Hey, well its been 2 weeks now and I'm just finishing up my trip in Costa Rica. It´s been great so far, went straight to Bocas Del Toro on the caribbean side of Panama from San Jose. Met some german surfers at the bus station who were heading to Bocas too so I stayed with them for 4 nights at this awesome hostel right on the water on Caranero island in Bocas. The waves started to pick up after a few days and got some really good rides at a beach break off of one of the islands. Still pretty rusty [View Full Entry]

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People often have a hard time understanding that there are basic items that one cannot obtain in Costa Rica. With all that is said about it's modernity, there are countless things that people take for granted living in the US that are not even a part of daily life down here. I am not talking about HDTV or High-Speed internet, (while neither of those are that easy to come by in CR) I am talking about basic necessities of life. There are certain items that our family brings down for us since we cannot get them here, such as nicer baby [View Full Entry]

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We spent a few days searching for a car. Kilon and I were undecided on the exact model etc. We were told to NEVER trust the odometer. Look for paint and body work to be an indication the car had been involved in a wreck (from witnessing the driving I’d say a good portion have been involved in an accident). We were originally looking at Honda CRVs and Toyota RAV4s. The CRV and RAV4 were too low to the ground for our purposes. After looking at 20+ cars we decided on the 2005 Toyota Prado Land Cruiser (2 door). We based [View Full Entry]

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So after traveling around as much of the country as we could stand for a month (mid-November to mid-December) while toting our two high-maintenance pieces of luggage, we settled back in Heredia. We chose Heredia primarily for the cooler temperatures (about 70 degrees in the morning and almost always sunny, rising in the afternoon to the mid-80’s , then cooling again with the afternoon rain) and the proximity to San Jose, schools, and other services. Our first weeks back in Heredia were surreal. While looking for a home to rent, we stayed in a little apartment with an open-air kitchen [View Full Entry]

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So I'm here and I already love it however it is a lot different than I thought it would be because I forgot that this is a 3rd world country. When I arrived at the airport I was happy to see that everything was in English and Spanish but that pretty much stopped there. Our hotel is right in the middle of a semi-busy street in Heredia and I will put up pictures soon to show you. The rooms are pretty small but good enough. It's really nice because all of us are on the same floor right next to [View Full Entry]

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After living for 2 weeks with power outages lasting from 2-5 hours a day there was sufficient rain in near the dams to allow the hydroelectric plants to start producing again. The power outages are over! It's amazing that even though it was only a couple of hours per day, it impacts you life in so many ways! This week they were working on the lines up the mountain, so not only is Costa Rica's power back on line and running at 100%, we should not be affected by even the worst weather! Thank G-d for small miracles :) [View Full Entry]

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Baby Klein makes his appearance! Sorry this has taken so long to get online, but it’s been a bit of a crazy couple of weeks. On Sunday April 8th, Rachel gave birth to a beautiful baby boy at hospital CIMA. Everything was wonderful, we were in the hospital over the festival days of the holiday of Passover, where we don’t drive or use electricity which made for an interesting 48 hours. Fortunately my parents were in town, and they stayed across the street at a hotel. They kept a ton of food in their room and we made the holiday as [View Full Entry]

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We took a day trip to La Paz waterfall gardens which is near Poas Volcano. It was a little pricey but worth it. There is a series of five incredible falls in the rain forest with plenty of steps on the trail. Luckily it is mainly downhill with a shuttle to take you back to the top. There was also a butterfly garden, frog habitat, serpentarium, bird habitat, typical early CR home, and a hummingbird garden. Grayson got some real butterfly kisses in the garden. Grayson also got to fish in the “trout pond” which was actually an incredible rock swimming [View Full Entry]

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Since coming to Costa Rica, we have thankfully fallen into amazing contacts. This is not typical, as most people have horror stories about one person or another. Thankfully for us, everyone from our realtors to our lawyers, contractors, bankers and more have worked out perfectly. I figure it is good for them, and anyone else that may be looking to relocate here to have a list of tried and true contacts here. Without these people our move here would not have been possible. Please don’t add to this in comments, there are others I am sure, this is just my list [View Full Entry]

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Well, we are almost finished with our first month and things have gone well. Obviously we would have loved to have been full the entire month, but we did pretty well considering that we opened our doors less than 30 days ago. We have had 14 guests through the hotel and it seems that all have been thrilled with the results. (I will get some of the thank you notes up as soon as I get permission to release them.) Its interesting running hotel, it’s far more work than we could have ever imagined. Rachel is up at 5:45 cooking for [View Full Entry]

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