What happens when North American empty-nesters decide to pull up roots and move to Costa Rica to start a reforestation project?

This section is a series of stories on life in the campo, or country living in Costa Rica. The stories relate the experiences of my wife and I on our visits to set up the business and our early experiences of living here. Finca Leola's business is returning pastureland to perpetual forest, with a plantation as the first stage. We make most of the wood from the plantations into furniture, flooring, and other wood products, creating a lot of good jobs.

These stories are mostly set in the area near our tree plantations, located near La Fortuna, San Carlos, in Alajuela Province (Monterrey is the nearest town of any significant size to finca #1, and our home, office, furniture factory and the rest of our plantations are near San Rafael de Guatuso). We have also included in this section some amusing stories by the North American wife of our tico (Costa Rican) former partner about her own adaptation to the culture. When we visited Costa Rica prior to moving here, we used to stay at their casa (house). It was a better-than-average 3-bedroom tico home, concrete, no hot water (not even a suicide shower¹). The rent was $120 US dollars per month in 2003; utilities less than $20.00 a month, including phone, and Internet access was $15.00 per month.

Later stories about our life here are found in our blog. The stories will probably never stop coming, because we'll never stop learning from the quirky situations we get into. And we hope we'll never stop finding the unexpected in Costa Rica.