When we lived in NYC, we used the four basic methods of inner-city transportation: foot, subway, bus, taxi. Here in the Greater Puerto Viejo area, your basic travel options are a bit broader: bike, moto, bus; car, golf cart, ATV, horse, surfboard and the occasional ox cart.

Most things (groceries,...

As we hit our one-year anniversary here in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, we made ready to move into our sixth place of residence. Last time, we explored the reasons so many folks seem to bounce around here in Puerto, as well as our own moves one and two....

Ask any Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica resident "How many times have you moved since your arrival?" and it goes something like this: "Five times in the past year," "twice this month," "I've lived in 18 places since i got here" and so on. When we first heard these Hobo Joe...

Google "Costa Rican restaurant New York City" and what comes up? I'll tell you what: nothing. In the most densely restauranted city in the world, there is not one Costa Rican restaurant. In our old NYC neighborhood alone, along with the Chinese, Thai, Italian, French, et cetera, we had an...

One appealing aspect of moving to a place where you don't speak the language is you no longer have to hear anything stupid. Living in New York City, where strangers rub elbows and ears together, means that you are constantly overhearing cell phone conversations, 90 percent of which constitute of...

"We got sunlight on the sand, we got moonlight on the sea / We got mangos and bananas you can pick right off the tree..."

We have all of the above in Puerto Viejo, plus snorkeling, surfing, gorgeous beaches, wildlife to rival the Bronx Zoo, and one of the world's...

One big reason to have a dog in Puerto Viejo is security; pretty much anything that isn't nailed down is fair game around here, petty burglaries aren't uncommon -- and we determined we wanted... a beast. A sinewy jungle savage to both serve and protect. A relentless soldier, a brawler,...

Welcome to "House Hunters International" ... The Do-It-Yourself Edition.

Before we moved to Costa Rica, we watched the crap out of HHI, despite the fact that most every episode showed a couple with too much money and too little imagination bobbleheading their way around three houses making inane comments...

You'd think it'd be tough to pull a move like this together; what to pack, what to get rid of, finding a buyer for our Manhattan co-op, trying to find place to land (in Costa Rica) while living in New York. On the other hand...

We really couldn't do anything...

I would have stuck around to see if the pup we'd just gotten would make it (or just keep blowing those green things out its nose), but practice (as in baseball) was supposed to start in a minute. Not a New York minute, but still... I really had to get...