen, two St. Paul developers, have formed a joint venture and intend to enter the Costa Rican real estate market. Their first project is a 26-unit luxury condominium project in Playa del Coco on the country’s West Coast. The pair is working on a much larger 250-acre mixed-use project in the center of the country.
• A group of Twin Cities investors, including former 3M Co. and Control Data Corp. executives, have opened a macadamia nut farm in the country.
• Graves Hotels Resorts of Minneapolis announced plans to develop a Graves-branded luxury hotel in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, also on the country’s West Coast. It has two other properties there already. Graves operates Graves 601 Hotel Minneapolis, the former Le Meridien Hotel Block E development.

The relatively small country has become a popular vacation spot, and visitors are coming back to Minnesota enchanted, just as Bishop did. Word of what he and other entrepreneurs are doing in Costa Rica has spread, prompting more investment.

The reasons are many.

One draw is the sheer number of U.S. citizens expected to move to Costa Rica. Bishop said he’s heard the U.S. government say it anticipates 1 million Americans will retire in Costa Rica during the next 10 years.

Others, like Bishop, say they simply become enchanted when they visit for pleasure.

“There’s a long heritage of Minnesotans going to Costa Rica during college because of their environmental-studies programs down there,” Bishop said. “Today those young folks are adults, so there’s a huge connection.”

Pakonen, owner of Pak Properties, was an exchange student in Costa Rica for a few weeks in college. He was drawn to the country for its stability and beauty.

There are many cultural differences between Minnesota and Costa Rica, he said, but for the most part, business is done the same way. People are educated and they do business “above board.”

Pakonen decided to take a look more than a year ago after someone approached him with an opportunity to invest in some land.

Potential developers need to consider that the Costa Rican government is active in protecting the environment. It limits the height of hotels along the coast so it doesn’t become another Miami or Cancun, for example, Kirchert said.

Ecological tourism is the biggest contributor to the country’s gross national product, and officials want to protect that.

But it’s not just developers pushing into the country. A Minnesota-based mortgage company is setting up shop down there, Bishop said. Other service companies will likely do the same as the Minnesota contingent there grows.

Several Minnesotans, including John Doleman, a former Control Data Corp. executive; Tim Stepanek, a Minneapolis venture capitalist; Jerry Robertson, a former top executive at 3M Co.; and Elli Ansari, owner of food-marketing firm Flavorroad, are partners in a macadamia-nut business in Costa Rica.

While the business started in 1989, investors say it’s coming out of its shell.

The group of investors — there are about 80 today — bought the macadamia plantation, called Finca La Anita, to save it from loggers and to employ a village of about 350 people nearby. “It’s an investment, but there’s an altruistic component to it, too,” Doleman said.

Finca la Anita isn’t yet profitable.

It takes awhile to get such an operation up and running. Macadamia seeds must spend two years in a nursery before they are planted, and it takes another five years before trees yield nuts.

The company is starting to sell its nuts retail in co-ops across the United States instead of just on the bulk market. The plantation owners started a marketing program that offers customers a free stay at the plantation when they buy 40 boxes of nuts. The nut entrepreneurs also are promoting the fact that for every box of nuts they sell, they contribute enough money to a trust fund to save a full square-meter of rain forest.
“We’re slowly doing better and better each year,” Doleman said.

Getting there

Costa Rica is by far the most popular destination for Minnesotans visiting Central America and South America, though easy access has declined, said George Wozniak, president of Minneapolis-based Hobbit Travel.

A few years ago, Sun Country ran two flights per week between the Twin Cities and Costa Rica. Today, Northwest Airlines runs one flight per week between January and May to an airport on the country’s West Coast. Continental Airlines offers five flights every day into the capital city, San Jose, but Twin Cities passengers are required to transfer in Houston or Newark.

Flights usually run between $450 and $650 per person, but Northwest recently quoted a round-trip ticket to Liberia International Airport on Costa Rica’s West Coast for $305 per person for mid-April departures.

Even though it’s a fraction of the size of Brazil, Costa Rica claims to have more rain forests and species of birds and animals.

A couple of years ago, Wozniak and his family went on a river-raft tour through the center of the country.

“It’s a pretty amazing place from the standpoint of going back and thinking you’re in Jurassic Park.” He said the monkeys, butterflies and birds reminded him of a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie. “It’s a heck of a way to see areas you’d never be able to see by land.”

Finally, I bit the bullet and agreed to visit my friend Sandy in Tilaran. Getting there got off to a bumpy start as my original ride lost a muffler in a pot hole, then the second driver, from Grecia, spent an hour trying to find my apartment building. But eventually Alonzo and I set off, only to find ourselves caught in the bottleneck on the highway in front of the airport. The trip though the mountains is a joy of vistas that change constantly when they are not blocked by semis. Trucks, of all sizes dominate the two-lane highway over the mountains and dictate the flow of traffic. (Slow.) Reestablishing the train that used to go from San Jose to Puntarenas, I think is a must.

Once into the Canton of Puntarenas, the scenery changes dramatically. Here there are rolling hills, large pasturelands, and fewer trees. Houses are few and far between. Beginning in the 1960s and encouraged by foreign investment and demand, Costa Rican farmers decided to diversify and raise beef cattle. Guanacaste was where most of the cattle ranches were located. Pastureland replacing forests has been blamed for the persistent droughts in the area. Another unfortunate side effect was the loss of work for many peons since fewer hands are needed to round up cattle than to grow coffee, bananas or rice.

Having heard that the road conditions were terrible, I expected the worst and found the roads quite good – until we got to Tilaran and the road that leads to and from the house where Sandy and Roger live. I have never seen potholes the likes of those, and so many of them! Later, when Sandy and I drove to the restaurant “The Black Horse,” I had to close my eyes to keep from having a heart attack as time and again Sandy had to drive off the ridge of the road to avoid potholes. Beyond the ridge there was nothing to stop us from rolling down the steep hill leading to Lake Arenal neither tree nor a herd. Sandy has lost two tires to potholes in the past few months. Intrepid indeed, are the tourists who venture into that territory in rental cars.

The house that Roger built is a work of art. The ground floor is taken up with the garage and utility rooms. The second floor is the living space, all of it open except for the bedrooms and adjacent baths. A verandah runs around the entire building. All of the woodwork was done by Roger – well, the entire house was. And it is warmer and snugger than my breezy apartment. It has to be, I guess, since Tilaran means ‘place of wind and rain,’ and it usually lives up to its name.

Willy and Monica, along with their triplet daughters, run The Black Horse Restaurant and the adjoining gift shop. The family (along with Sandy and others) is involved in rescuing stray animals, getting them neutered and finding them homes since as yet there is no animal shelter in the area. Sandy and Roger have three cats and two dogs – so far.

The restaurant was a great place to comfortably bird watch. While we were eating, we saw a half dozen different birds at the bird feeder, including some magpie jays that truly looked and acted as if their ancestors could have been dinosaurs.

The weather turned beautiful my second day, but I was there to work with Sandy on the final proofing of my book, so we spent the time inside.

Returning to San Jose was much easier and faster with Sandy doing the driving (going to Tilaran I had a driver who had never been there before himself). As we approached the city and we saw the first large cluster of homes in the distant valley, I evidently breathed aloud the words, “Ah, civilization.” because Sandy burst out laughing at my incorrigible preference for city life. I did confess to her that the air smelled slightly used compared to the fresh air in the country. The next day it turned cold and rainy in the city – as bad as any weather I had encountered in Tilaran. Sometimes it takes a strong constitution as well as courage to be a city girl.

Jo Stuart is the author of the popular book about life in Costa Rica entitled, “Butterfly in the City.” To order a copy of her wonderful book please contact her at: jostuart@amcostarica.com

By Jo Stuart

Although I had no intention of becoming so, I am now familiar with all of the hospitals, except the children’s, in the metropolitan area. My experience includes three hospitals with the Caja and three private. If there are more, I don’t want to know about them. My doctor at Hospital Mexico referred me to a doctor at San Juan de Dios, the last to complete my repertoire. Actually, the referral was some papers giving me permission to seek an appointment.

Each hospital seems more confusing than the last upon first entering.
San Juan de Dios is right at the foot of Paseo Colon and is a mammoth structure, although upon first entering, the reception area and hallways are not large. There was, fortunately, a window indicating that it gave information to patients. That was my first stop. The man behind the window sent me on my way to another office, and told me to return after I had my papers properly stamped.

The man in the designated office told me I had to go out of the building to another office. When I returned to the first window, Carlos (as I was to learn was his name), looked slightly annoyed and told me he would take me to the correct place. For the next hour Carlos led me to the various offices, sat with me and chatted while we waited. In one waiting room, a pretty teenaged girl asked me where I was from. I told her and she said she had lived in Kansas. “Like Dorothy, you are not in Kansas anymore,” I joked. She was Tico American. Then I asked her how she liked living in Costa Rica after Kansas. She said she preferred it here because the people were “so happy.”

Finally, we made it to the window that would give me my appointment (by now I had a folder with my name on it – I was in the system!) A woman was just closing the window and there was a sign that said that there would be no more appointments given out until April 18.

I was not all that upset because Carlos had made my passage quite pleasant. A long time ago I wrote about “Tico Moments” in a column, referring to the kindness extended beyond the ordinary by a Tico.
Carlos’ help qualified.

Then, on Sunday I decided to stay downtown after the concert.
The city is obviously emptying and closing down. The National Theatre was almost empty, but those of us who were there thoroughly enjoyed the violin and piano recital.

By the time I was on my way home, the rain had begun. The first rain of the season and it entered boldly – and I was without an umbrella. I got on the Cementerio bus just before the downpour, but when I got off at the new bus stop on Avenida 2 east of Soda Tapia, it was raining hard. Fortunately, there was a bus stop for the Estadio bus at the same stop.
I sought dryness under a small awning about fifteen feet from the bus stop. Shortly a man came out of the building attached to the awning and asked if I would like to seek better refuge on the porch. I explained that I would not see the bus coming if I did, so he came out and stood with me and when the bus came down the street hailed it, stopping it before the bus stop. The bus driver was most gracious when I scrambled on. There weren’t many people on the bus and they were all discussing the recent bus accident that landed the bus among the trees of the Sabana Park or being entertained by a little boy of about six.

When I stood up right after the driver stopped at the parada in front of ICE building, he slowed down and asked if I had missed my stop. I said no, I wanted the next stop – well, I really wanted to get off at the corner (a good 75 feet before the next stop). With encouragement from the other riders, the driver kindly dropped me off at the corner. I am sure the Pavas bus driver would not have done so. I hurried home in the lessening rain, not minding getting wet because I had had my share of Tico Moments to keep me warm and cheerful. Perhaps it is the coming of Easter, but everyone who is left in the city seems to be even more kind and helpful than normal. I’ve never lived in Kansas, but I do find it easy to be happy here.

Jo Stuart is the author of the popular book about life in Costa Rica entitled, “Butterfly in the City.” To order a copy of her wonderful book please contact her at: jostuart@amcostarica.com