Covid & Costa Rica and What it Means for Us

The last time I wrote about Covid back in April there were very few cases here. The government had shut down the borders very quickly (quicker than in the UK) and for a few months things were kept extremely tight and under control. There were only repatriation flights. Only citizens could come in and they had to quarantine for two weeks. The land borders were closed and tourist visas were extended several times and currently up till mid November. We were due to do our first visa run in April, as you need to re-up your visa every 90 days, but we haven’t had to do one at all. For a few months 10 people total had died and there were a handful of cases a day - and a handful of people getting better and for quite a while (around 3 months) the number of active cases was around 400-600 and dropping.

Masks were brought in and there were driving restrictions. You couldn’t drive on some days and after certain times. Bars, beaches and national parks were shut. Churches couldn’t meet. Events were cancelled. Similar to other places but with no actual lockdown. And then, as things seemed to be getting better, a 4 phase plan was put into place. Some restaurants and hotels could reopen at 50% capacity. The beaches were open in the week from 5-8.30am. 

If you read my earlier post you might remember my concern about the porous borders and the pretty dire situation in Nicaragua to our north. About 6 weeks or so ago there started to be concerns about pockets of infection that were spreading in fruit picker/packer communities in the north of the country that tended to employ Nicaraguan workers. Like in the meat-packing industry, or sandwich factories, people are working, travelling and living close together and maybe in situations where their health and safety isn’t a top concern. It was inevitable really.

A few weeks later there were concerns in and around the capital city as numbers increased and there were mutterings about young people and beaches (sound familiar?!). And now there has been a second spike, though the first was hardly a spike. There are now around 25,000 cases, about 500 new cases a day, and around 250 deaths. These are still tiny numbers compared to a lot of places, but the medical capacity here is not huge. There were 141 ICU beds at the beginning of the year. That has been doubled and intermediate care has been extended, though that affects general capacity. We took Iris to the Dr with a suspected (later confirmed) UTI and they wouldn’t see us because she had a slight temperature. At the hospital only one person was allowed into the hospital with her. Tom went (as he’s bi-lingual and also much more patient and less Karen than I am). It was a strange experience with a mixture of process (only one person, your temperature taken on entry after you wash your hands) and staff fist-bumping each other and wearing their masks round their chins. (Eek).

So there are “zones” here now - Orange Zones - which is where things are currently in lockdown, you can only drive your car on two days a week (it's related to your registration plate) and only essential services are open. And Yellow Zones where beaches are now open every day till 2.30pm, restaurants and commercial businesses are open at 50% capacity and you can drive 5 days a week between 5am and 9pm in the week and 5am and 7pm at the weekend. The driving thing is clearly a bigger deal here where few people live within walking distance of a place to buy more than the very bare essentials. 

Now we are living in a Canton called Coto Brus. In terms of administrative districts, Costa Rica is pretty rural with a lot of mountains (and volcanoes!) and national parks, so there are many levels of administration. There’s national level, province, canton, district and then I guess town. We live between the towns of Sabalito and San Vito, which are also the names of the districts, in the Canton of Coto Brus, in Puntarenas province (which is also the name of a town!). Previously we were in Quizarrá, near the town of San Isidro, in the district of Cajón, in the canton of Perez Zeledon in the Province of San José (which is also the name of the capital city). It’s less confusing once you get your head around it.

So I guess like anywhere - in fact like where I grew up in Halfway in Sheffield where the boundary to Derbyshire was on our road - people live right on the boundary and the one here is literally in our garden! There is a river that runs through the garden, we have a little bridge and some garden on the other side. This side with the house on is in San Vito district and the other side is in Sabalito. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't matter but as Sabalito is on the border with Panama it was designated Orange for a while, even though the central plateau General Metropolitan Area around the capital city 4 hours away is where there is community transmission.

So this week the Orange Zone is under a “closure” as it is Mothers’ Day here on Saturday (15th) and the government understandably wants to restrict movement from the infected areas. This meant that we could only drive there on Fridays and Sundays (but sometimes Saturdays) and in San Vito we can drive every day except Fridays and Sundays. It meant, for example, that we couldn’t do any journeys that involved going to both. So for example we were thinking we were going to be moving house next week to a house in the other district and we couldn’t work out how we’d do that. (There was a conversation about leaving the car down a hill and carrying the bags up the hill into the different canton which I would probably have been more OK with if we had a window in the back of a car instead of a bin bag which we’ve been driving around with for the past 6 weeks - ahh Burger Burger Mousey up to her old tricks!).

Other things we couldn’t do were pick up our cleaner on a Thursday or go to the nice coffee shop with the book swap! We live 15 mins drive away from Panama at the moment - so close that our phones regularly switch timezone and welcome us to Costa Rica and suchlike. In Panama the restrictions are different too. So we can go to the Petrol Station and the duty free shops which are 100m into Panama, but the shops are only open in the week there. If you have a hire car or are in a taxi you can drive any day and if you have proof you’ve got a hotel booking you’re also allowed to travel. The *reality* here though, is that there are still only around 10 active cases in the whole of Coto Brus and the Chamber of Commerce kicked up a fuss and now Sabalito is yellow again, so it’s alright. And really, it’s alright because these are very insignificant little inconveniences in a world where millions of people are getting sick and hundreds of thousands are dying. 

And the main news from that really is that it’s comparatively still very safe where we are. And though it’s rural medical care, it is only 10 minutes away, whereas for the last 7 months we’ve been an hour away from a hospital. We are much closer to facilities even if they are much smaller. (I’m also less worried as my blood pressure is pretty good at the moment!). In general what started off as a clear plan has met the reality of there not being a one-size fits all approach and though it has been confusing because it keeps changing, as long as we keep up with the very useful English online paper - Tico Times - we know what’s going on. There’s criticism of course but honestly I think we both feel like they’re dealing with things pretty well here. 

So in the face of this spike and there being lots of cases in Alajuela - the area where the main airport is - you’d expect the borders to stay shut right? Well, the economic pressures are huge here too and so after pushing back and pushing back, the government opened the air borders to Schengen, EU, UK and Canada on August 1st. So there are flights to Madrid and Frankfurt running now. BA isn’t running until 27th October (and we’ll see right? - that’s a long way away in Covid-world) and there aren’t actually any flights to Canada or the rest of Europe this month as far as I can see.

The US Americans are champing at the bit - there are so many people who have second homes here or come for a few months here or there - but although there is pressure it would seem like madness to open that can of worms right now. Certainly our holiday with Sarah, Rudi & Valerie has been cancelled for the meantime. (Our friends who were due to come down from California in September).

If you do come into CR you need to get special travel insurance which is apparently about £100 a week per person, have a negative PCR test dated in the last 48 hours and fill out a health questionnaire.

***

So what’s our current situation? Well. We haven’t really been able to explore around the country as much as we were expecting, both because of the restrictions and because we have been a bit skint for various reasons (our Airbnb took a bit of a dive, though it has picked up again now, fingers crossed, our car needed a lot of expensive work). But, in general, we really like it here. It is beautiful and warm and the nature is great and the people are friendly and laid back. I don’t think there’s anything particularly pushing us to leave. 

We miss our friends and family. Iris in particular misses her bunk bed and Amelia, but also “all the people who she loves in the whole town”. Instead of saying she misses people she says she’s lost them “I lost Amelia/Auntie Kathryn/Rosa/Mummy Chicken” - it tugs at the heart strings.

So considerations for our plans for the next 6-12 months include:

👉I would really like to see my sisters in the flesh and have the opportunity to say goodbye to Mum properly. Also it’s my sister Charlotte’s 40th in November and a special birthday for my best woman in April, both of which it would be nice to help celebrate.

👉My sister Toya is getting married in Italy at the beginning of June next year which is a definite for us.

👉Tom is going through the EU citizenship process and there is a chance we might need to move to Spain before the year is out so that Iris and I can start our citizenship applications too - we’d then need to live there for a year. 

👉We applied for and accepted a school place in Sheffield for Iris this coming year but to start after Easter.

👉There’s still a lot of Costa Rica that we haven’t explored. We own an expensive car here and have a lot of stuff that we probably wouldn’t take if we left which makes us slightly less flexible. If we left right now and decided to come back we also wouldn’t be able to afford £300 a week in insurance costs!

👉Covid says “stay away fools” and makes everything uncertain. In good and bad ways.

👉In November (or before) the land borders might open (this seems currently unlikely given the state of LATAM but who knows) and we might have some convoluted and expensive hoops that we need to jump through to stay here which would make it unfeasible. Though I guess we could then just pal around in Panama for a while.

👉If we came back to the UK we would quite possibly have nowhere to live as our house is booked out on Airbnb for pretty much the whole of October and November.

👉In general we like this lifestyle and so it would probably make sense - financially and environmentally - to stay here and look at this country and other countries near here. It took quite a lot of effort to get here!

👉Money - if there’s another lock-down there and if the mortgage breaks and things end, then it might be a bit sticky. Equally we have been offered a house-sit near here that could run until the borders open to the States, which could be months.

It seems that one of the only things we’re pretty certain about, is that we’re going to carry on adventuring for a good while yet if we can, wherever that is and whatever it entails. So this week we withdrew Iris’ school place and have decided to home/world-school her for the time being. We wanted to make a decision with enough time for another child to be given the place for September. Iris doesn’t legally need to be schooled until Sep 2021 so we have options. We’ve essentially been home-schooling for 7 months now and we’re all happy enough with the arrangement. The schools here are shut till at least September and a pre-school I enquired at was closed “till next year” - the school year here starts in February. The playgrounds are shut too, so there aren’t a lot of socialisation opportunities in general. But these are the experiences of children all over the world right now. In the scheme of things we think this is the right thing for us all. And despite all the unknowns and all the insecurity and all the whiff of the four horsemen, we’re looking forwards to it!