moving to Costa Rica

klafavor47 wrote:

Hola Ya'll.
My name is John and my wife is Karen.
We have a house in Esterillos. I'm currently in Afghanistan as a contractor working on helicopters for the army.
We both like golf, fishing, walking on the beach or in the mountains and traveling.
We have a house outside of Orlando as well.
Looking for new friends.

Hola John & Karen,

Welcome to Expat.com!

Well that would be the epitome of two different worlds.  Little culture shock when you come back to Costa Rica?  So do you guys plan to move here permanently at some point or ???

Take care,
- Expat Dave
Expat.com Team Member

Hi Dave,
yes we do  plan on moving here at some point.
Trying get things together. having a few issues with our house.
No internet and wifi is getting real expensive.
I am currently in Afghanistan, but will be there 18 May for 2 weeks in Jaco.
Our house is 15-20 minutes away.
Want to put our house on AiRBnB.
But eventually move to Costa Rica.

It is well known, that many rural or beach  areas have little or no internet access, and this is one of the main points that those of us who already live here, will tell you to 'stand in your chosen abode or lot' and see what access/speed will be available to you. Realize too, that wi-fi is not always available...and as you have found out, not inexpensive. You may also have found that running A/C tends to be expensive, so be aware that these expenses will eat into your profit when renting your property as a short term rental. Costa Rica intends to have you pay tax on rentals under 30 days.

Thank you for the info. When we were looking at the house last year, the realtor said the was internet as well as TV. The house is really beautiful but now we are told we might need a repeater.
Getting hard to trust anyone these days.
Also, shipped household goods from Honduras with a "friend" and our stuff is still in customs and has been for 2 weeks. Not sure if we have anything left.
We were told we could not bring anything with feon in it.
Also have a vehicle that will cost us a fortune to get registered. Looking at selling it. Was told if we didn't register it, they would come and tow it away. Not real happy at this point. Like I said, hard to trust anyone.

Have you contacted kolbi, claro or movistar regarding internet where they will set up a dish on your roof?
In regard to your vehicle , they won't come and tow it away, if it is parked  at your home. Tax and duty is due within 90 days. If you are only here for a short visit, and wish to use the vehicle you can have  registration 'deferred' when you have it parked in a secure area at the customs compound , but it will cost you...

Info on taxes, etc. when importing a vehicle

Thank you for your response.
We are trying to sell our SUV at the moment as we don't want to keep it here.
Also, those 3 sites for dish that you mentioned, is that for internet or just TV or both.
Thanks,
John

Both TV and internet is available but it would depend on what 'package' you purchase. Note, I understand, that most of the TV programs will be in Spanish.

SKY TV will offer more English language programs....but not internet, as far as I know.

Contact them for more information.

Thank you. do you know what the average cost is off hand?

No, sorry can't help with claro, kolbi or movistar. As mentioned, it will depend on the package you purchase.

I can only comment on SKY TV as I have the very basic SKY package for TV, since I watch very little TV at a cost of approx. $20 per month. Not much in the way of North American sports, news, etc if that is important to you.

No. we're not into sports, besides I would rather go hiking or fishing anyway.
Maybe ziplining. Karen watches soap operas but doubt they are shown there anyway.
Also, do you know if the fire stick from Amazon works there?

To use any of these gadgets', you need a really good internet connection/speed.

My wife Karen contacted Boomerang but haven't heard anything back from the yet.
That was the day before yesterday. I would've thought that we would've heard something back by now.

klafavor47 wrote:

My wife Karen contacted Boomerang but haven't heard anything back from the yet.
That was the day before yesterday. I would've thought that we would've heard something back by now.

We used to use Claro for T.V. and most of their channels are U.S. stations and can be set to English.  The cost was about $30 per month.

- Expat Dave

Hi Dave,
How much TV did you watch and what channels did you get?
And I guess you don't use them anymore?

Hello everyone,

@klafavor47: I created a new topic as from your post on the Costa Rica forum.

Hi John, greetings from Cape Coral, Fl . We have lived in Costa Rica (Ciudad Cariari) for the past 24 years but now only spending the winter months (Dec -April) there and staying in Cape Coral the rest of the year.  My wife and I are also avid golfers and we belong to the Cariari Country Club there.  We love meeting new people and making friends as well so contact me and let's start finding out about each other.  We already have several things in common.
Regards
Arturo Napoles
***

klafavor47 wrote:

Hi Dave,
How much TV did you watch and what channels did you get?
And I guess you don't use them anymore?

I'm guessing about 25+ channels were available in English.  When I did watch it, it was for a few hours at a time in the evenings.  I stay physically pretty busy during the day on various projects so I'm too exhausted to do much in the evenings. 

No, I no longer watch TV.  If I watch anything I'll view something online using Netflix or Popcorn Time.

- Expat Dave

klafavor47 wrote:

No. we're not into sports, besides I would rather go hiking or fishing anyway.
Maybe ziplining. Karen watches soap operas but doubt they are shown there anyway.
Also, do you know if the fire stick from Amazon works there?

the fire stick works but what we found works better is the ROKU, the cheap one that dangles from the hdmi connection on the back of your tv. If you want I can get the exact name of it.
We have found that this works quite well with only 2mbps or less internet speed.

Amazon prime cannot be seen here iin Costa Rica except by use of a proxy . So if you get a proxy like Private Internet Access on your computer you can watch prime on your computer by choosing a city where it will work from the list of cities PIA gives you. However it will not work - as far as i've been able to figure - with ROKU or Fire TV because you'd have to make those work via a proxy.

However I have found Prime more problematic (ie. spinning /loading) than Netflix, Netflix apparently uses an algorithm that adjusts the picture quality to your connection whereas Prime does not, or if they do it doesn't work as well.

However, Netflix immediately recognizes any proxy I have used so we can only watch Costa Rica's version of netflix, not  the USA version , and the USA version is much much better. Nevertheless the CR version of netflix does have quite a bit worth watching imho.

Best method to watch tv series in particular, cable or network, is to learn to use torrents. It's quite easy and then you can download whatever you want, even with a slow connection and watch it without interruption at your leisure from a USB slot on most modern TV's.

If you do use torrents, make sure to use a good anti-malware software like Emsisoft.

Re Netflix, Amazon, and others as far as that goes, I use Express VPN and I get U.S., Canada and UK Netflix and Amazon.  I think it's about $60 per year, or you can also pay by the month.

Send me a PM if you want more info.  👍🏽

- Expat Dave