Vacation Ready

We are getting excited and ready for our 3-week vacation to CR in October. We will be spending 20 days there, relaxing, enjoying our time off and hoping to find our new home for the next year. We have rented a nice house with pool and also have a rental car so that we can make excursions to scoop out different towns and villages. We have 5 or 6 areas in mind that sound very promising to us. Hopefully we can narrow it down while we are there and may get lucky and find a rental house so that when we come back in December we have a place to live.

Our vacation rental is located in Alajuela, which is the second-largest city in Costa Rica after the capital, San José. The climate is tropical, which is typical of the Central Valley, with moderate temperatures, averaging  72-77 F (23–26 C) degrees,  and the city and its surroundings are famed for having "the best weather in the world".

Even though it is still 5 more weeks till our vacation, I started packing and putting stuff aside we want to take with us. We are planning on taking extra luggage (from toys, clothing, books, etc), so that we will have to ship less later. For example, during the 3 weeks vacation, the kids will need some toys, so we will bring some along now but will leave it there in a storage unit until we come back in December. It will be easier to bring things with us in the airplane rather than to ship it as there is an import tax on all goods (toys, household items, etc). And we can avoid some of the taxes when bringing it with us as luggage.

On the other hand, we started very slowly to sort thru stuff at home that will be given away or sold. There is not much to do right now as we still need most of it on a daily basis and can't get rid of it till closer to our moving date. This waiting period can be exhausting and annoying as I'm actually ready to pack up our stuff and leave now.  But in the grand scheme of things, it is not that much longer till December, especially since we are gone for almost all of October and once we are back from vacation, the real moving stress will begin. So, I'm practicing patience and continue to make lists.