Why Costa Rica?
The Life Decision
There are many beautiful places in this world to visit and/or live. So, why would I choose Costa Rica. To really understand I need to first dive into my past.
The Boring Part
Born in Providence, RI; I am a city boy at heart. I spent the first 12 years of my life in Rhode Island before I moved to Vermont. What a difference! I had never seen so many trees and I couldn’t get use to stores closing at 6pm. What lazy bastards!. After Vermont I moved to it’s neighbor state New Hampshire where I finished high school. Not too interesting in these two states so I will just skip over them. I did however start my IT career in Claremont, NH at a local computer store named Competitive Computers (thanks for the start Mike Demars, here’s a link for you – BTW you need to fix your page, it shows your IP address at the top..Rookie!).
After New Hampshire I moved to California where I learned most of my networking skills and completed my MCSE. Once I started out on my Network Administration jobs I noticed that I was working way too much. So fuck that, I moved back to New Hampshire to sloooow down. But, the money difference really sucked so I started my own Consulting Company. Well, not too many clients in small little New Hampshire so I needed to get another network admin job.
I got a job at the Visiting Nurses Association of Vermont and New Hampshire and worked there for two years. That job ended in tragedy, well sort of. We had an email server down and needed it fixed by Monday morning, it broke down ( 2 hard drives failed in a 3 drive RAID 5 system—that’s bad! ) on Friday. Needless to say we needed to buy new hard drives, reinstall the OS, restore from backup and test. Since this is New Hampshire, getting the hard drives for the server is not easy. And at that time we were using an old school backup system (tapes! go to SANS from now on, trust me) and with a huge Exchange database this took forever to restore. There was mountains of pressure from the CEO and my boss, the IT Manager, to get this done by Monday, so I couldn’t leave the office. I spent two days restoring and testing everything and the system was up and running early Sunday morning. All things aside, a decent restore.
Now the Important Part
I left the office around 4am and started to drive home (two days without rest, I don’t suggest this!). Once I started driving I felt extremely tired so I pulled off to the side of the road. Stretched and thought I was OK to drive the rest of the way.
I lived about 20 miles from the office
I heard a loud noise and noticed I was in a field. I had hit the guard rail and spun into the field and to make it worse, my brakes were not working and I was going about 50 MPH. I tried the E-Brake, no luck. I was worried about crashing and hitting the steering wheel so I ducked into the passenger seat and curled up like a baby. Then I woke up in an ambulance with a broken clavicle (the bone above your shoulders). Here is a picture of the final result of the crash. If you look closely you can see the Camaro that my SUV landed on top of.
Time to Think
I spent 2 months in the hospital because that particular bone is a bad one to break, and I am apparently allergic to the metal they used during the operation, so I needed a second operation. I started thinking, why this happened and my conclusion is that I work too much. Why didn’t I just sleep each night? Because I am addicted to work.
My friend had moved to Costa Rica and was emailing me every other day with pictures and he was so happy. He kept telling me I NEED to come to Costa Rica. His pictures were great. Beautiful beaches and Beautiful Girls. So I started doing my research on the country to see if I would like it here. The first place I always go is to is cia.gov to check out the real stats on the country. Check it out here
More Costa Rica Girls
Besides the fact that Christopher Columbus named the country (The Rich Coast) I really loved the weather. Every month of the year the average temperature is 75 degrees. Perfect! Half the year is rain season which allows for the country to be so green. The other half there is absolutely no rain, and perfect. I actually love the rain! It is rain season now and this is how the day goes; the mornings are bright and beautiful. Between noon and 4pm the rain will start to come. It ends around 6pm to 10pm. That’s it.
Once I was back on my feet I took a 3 month vacation here and fell in love. As I said in the beginning I am a city boy, so I do not think that the crime rate here is bad, and I personally have not had anything happen to me. The people have all been very friendly and that helped my decision to move.
What to do in Costa Rica
The list is too huge to write in this post, especially since this post is already too big. If you are reading this far, thanks! But, I don’t expect too many people to get to this part. Hopefully the heading brought you here, for you Speed Readers.
There are 9 active volcano’s in Costa Rica and they are all beautiful. Great places to visit. The west and east coast are lined with beaches. The cost to live here is amazing. I am in a 3 bedroom house which I pay $360 per month to live. I can work 20 hours a week and live like a king! No more working all hours of the night for nothing. And finally, the women here are so beautiful. Being a semi young American who is tall (I am 30 years old and 6′2″) helps me to catch the eye of a lot of the women here. Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of women here just looking for an American with money, but there are also a lot of sincere women.
Anyway, in future posts I will show you my personal experiences in Costa Rica full with pictures and videos, if I can get them. I am not the touristy type of person, so you will see more of the real Costa Rica and not the spots that all the tourists go.
Congratulations on your move. I’d like to see more of what the tourists don’t. Can’t wait.
Matthew Drydens last blog post..I Can Tell, Tree
Welcome to Costa Rica bro, we are having a great time here. And it will only get better…
Sounds like a great place to live. I lived in Hawaii for awhile which was amazing but really expensive. I have been thinking a lot about Costa Rica and still might give it a shot now that I have decided to give blogging a full-time go.
Justin Wrights last blog post..Life After the Cubicle
What a story. I have read this before but I guess I failed to comment. Some things in life will give us a wake up call and you are lucky, in some ways, to have experienced one early on. That looked like a horrible car wreck and you are lucky to be alive.
You can see the “love” you have for Costa Rica by the way you write.
Wishing you many days of happiness in your found paradise.
Tammy-Cricket´s last blog ..Kidnap
Muchas gracias mi amiga. I have been getting a lot of traffic to this post from Google Images search, so I thought I would send it out again…Whenever I am in a car at night, I remember the reason I am where I am and I am thankful…
Pura Vida, as they say…
Hey What a great story! My name is Khumz and I am thinking of moving to Costa Rica! Funny that you worked for VNA!!! That used to be my client when I worked for Multiview. Send me an email as I would love to chit chat with you about your move and my possible move there!
Cheers,
Khumz
Sorry man, took out your other link at the bottom. You get one on top :)
Saw you sent me a FB message, I will answer there..
I just wanted to say I love your story. Thanks for sharing – I will show it to my husband, he’s also a workaholic and needs to slow down big time.
I hope you have a nice day.
@Maria : Thank you for stopping by and I am happy you liked the story. Good luck with your husband, I know it took my accident to open my eyes.
I have been twice to Costa Rica, and I LOVE IT! I miss that place. Maybe I will move there. Where does an American work there?
Bri, I made sure to keep my businesses in the states and hired some employees to take care of the things I would be doing. But, I can manage everything over the Internet and that works perfect for me.
It is a great place to live!
Bri, I made sure to keep my businesses in the states and hired some employees to take care of the things I would be doing. But, I can manage everything over the Internet and that works perfect for me.
It is a great place to live!
Bri, I made sure to keep my businesses in the states and hired some employees to take care of the things I would be doing. But, I can manage everything over the Internet and that works perfect for me.
It is a great place to live!