Scott

I love to see news that re-affirms our selection of Costa Rica as the country outside of the United States we have chosen to invest in, and the one that we intend to spend some of our time in, once we are location independent. This weekend I saw in Q Costa Rica that JetBlue has announced they are adding their "Mint" service in Costa Rica. "Costa Rica’s Liberia becomes JetBlue’s [...]

I almost missed this news, but thankfully I noticed this mention in my newsfeed, from Q Costa Rica. Today is Guanacaste Day! "In 1824, the Central American Federal Republic passed the law and signed it on July 25, allowing the Guanacaste province to become part of Costa Rican territory. Nicoyans decided to be part of Costa Rica instead of Nicaragua." Guanacaste is the province where Tamarindo is located, which is where we have [...]

An article about a new collection of Google Street View photos of popular places in Costa Rica led me both on a discovery of the beauty and sights of Costa Rica, and also down the rabbit hole of Google Maps Street View.

As surprising as it was for me to find out that Costa Rica was playing in the 2018 World Cup, and the United States was not, I was even more surprised to find that Costa Rica's first match of the tournament (at 8am on a Sunday morning no less) was being televised live on free TV in the United States, on the Fox network. This is notable for me because [...]

I have a lot to learn about Costa Rica sports, but I'm happy to start with following the Costa Rican team play in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. I was not aware that the United States team failed to qualify in the same tournament that Costa Rica did qualify, with Costa Rica beating USA twice, and once in the New York area. As the Costa Rica team prepares to play in the world cup, I outline their journey to get there, and the path ahead.

We recently ran into a string of air conditioning issues with one of our rental properties in Jacksonville, to the tune of $10,000. Read on for details, but this is a good example of buyer beware and that old mechanical systems will fail sooner than later. Did you know there is "$5,000 Rule" for determining when to repair or replace your air conditioner?

Lenoir Preserve is a small park, only 40 acres, but has lots to offer.  It wasn't at the top of our list of excursions (frankly it wasn't even on the list!), but we found it because we had a 1pm appointment in Yonkers and we were looking for something close by we could visit beforehand, and it's rectangular green space in Google Maps looked very inviting. We enjoyed the structures on the property such as the mansion and gazebo, as well as our sighting of several deer.

Our three days in Manila were based out of Newport City, which we selected because we had considered buying here, and while we decided not to buy in the Philippines in 2017, we figured we’d give it another look. Our stay this time was at an apartment rented through AirBNB, which gives us another data point to compare to our own AirBNB rentals in Costa Rica. The location of Newport [...]

In March, Caroline and I took a trip to Tamarindo, Costa Rica.  Just before our trip, we had a little winter storm in New York, so we were very glad to be able to escape for a few days and enjoy the beautiful sunny and dry season in Tamarindo.  In fact, it had snowed several times in New York City in the last few weeks, making the winters end even more [...]