@Julien
Hello all.
My name is Heidi Vardeman, writing from snowy Minnesota. For the past two years my husband, myself and his service dog Zest have visited CR and stayed at a small family owned hotel just a couple of blocks from Jaco beach. We are not in CR now because we have some medical treatments that have to be completed before we can leave. We can't wait to get out of the cold and snow.
We love Jaco beach. Jaco has a chintzy beach town charm. It is great to be in a hotel (with kitchenette) because we have no responsibilities for housekeeping or anything else. We came to CR because it was one of the few warm countries that my husband's doctors would allow him to travel to. It has very good basic healthcare.  My husband has a spinal cord injury and is paraplegic. He uses a wheelchair. Originally we had planned to stay in San Jose as I had a volunteer opportunity at the Universidad Biblica de Latinoamerica. It's a great school with a beautiful campus but San Jose does not work for someone in a wheelchair. The streets are narrow and the sidewalks even narrower. Having grown up in the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan, I figured the land would be flatter near the ocean. My husband would be able to get around in his power wheelchair better there than in ;San Jose. So I took the public bus to the closest beach to San Jose (Jaco) with a list of all the hotels that claimed to have "instalationes para discapicitados."  I walked down the beach to check out 21 hotels on my list, but stopped at #19 because we hit the jackpot: a small, family owned one-level hotel in the Spanish hacienda style with a pool and kitchenettes in some rooms. Hotel compound is fences. There's a glorious fruit/vegetable transfer station around the corner where we buy fresh mangoes, pineapples, papayas, bananas. The hotel is about $50/night. We could not be happier with it.
I am a retired Presbyterian pastor and professor who loves to read, talk, read history, watch Britbox and paint watercolors. Recently I taught theology in Ethiopia. My husband, also a minister, worked mostly as a prison chaplain and later as a denominational executive, sort of like a bishop. We are active in local and national politics.
We will continue to visit CR on simple tourist visas (3 months) and retain our Minnesota residency unless my husband takes a turn for the worse. If he needs extensive nursing care, we will move to C.R.because there we would be able to afford to pay for people to take care of him. The elderly are more highly respected in CR. They are not as shut away as they are in the USA. I have been a nursing home chaplain--and a parish pastor who visited an awful lot of old people in their homes. It's the loneliness that creeped me out. I'm not so worried about the healthcare system because I don't expect miracles.  We have many medical doctor friends in the US (and my husband teaches medical students at the University of Minnesota) so we have a pretty clear idea of what is and what is not reasonable to expect regarding healthcare in CR.Â
I'm rather put off by the appeals to expats on the web, offering a "Costa Rica paradise." Of course it's not a paradise. But unlike other Latin American countries, it has a lot going for it. A friend who is a retired professor of Latin American studies in Tampa says that it had/has two especially important saving graces: 1) the lack of resources that foreign countries want/wanted (like copper in Chile) and 2) flexibility on the part of the elite class. They were and are more willing to negotiate -- and concede -- than the elites in other Latin American countries. I'm not sure that's true, but our friend is pretty knowledgeable and well respected.Â
Looking forward to communicating with y'all.Â
Heidi
