Days 4 and 5...in Costa Rica

Day 4: So the first day of house hunting started out just fine. We had a hotel breakfast and headed back to San Jose. This time we knew where we were going and made the trip back in under 2 hrs...a dramatic improvement ;-) BUT...that is where it ended. We got back to the hotel and met out "counselor" in the hotel lobby. Apparently when you move to another country, my company provides a local counselor to help bridge the divide...a real plus IF the counselor works with you. So she gave us a quick rundown on the Costa Rica scene and then our realtor met us in the lobby. So off we all went, to find our mansion in paradise! OUCH...something akin to a sharp stick in the eye...called reality! We went from one dump to another and Jen and I were looking at each other utterly confused. So at the end of the first day I got on the horn with a few company relocation folks and said "WTF?". Well, it appears that we spent the first afternoon looking at furnished homes when we should have been looking at unfurnished homes...and we were looking in the wrong areas too...and our monthly budget was a little lower than it was supposed to be. Well, that was the first strike against the relocation system!

Day 5: We spent the next morning at the local mall looking over what Costa Rica has to offer. Electronics are through the roof and housewares are on par with the USofA. Oh yeah, and they have their own versions of a Dollar Store also ;-) Overall, things appear to cost on average right around the same as here. In the afternoon, we corrected course and let our realtor know that we were in the market for unfurnished homes in a better area with a bigger budget. Ooohhh, that made a difference. While we still were not shown our tropical paradise home...on the second day we definitely saw some "livable" situations... a big improvement. We finished the second day with a ray of hope and chose the 3 homes that we wanted to go back to visit the next day. Unfortunately, the home we really liked was in the wrong neighborhood and the house with the best community areas for kiddos was out in the sticks...so unfortunately there was no "easy button" this time.

To be continued....