Wendy Stoneham left Saskatchewan for coastal Costa Rica nearly a decade ago. She’s now nine years into life there, working as a real estate professional along Guanacaste’s Gold Coast, which covers Playa Flamingo, Potrero, Tamarindo and Playas del Coco. Published as a sponsored post, her account offers a candid look at what building a life and a business in a new country takes.
Choosing Community Over Convenience
Stoneham says she chose a small community away from heavily touristed areas. She wanted to experience another culture and see the world from a new angle. What she found felt familiar: small-town connections, neighbors looking out for one another, and the strong community spirit she knew growing up in Saskatchewan.
She didn’t wait for that welcome to arrive on its own. Neighbors became friends, she writes, and invitations to celebrations and local gatherings soon followed. She found acceptance by showing up, taking part, accepting invitations, listening, learning and appreciating local traditions. In her view, buying a home alone doesn’t make someone part of a community. Relationships and consistency do. It’s a plain-spoken lesson in personal initiative, and it runs counter to the idea that a purchase or a visa buys belonging.
She doesn’t claim her path is the only one. Some people, she notes, find happiness in the international expat community, and there’s no single way to experience Costa Rica.
The Paperwork Reality
Stoneham speaks bluntly about the friction. “Pura Vida” doesn’t mean every day is easy or that paperwork disappears, she writes. She points to complications with banking, applying for or renewing a driver’s license, and handling residency and other administrative processes.
Bureaucracy brings everyday costs for anyone crossing a border to start over. Newcomers need more than enthusiasm. They need patience with the process and a clear-eyed view of the rules. What she says she values most are things no agency issues: a welcoming neighbor, unexpected invitations, celebrations and friendships that grow over time. “Perhaps the real journey is not about changing Costa Rica at all, but about allowing Costa Rica to change you,” she writes.
Property As A Life Decision
After nearly a decade working with buyers and sellers, Stoneham says property purchases in Costa Rica are rarely just transactions. They can represent a lifestyle change, a new chapter or a long-held vision. She describes moving across borders as a profound financial and personal transition, and says she guides clients through legal and market realities as well as the personal process of building a life there.
That framing puts the buyer’s own due diligence at the center. Her author biography lists her work across Guanacaste and gives her email as [email protected] and her phone number as +506 8777 4224.
What Else Is Moving In Costa Rica
The page carried a string of headlines sketching the wider environment a newcomer would enter. Costa Rica is raising mandatory vehicle insurance rates for 2027. The dollar closed Friday at 452.92 colones on Monex, down from 460.45 on October 1. More than 400 buildings fall within the proposed right-of-way for the Tibi electric train, and the state also needs to buy 145 private lots by 2028.
Other items covered enforcement and public services. A criminal case is underway over clearing protected land beside Montezuma’s waterfall, where inspectors found trees cut and a hillside terraced on 6,564 square meters, including public heritage land. Police named a 22-year-old suspect in the killing of an American man in Playas del Coco. Public schools have lost 180,000 students in five years. Another headline said ICE sent two Costa Rican children, ages 9 and 11, to a Texas family detention center after they were apprehended near New Orleans and transported 12 hours by road to the Dilley facility. These were headlines and short promotional descriptions, not details from Stoneham’s feature.
Why This Matters:
Stoneham’s account offers a useful corrective to the brochure version of expat life. Relocating abroad involves a financial commitment, legal, banking and administrative hurdles, and success depends on individual effort and homework—not a promise of effortless paradise. The headlines around her piece add context a buyer would weigh: vehicle insurance costs going up, a currency that moved from 460.45 to 452.92 colones in under three weeks, land the state must acquire for the Tibi train, and enforcement actions over protected land. For anyone considering property in Guanacaste, those are practical realities of regulation, cost and property rights alongside the lifestyle pitch. This was a sponsored post, so readers should weigh it accordingly and do their own research.
- wendy stoneham
- costa rica
- guanacaste
- real estate
- expat life
- community
- saskatchewan