Moved to a Foreign Land

After forty-plus years of Minnesota winters and at least four years of “outrage and embarrassment” over a certain recent White House administration, Colette and Nick Strand of Excelsior decided to bail on the US of A and resettle in Central America. A quick survey of the region led them to Playa Coco in northern Costa Rica, and soon they had divested themselves of years of furniture, clothes, and accumulated junk and were living the 24-7 flip-flops-and-sunglasses life of ex-pats-under-the-palms.

“Like a lot of people,” says Colette, “we kind of looked at each other one day, probably a winter day, and said, ‘We’ve been following this same routine almost our entire lives. The kids have graduated from high school. If we’re ever going to do something like this, now is the time. And we did it.”

That was four years ago. They’re back now, having sold their newly constructed Costa Rican condo—at a profit—with no regrets at the radical change in their life path. “It was so good for us,” says Colette, whose artistic talent gave their condo a look that helped its eventual sale. “To just do something so radical and so different. We didn’t even speak Spanish. I had never traveled out of the country. Moving there meant we had to adapt to everything.” She admits they were lucky to have met an American real estate agent who guided the legal end of the purchase business. “Literally, it was just one sheet of paper to buy the house.”

The experience in Costa Rica included dealing—in a foreign language—with the inevitable construction delays and screwups and acclimating to a local infrastructure that brought, in addition to chronically mud-sotted roads, frequent electricity and water outages “never in any pattern. It’d be easier if you could plan on it,” says Colette. “But you’d just lose power and water for hours without any warning.”

When the economy started failing, they decided it was best to come home. “We don’t regret moving to Costa Rica at all,” says Colette. “I missed things like just calling my girlfriends and running around with them. I think Nick missed his garage full of tools and all that kind of stuff. But the upside is we removed so much clutter from our lives just by doing it and, of course, proved to ourselves that we could.”