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No problem. Well, I opted to pass on paying $80 to ARCR also. Dr. Molina told me that the only reason you would need an import certificate is for COMMERCIAL importation of animals, not personal import. Save your colones and don’t pay fees you don’t have to. You are already going to spend lots o $$ on the vaccinations, health certificate and shipping fees…I am confident you and your pet(s) will fare just fine!
Hola Maravilla. I flew October 19, 2006 with my puppy of 4 months and 3 adult cats. They all flew as Cargo (sad!) on American and fared just fine. I had spoken with Dr. Molina a few weeks before we moved to C.R and he assured me we DID NOT need an import certificate from him. The airline and the CR Embassy site claimed all we needed was: 1. International Health certifcate for each pet filled our by our vet and signed off by the USDA (in our case in Gainesville, FL) 10 days before the flight to CR. All pets had their rabies shots that were more than a month old, but less than a year. All the animals were vaccinated a couple of months for all the other shots needed (but I forget what they were…see the CR embassy website for info). When I got to the Liberia Airport, the customs guy looked at all my docs and said “Gracias” looked at the pets and waived me through. ALL THAT RUNNING AROUND FOR?? Just kidding. My pets are all well worth it, but I just went through all this and really didn’t think it was bad at all. However, I do agree that there is SO much conflicting info on so many different sites. I only know how to ship your pets with a passenger, so I couldn’t fill you in on how to do it without. Buena suerte.
Depending on what part of the country you live in, that will dictate your budget. ie: I live in Guanacaste, which is more expensive than the central valley. Here’s an example MONTHLY budget:
Maid (she comes over 2 x per week for 6 hours @800 colones per hour) = $75.00 USD
Gas = $400 (for two cars… depends on how much you drive)
Life Insurance = $90 (for two of us)
Health Insurance (INS) = $116 (for two)
Groceries = $400 (could be less if you eat simple things)
Car Insurance $200 (two cars)
Home Insurance $30
Cell Phone $40 (two lines)
No land line
Direct TV = $34
Garbage = $5.00 per month
Water = on well, no bill as of yet.
No internet (use it at work)Grand Total = $1,390 (don’t forget going out, travel, having fun.. maybe $300-600 per month??)
Hope this helps…
Edited on Dec 04, 2006 14:38
Edited on Dec 04, 2006 14:39
After going through what I went through, I would buy my car here. The only thing is that my car IS better quality. The other poster was right. Same car, but different standards, and overall quality. I did bring my car in again the other day and the service manager was nice enough to help me solve my issue. Nice guy. That was at the Agencia Datsun in La Sabana. ALso, in Liberia there is an authorized service center in downtown liberia next to Burger King, just an FYI for those of you with Nissans who live at the beach.
Hi there. The Xterra cost me $27,500 brand new (it’s a 4×4 off road edition). That’s not even available over there. A regular Xterra costs around $30,000 (including the tax). My parents also saw their Ford Escape costs $5,000 more in Costa Rica. That ‘tax’ is still there in Costa Rica, just less and hidden into the price. Just because you buy a car there doesn’t mean you don’t pay tax. You just don’t pay as much. Hope that helps.
Kimyoa650, this is NOT a luxury car. It’s a 2006 Nissan Xterra 4×4. And, consider this. My car in Costa Rica would be about $7,000 more (give or take) to buy there. So, in reality, I paid about $4,000 more to bring my own car. I can’t vouch for the quality of the Nissan Xterras there either. But, like I said, I should’ve bought my car there. Oh well.
Hi. Yes, there are high taxes on your car. I opted to drive the car for 6 months on a tourist visa and pay my taxes this year. The taxes on the rest of my belongings was $1,500 approximately. In hind sight, I probably would have purchased my car in Costa Rica, but I had already committed to shipping it. It’ll be nice to have my own car too, since I’ve been the only driver and it’s a perfect 4×4 for the area. The taxes on my car will unfortunately be a staggering $10,800 according to my mover… yikes! I know that there is a site to look up your taxes (because I’ve done it before) but the address slips my mind. I’m sure someone else can chime in with it.
Cesca,
My husband and I move to Costa Rica in 2 weeks and we’ll be living in your area. Huacas has a 24 hour emergency clinic and Flamingo has good healthcare as well. However, while I haven’t gotten any prescriptions from their pharmacy (yet) I am sure they are not the cheapest simply due to being a more touristy, high-priced area. If you can go to Santa Cruz (30 minutes) or Liberia (1 hr drive), you’ll save a lot if your talking prescriptions. As for healthcare, the nearest hospital is in Liberia if you need major care. Otherwise, there is plenty of good clinics, dentists etc in the surrounding beach communities (Tamarindo, Conchal, Flamingo, Potrero, etc).
Hi PS:
Yes, total cost was $6,225 to be exact. We paid $2,925 to Alpico Internationl in Tampa (we packed our belongings and they loaded them into the truck since they are much better at that than my husband and I would ever be). The rest of the money, $3300, was paid to Charles Zeller. That includes $1,500 for import duties. ** Please note that I am shipping my car, but have to pick it up in San Jose due to customs being there and you have to be there in person to get your vehicle. I am NOT paying taxes until January on my car to save money because it’s a 2006 model. So, my taxes, which will be around $10,000 will be paid in January/February time frame. That is maybe what you may be referring to the high taxes. It doesn’t cost much to actually ship a car to Costa Rica, but the import duties are sky high. In retrospect I probably should’ve sold and bought down there, but it’s nice to have my car that I’m used to and know it’s only been driven by me and it’s a perfect car 4×4 for Costa Rica. I was actually pleasantly surprised at the quote we got. It would have cost us MUCH more to sell all our things and repurchase those things in Costa Rica. I must say that we did sell probably 1/2 of our house furnishings in order to downsize and not ship so much. It ended up being about 1/2 of the container of household goods, my car, and some charitable donation items. If you have any specific questions, feel free to email me at: mediatica26@yahoo.com Buena suerte!
We used Charles Zeller with Ship to costa rica. His email is: shiptocostarica@racsa.co.cr I believe. You can also search for him on the ARCR site as well. He has been great to deal with thus far. We paid $6,200 to ship a 40′ container from Tampa, Florida to Playa Conchal, Guanacaste and that includes import taxes of $1,500, door to door service. So the actual shipping charges were $4,700. Pretty reasonable for all the things we shipped. lots of household goods and a car. Hope that helps.
From Harvcarp below…. (He had issues cutting and pasting, so here is the reply from ARCR).
Hi Harvey,
your email was forwarded to me, and I believe you are referring to the ¢8,000,000 maximum annual amount on Plan 16. This is correct for that specific insurance, but there are other options that you can get now, including one for up to $200,000 annual coverage. Give me a call if you are looking at your insurance options, there are many
Sincerely yours
Ryan PiercyI’m a Realtor in Tampa and Florida real estate is SLOW. Let’s put it this way: I sold houses in 24 hours to 7 days on average last year and had multiple out of control bidding wars. NOW, I have 13 listings, only 2 scheduled closings this month. Condos especially in Tampa and Miami are sitting and not selling. Developers are offering insane incentives to get people to buy. I have listings that have sat on the market for up to 5 months. Never in a million years would I have thought that this would have been the state of the market this year. Luckily, I sold all my rentals earlier this year and my own home. I’ll be in sunny CR next month and I can’t wait!
I don’t understand what you mean by ‘unlocking’ the phone. I bought my phone (actually two of them; Samsung model) from the T-Mobile store in Tampa. I took both phones in the box, handed them with receipts in the box to my cousin with a copy of my and my husbands passport. She went and hooked them up with ICE in July. That simple. Well, that simple if you have a relative. Otherwise you can also hook it up in your C.R corporation or S.A. Whoever said you have to unlock the phone isn’t right. I took the phones brand new to C.R and they work great. No tricks.
Edited on Sep 14, 2006 04:58
I have an interesting situation about squatters also. My husband and I are in the process of buying some land (10 acres or so) in Montes de Oro (aka: Miramar, Puntarenas). There is a squatter that brought on STOLEN cattle onto the land (the previous owner no less) and tried to claim rights. This battle has been going on for years and the courts just now ruled in the favor of the owner. You would think it’s over there, but the squatter had the guts to appeal the decision! Well, the court through his appeal out and now he is being formally evicted by the municipality. We are supposed to close on this in SJO on November 7th. The title is clear, according to my attorney, but they are waiting on the court order that the squatter lost in court and now his formal eviction before we even think of purchasing this land. I am getting a good deal on it, and that’s why we’re personally ok with dealing with the situation. It is real, I would also throw in my opinion to say it’s mostly in rural areas. This is a rural, coffee growing area and it’s not gated… The current owner is an American and didn’t visit the land for years at a time. Not a good idea. You need to have someone looking over your land and/or property. Anyone else with stories and/or advice, would be appreciated. I hope never to encounter this first hand ever… Also, maybe Scott can interject here, Why don’t they do away with this law? Isn’t there pressure from locals, investors and the like to do away with this old law…that seems to benefit NO ONE but the dishonest squatter??
Edited on Sep 06, 2006 12:26
