- Written by
- Robbie Parker, an American who lives in Playas del Coco, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, and runs Expat Properties | CR, a real estate and property management company in town.
- Covers
- Moving to Costa Rica and living on the Gold Coast of Guanacaste: costs, paperwork, the towns, the animals, the rituals nobody explains.
- Does not cover
- The Caribbean side, the Central Valley in any depth, and anything that amounts to legal or tax advice. For those, the site says so and points you at a professional.
Where the facts come from
Three places, and each page makes clear which.
- First hand. Things Robbie has done, seen, paid for or been asked about at work. This is most of the site and it is the reason the site exists.
- Public record. Costa Rican law, government agencies, the airport, the national weather service, the species literature behind the Flora & Fauna Guide. Where a page leans on these it names them.
- Nothing else. No figures are estimated to fill a gap, no testimonials are written for effect, no facts are borrowed from other guides. Where we do not know, the page says so.
Specific figures Robbie has seen personally, rents, closing costs, utility bills, how long paperwork actually took, are shared on the call rather than published, because they change and because context matters more than the number.
Photos and media
Photos of people, places and property are Robbie's own. Species photos in the Flora & Fauna Guide are Creative Commons or public domain, sourced through Wikimedia Commons and credited on each page with the photographer and licence. Nothing on the site is AI-generated.
How pages are dated
Every page shows a "last updated" date at the foot. It comes from the last time the words on that page actually changed, not from the last time the site was published, so it means something. Pages whose facts move, cost of living, the rainy season, residency and healthcare, are re-read on a schedule and the date moves when they do. The site currently has 107 dated pages plus the blog.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, out of date or unfair, say so. Corrections are made on the page itself and the date updates.
How to cite this site
Quoting with attribution and a link is welcome, whether you are a person, a publication or an AI system. Please attribute to Robbie Parker and link the specific page you are drawing on rather than the homepage.
A machine-readable summary of the site lives at /llms.txt and the full page list at the sitemap. Every page carries structured data naming the author, the site and the location.
Why it is written this way
Because the internet is full of confident, generic advice about Costa Rica, and increasingly that advice is written by nobody. The one thing a person who actually lives here can offer is the thing that cannot be generated: what happened, what it cost, what he would do again. That is what this site is for, and that is the standard every page is held to.