The   Bella  Blog

When we decided to move to Costa Rica, our original plan was for 6 of us (known then as The Aspiring Expats), to settle on the Caribbean Coast. We were to buy land, build and live in 4 sustainable living, self-sufficient off-the-grid container homes with a common area hub in the center, with plans to expand into a larger container community at a later date! Five Year Look Back August 3, 2015 At our last several weekly meetings, we have been discussing housing options using al

Today is September 15th It's Costa Rica Independence Day Some of you may remember this video, which we posted back in 2018 on our old vimeo channel. Now that we have moved from Grecia, it's fun to look back on those days, so, from time to time I'll upload one of the old videos and repost it to our new Youtube channel -- and you can also view it here. I think this will be helpful to our newer subscribers -- and for those of you who have been around for a while, you might like

We are finally in our new home!! In the midst of a "pandemic" With the number of Covid cases on the rise and both our city locations on "orange alert", I figured I better change our move date while things were still partially open. I moved the date from Sunday July 12 to Friday July 10. Very happy I did, because on Saturday July 11th, Costa Rica instituted the strictest Covid measures to date! The new restrictions for areas on orange alert cut driving down to one day during t

Hope you are all doing well. We are in week 5 of self isolation here in Costa Rica. We're working on a video to update you on what life has been like for us. So stay tuned! In the meantime, here are a couple of items I'd like to share with you. The first is written by a proud Tica who writes about how Costa Rica is handling the crisis and below that is an excellent video showing the comparison between NY and Costa Rica. So happy we are here! I hope you will take time to look

What a week this has been. Who can remember what life was like before we had to stay 6 ft away from each other, wash our hands a gazillion times a day, sanitize everything and stay sequesterd in our homes? Here's the latest news from Costa Rica - We started using an online delivery service for our fruits and veggies. They make deliveries on Fridays. We don't have Uber eats or any of those other fancy delivery services here in our area but this will cut down (somewhat) on our

Can you Salsa? I have to admit it. I can not! I posted this on Facebook today but for those of you who do not have FB here's what I said. Sunday we took ourselves over to Sarchi (next little city over from Grecia) to "Viejillos" a bar, restaurant/discoteque (I didn't know discoteques were still around 😉) For those not familiar, Viejjillos is a HUGE place and every Sunday they have dancing with a live band, from 1-6pm. People of all ages come to dance. It was my 2nd time goin

YAY!!! I have finally completed our look back/4 year Costa Rica wrap up video!!! Or, I guess I should say, vide-O's -- as it turns out that I had to split the original video into 2 parts. In the end, a 1 hour video was just a little too much for my poor laptop to process. Even with the 2 video split, part 2 took half the day and all night to upload! Yes my friends, those are some of the joys of video making and uploading in Costa Rica!!! I will keep that in mind for future u

You just never know what's in store for you in paradise! The other day we invited our friend Javier over to hang out in our backyard. He arrived with his guitar and a couple of bottles of wine. We also invited our friends Kate & Sergey, who brought over some snacks and Kate's West African drum. So, Lavanson grabbed his Native American flutes and I brought out my tambourine and Nicaraguan maracas and we commenced to have a little jam session right there in our backyard! Check

Happy New Year Everyone! Just a quick check-in to wish each of you the very best for the the new year! Hope you all have something special to look forward to. Celebrating Our One Year "That Bella Life" Blogoversary/Vlogoversary!! Yep, that's right, how time flies. This time last year I was putting the final touches on this website and preparing to launch! The website will remain the same but as I do every year, I am redesigning our videos a bit including some changes to our i

Costa Rica is one of the most popular relocation spots for US expats, however you may not be able to watch all of your favorite TV shows! Things have changed a bit since we arrived 4 years ago. When we originally subscribed to Tigo, a local cable provider, they offered a package which included a decent # of US channels including 10 HBO channels as well as several CNN channels, (MSNBC was never part of the any package option). I generally watch CNN/MSNBC for the debates. I no

I know it's been a minute since my last post. There has been a whole lot going on. I will fill you in on some of it in our next video "Things Change" - Our 4 yr Costa Rica Update. Look for that in the next few weeks. In the meantime, the rainy season is just about finished for the 2019 season (Yay) and with that will bring strong winds till sometime in January (Ick). By the time the dry season comes around, our backyard looks a hot mess - to put it bluntly. Much of the house