Costa Rica Blog

Real estate for Expats - A Comparison

Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama,  Belize and Nicaragua

Boston Scientific, based in Natick Massachusetts, recently announced plans to double the size of their manufacturing systems in Costa Rica. The company is closing its facility in Doral, Florida eliminating 1400 jobs.  The firm is investing over $30 million dollars in the new facility in Alejuela, just outside of San Jose.  The company cited the availability of skilled labor and lower labor costs as the primary reasons for the move.   Boston Scientific began manufacturing in Costa Rica in 2004, currently employing over 1700 people in the country with plans to double that number in the next two years.  The company makes medical devices including a variety of medical delivery systems, stents, catheters, graft materials, suture devices, implantable cardiac remote monitoring units and gastrointestinal related devices.  The firm produces nearly 26,000 different items from 17 plants worldwide. The company is publicly traded on the NYSE with sales in 2008 of over $8 billion USD and 24,800 employees worldwide.

We spent Thanksgiving this year with friends from Key West.  There were 8 of us all together.  We had a crab stuffed Mutton Snapper as our main course and we also had a Turkey.  Kristina insisted I buy a "Happy Turkey" one that lived it's life as a vegetarian and free ranged.  Happy Turkeys (read expensive Turkey) aren't sold as loss leaders at Publix, Winn Dixie or Stop and Shop.  They come from Specialty stores and typically cost as much as a Day at Disneyworld.  They don't seem to taste different to me and since Kristina is a vegetarian, I suppose they don't taste different to her.  I don't really think the Turkey was any happier once he was in the oven but who knows.   

One of my favorite restaurants in the southern Pacific area of Costa Rica is La Fogata in Uvita.  Their specialty is rotisserie chicken on a wood fired oven but they also serve pizza, pasta dishes and salads.  The rotisserie chicken is about the best chicken I have ever had, a combination of great cooking as well as the fact that the chickens are all free range.  Unlike chickens in the US produced in some factory farm on a diet of corn, these chickens live outdoors and eat things chickens naturally eat.  You can bring your own beer and wine.  The seating area is rustic on a deck covered by a roof but no walls.  They doubled the size of the seating area last year since there was always a line to get a table.  Even with the extra seating, if you show up after 7:00 pm on a busy day, the chicken may be all gone.  Take the first right after the big bridge on the Coastal highway (heading south) and La Fogata is on your left about 200 meters down the road.  If you find yourself in Uvita at a time you are feeling hungry, it is worth searching a bit to find La Fogata.  Expect a half chicken dinner here with sides to set you back about $5 dollars.  

Bull Riding Basics

 A visit to the Boruca Indian Indigenous Village