My name is Jeanetta Taylor Owens, born in Omaha, Nebraska a bunch of years ago. My husband, Charles, was a military man and he had been assigned in 1978 to Balboa Hospital in Panama City.

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I am currently owner and inn keeper of La Terraza Bed and Breakfast in Grecia, Costa Rica. I have been in the hospitality, sales and customer service industry for over 20 years and have an extensive international back ground that helps to make you feel at home no matter where you are from.

So how did I end up living in Costa Rica?

Whenever someone tells me that they live in “paradise”, I first try to get them to explain what they mean by paradise. Well, my definition of paradise is this: a place where the weather is great all the time, a place where the flowers and trees never seem to die and where people are still very cordial and friendly.

Those were the qualities my husband Charles and I found accidentally in Costa Rica, while taking a trip just to fulfill our curiosity.

When Charles worked in Panama, he fell in love with the people and the country. Charles spent many years trying to coax me into visiting Panama. One of my biggest fears about Panama was not the climate but the beautiful women. Charles loved dark women with an accent 🙂

There was no way I was moving to a country full of women with those traits and qualities! This fear did not exist while living in Germany, or visiting France, Spain, Hungary and Italy. Those countries had beautiful women, but the women did not have two qualities: dark skin and that special Spanish accent!

In 1998 Charles retired and we traveled via motor home throughout the US. After five years of camping out we decided to try something else. One day, while living in San Diego, Charles suggested we get our passports renewed, just in case we wanted to go overseas.

My interest was in visiting Vietnam. We had given a great part our lives to Vietnam even though Charles only served there for one year. My desire to visit Vietnam faded as we talked about the climate. Hot weather is not one of my friends; let alone hot and humid weather!

So, with traveling in mind, and the desire to visit a new foreign country, we hit the library. There we found a book about Costa Rica. My husband, of course, took that as an opportunity to approach me about visiting Panama. We begin to read books about Costa Rica and I made a deal with him; if we could go to Costa Rica then we could also visit Panama.

I thought it was pretty safe to go to Costa Rica. Remember my fear of the dark skinned beautiful women who spoke Spanish? Well, I said “yes” before I finished reading the book about Costa Rica. I had no idea about the population of people of color in Limon.

Once I had agreed to Costa Rica, there was no backing down. I was not seriously worried, anyway. Charles was now a spunky old man (smile) and after marriage to me for over 40 years, he did not have much run left in him. He had a desire mainly to look. You can restrict a guy from a lot of things, but not permitting him to look is just criminal.

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I think we thought Costa Rica was just another camping spot, because we jumped on the plane with no plans of where we were going to stay. It did not occur to us that we needed to make a hotel decision until we got into a taxi after our arrival in country.

The driver thought we were two crazy people. I don’t think he met many people arriving in country who did not know where they were going to stay. It was the first day of President Pachecos’ presidency, on May 8, 2002. The taxi cab driver took us to a hotel in town. When we were told the accommodations were $80 a night, our first thoughts were that he had two fools in the cab!

We stayed one night in San Jose and then the next day we went to Limon. I wanted to see where my people lived. The trip to Limon was a four hour bus ride from San Jose. When we arrived, we found a hot, small town along the coast.

It was nothing like I had imagined! Charles was so tired from the bus ride he did not get a chance to see the beautiful women. One day in Limon was hot enough for me, and with all the beautiful women in town, I knew we needed to pull out before Charles developed a reason to want to stay for a couple of days!

I had talked to someone who traveled a lot to Costa Rica and he had mentioned to me that the closer you were to the ocean the hotter it was. So while Charles was asleep in the hotel I found an Internet Cafe and looked on line for somewhere else to visit. Online I discovered a small B&B in Grecia and called the woman. She was North American and spoke wonderful English.

We jumped on the bus, rode back to San Jose and then caught a bus to Grecia. That may sound easy, but it was not. Neither Charles nor I spoke Spanish. I had believed Charles was speaking pretty well, because he knew about 11 words! I was eventually convinced that he could not speak Spanish when I needed to ask someone where the bathroom was. He could not give me the word for bathroom!

We did finally arrive in Grecia and it took everything we could muster to control ourselves, and not run up to our hostess and hug her. We were so happy to be somewhere English could be understood and spoken!

The owner of the B&B told us we could rent a room for a month. She was just opening and did not have any reservations as yet. That worked out perfectly. It would take us a month to adjust to our surroundings. Our hostess was wonderful. However, she wasn’t much help in getting around in Costa Rica. She had a vehicle and did not use the local transportation. We had to figure those things out for ourselves.

Two weeks after our arrival we decided to go home, put the motor home in permanent storage, and come back to Costa Rica. The plan was to stay in Costa Rica for about 2 months; then travel to Panama and stay there for a couple months. We had no intention of settling down and homesteading in Costa Rica!

After all, we had just sold a home that we had owned for 11 years but had only lived in for 2 years. Plus, our lives had been lived like rolling stones and we enjoyed that lifestyle. For us, It was absolutely nothing to just jump on a plane and visit a country, or city in the US, for a few months. Our families considered us genuine gypsies!

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The owner of the B&B told us she was moving to Nicaragua, and that she was going to put the bed and breakfast up for rent. She offered it to us but we could see that she had reservations about us. After all of our conversations about all the places we had lived, I’m pretty sure that Charles and I just did not seem normal to her. I did not want to rent the house, anyway, because the lease was for one year. So, we bused all over Costa Rica looking for that famous, fabulous cheap place for rent.

We found out that the books lie!

Costa Rica is not “cheap”, but it is “cheaper.” From my reading, I thought we could live in a palace for about $700.00 per month. Some of the places that were advertised sounded like they were palaces but they were mostly borderline horrible.

On the other hand, the place where we were already living was beautiful and clean, as were the surrounding town and community. Finally, we returned to Grecia after searching almost all of Costa Rica for a place to stay. Charles agreed to sign the contract for a year. I really did not think we would be here for that one year!

But one year later we purchased the B&B. We were retired and were not looking for a business. Charles’ retirement ideal did not include running a business. His wife talked him into those sorts of things. It didn’t hurt, though, that he had fallen in love with the area and the house.

So, we opened the business. Man, was that a real challenge! I thought that running a B&B just meant you served breakfast and had a bed for people to sleep in. There is far more to it than that. You know, many of my customers tell me that they have always dreamed of having a B&B. Well, if you do not like people and hard work, you’d better wake yourself up, I tell them!

Running a B&B is a lot of work (but I love it). It takes many years before you actually see a profit. I can think of a lot of other businesses to operate that take a lot less money to run. Our biggest challenge has been that we love quality and we will not operate any other way. Our place is designed as a small resort retreat, with some big hotel amenities, like personal service and customized vacation plans. The staff has been trained to cater to our customers. We really worked to build in everything that we had missed when traveling.

On 2nd January 2009 Charles died. We had been married for 47 years. My life has taken full circle and being here in Costa Rica is one of the best things that happened for both of us.

I look forward to writing more about living in Costa Rica, traveling in Costa Rica, moving to Costa Rica, being black in Costa Rica, being single in Costa Rica, running a B&B, and, well, just about anything and everything! I really look forward to hearing from guests, potential guests, and whoever else is interested, too!

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Written by Jeanetta Owens who owns the lovely La Terraza B&B in Grecia which is about one hour from San José, Costa Rica. For a taste of living the good life in Grecia, Costa Rica, may we suggest you to book yourself into Jeanetta’s B&B for a nice long vacation.

Jeanetta’s B&B has been rated the #1 B&B in Grecia, Costa Rica by Trip Advisor. You can find her blog here at La Terraza Blog

Calling from the U.S. 1-786-363-9036
Toll Free Calling from U.S. or Canada 1-(877)-298-7439800
Calling within Costa Rica 2494-0970
Calling direct from other countries 011-506-2494-3493
Fax number from the U.S. 011-506-2444-5221

How Did I End Up Living In Grecia, Costa Rica?

Article/Property ID Number 2421

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