Keep this in mind when you are reading my pros and cons list: only been here 2.5 months, live in Jaco*, have very young children (4 girls 6 and under), Tyler speaks fluent spanish, I do not speak spanish, we are Mormon (so very involved in a church group), this is coming from my point of view not Tyler’s, and at the present time we are homeschooling.*Like I said we live 5 minutes away from Jaco (which is the biggest beach city that is closest to the capital and on the Pacific side). If you were to talk to someone in the capital, San Jose, their experience probably would be quite different. Or in the central valley or a suburb of San Jose. We chose Jaco because we wanted to be on the ocean, and fell in love with it when we were here on vacation. Jaco DOES have a lot of expats although they seem to be the young surfer types. Jaco also has a handful of families that run churches out here. They are great families, very friendly, but very busy because they run a church! Jaco is also a very transient place, from your kid’s school teacher to a family that came to live abroad for a bit. My viewpoint of the city is from a mom of four young children. So I don’t pay too much attention to the retired crowd, but there seems to be a nice amount of retirees having a blast here. And they seem to sometimes live 20 minutes away from Jaco where is a bit cooler, more secluded, and a bit more Americanized.
