Though Rosy Rios and Doug Ancel of Reno, Nevada, knew they wanted to run a B&B in Costa Rica, they never intended to build one from the ground up. But that’s what happened on the way to their Hideaway Hotel, which opened in 2008.

First, they chose the place, driving the length of the Nicoya Peninsula, looking for a beach town with enough tourist infrastructure to run a business but without the overbuilding and overreaching that can spoil a place.

They came equipped, with backgrounds in business, real estate and construction, and a chunk of savings that would let them take a good shot at their dream. Rosy spoke Spanish, and Doug was learning.

Looking to Buy

Once they settled on Playa Samara, halfway down the peninsula and with a sweeping half-moon beach washed by waves gentle enough for swimming, they had local realtors show them what was on offer.  They looked inland, “in the jungle,” but it was too hot. Places in the town of Samara were “too noisy—roosters, cars, and chain saws,” says Rosy. And when they liked the location, the building didn’t seem right.

They remember that one realtor showed them a hotel, assuring them, “If you buy this, I guarantee you’ll make your money back in 5 years.” Being familiar with the ups and downs of real estate and business, Doug and Rosy knew that a realtor should never in good conscience make such assurances. They put their guard up even higher.

Howler monkey at the Hideaway Hotel, Playa Samara, Costa Rica; photo by Doug Ancel

One day, after months of searching, they turned off the coast highway onto a one-lane road that ran straight to the southern end of Playa Samara. Wouldn’t it be great, they agreed, to have a place within walking distance of the beach? But there were no hotels for sale on that road.

A little later, in April 2004, they heard through the grapevine that a German woman was selling a 1-acre parcel of land on the very road that inspired their ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ musings. It wasn’t listed with any realtors.

Doug and Rosy looked at the land and loved it. But it had no structures on it; their dream had been to buy and renovate an existing hotel.

The location, however, was perfect, and the price wasn’t half-bad. And so, after checking to make sure they’d have easy access to water, electricity, and phone line, and after some back-of-envelope calculations and late-night soul-searching, they decided to go for it. They did what most people moving to a new country or starting a business have to do at some point: change the master plan in order to accommodate an opportunity that may not come your way again.

Building a dream, from the ground up

Anyone who’s ever built a house or a hotel knows what comes next. It took Doug and Rosy a little over four years from purchase of property to opening the Hideaway Hotel in July 2008. I’m sure they could write a book about those four years, but here are a few high (and low) points.

Building the Hideaway Hotel in Playa Samara; photo by Doug Ancel

They knew what they wanted-a clean, contemporary design, high-quality construction to North American/European standards, and about a dozen spacious rooms. They wanted a pool, landscaped grounds, and a modern wastewater system that would allow them to irrigate the grounds with gray water and to give North American guests the privilege of flushing toilet paper instead of putting it in a waste container next to the toilet, which is the Tico style.

They got a good lawyer (key to getting anything done in Costa Rica), who introduced them to an architect who had a good reputation. “But he didn’t deliver,” says Rosy, so they set up meetings with several architect/ builder pairs, chose their favorite, and got to work. “The design process took some time,” continues Rosy “We wanted to be sure to choose the finishes, tile, granite, etc. ourselves.”

The permit process was also challenging. “We were held up in SETENA for 6 months,” Rosy says. “Apparently SETENA [the Secretaria Tecnica Nacional Ambiental] was backed way up at the time.”

“We were ‘next in line,’” adds Doug, “for a good 5 or 6 months.”

The web site costaricalaw.com explains, “the sole mission of SETENA is the administration of the process to review and evaluate environmental impact considerations. Builders and real estate developers cringe when they hear the word SETENA.”

“But our building permit didn’t take much time,” says Rosy. “You just present plans to the municipality and pay the fees.”

The pool before it was a pool at the Hideaway Hotel in Playa Samara; photo by Doug Ancel

Once construction got underway, Doug stayed on site as much as possible to oversee the work. The builder went over budget, and there were construction delays. But when the Hideaway Hotel opened its doors in 2008, it all seemed worth it. “Local realtors couldn’t believe it,” says Doug. They said, ‘You guys actually opened! So many projects end up unfinished ruins.’”

Their hotel is indeed no ruin; it’s a lovely place with the sort of amenities you really appreciate after having been on the road for while, from the spacious shower to the mini-fridge to blackout curtains for the times you need to adjust to jet lag or turn in early to make a wee-hours flight the next day. A hundred feet from your poolside breakfasts are trees often full of howler monkeys.

Advice on opening a B&B in Costa Rica

I asked Rosy and Doug if they have any advice for opening a B&B or a hotel in Costa Rica.

“Find one that’s been built,” Rosy laughs ruefully, although she also says she feels proud of how well their from-the-ground-up building turned out.

“It takes time to grow a business,” says Doug. “So you need operating reserves to tide you over. We planned not to make any money the first years,” he smiles, “And so far, we’re right on plan.”

But even in the months after I visited, their was an uptick in guests, and the hotel is getting great press in guidebooks and online-when I last looked they were the #2 Samara hotel on Trip Advisor. I have little doubt that the next few years will bring even more visitors and a return on their investment, both in financial and life-satisfaction terms. After all, they dreamed a dream and then, with hard work and imagination, they made it happen. It’s all part of the (somewhat flexible) master plan.

Photo of finished version of the Hideaway Hotel by David W. Smith

Dear Miss Move Abroad.
I’m an executive and I travel a good deal for my work. I’ve visited 41 countries on five continents. I’ve had the dubious pleasure of meeting many so called “expats” and have come to this conclusion: Most expats are losers who can’t cut it at home. I’ve yet to meet an expat, anywhere in the world, that makes me say to myself, Now there’s a winner!”

You’re Miss Move Abroad, so I don’t expect you to agree with me. But I dare you to print my letter.

Been There, Met Them

Dear Mr. Been,
How did you know that I can never resist a dare? That’s probably why I’ve lived in so many different places over the years, loser that I am.

But believe it or not, I can see where you might come to your conclusion. Many people flee their home country to escape—from the law, from child support payments, or from their own unfathomable selves. And it’s true that in expat communities all over the world you’ll find some pretty shady characters, people who come for lax law enforcement, the cheap drugs, the discounted sex. Those who in their home countries are either unwanted or wanted (think notices on post office walls).

This, however, is only one of the many varieties of expat, and your views make me suspect that you’re a Layover Larry, with your experience heavy on airports and underlings. Have you ever been to the homes of your colleagues overseas? Do you stay on after your business is concluded, to see what the place is like without your “work” filter operating? You may also be unwittingly narrowing your experience of a place. Do you work hard all day in a sequestered setting and then spend your nights in an expat bar surrounded by herds of expaticus alcoholicus complaining about the natives as they slowly slide off their barstools? Needless to say, these folks aren’t the best representatives of the expat species.

If you take a little more time and seek out other kinds of expats, you might find Peace Corps volunteers, academics or scientists chasing after their subjects, students on a gap year abroad, artists and writers looking for new material or a place cheap enough so that they can concentrate on their vocation rather than on being a wage slave, students of the language or culture, parents who want to broaden their kid’s horizons, or retirees who can finally live where they want regardless of work opportunities.

And Mr. Been, if I may ask, what exactly would cause you to exclaim, “Now there’s a winner?” Seeing yourself in the mirror? Does a person have to match up exactly with your version of success to be worthy? Sounds like you’re ripe for a long-term experience in a radically different culture, if only to show you that there are many, many definitions of success, many of which will look nothing like yours.

Sandra Shaw Homer, who has lived in Costa Rica for over 20 years, did something a little over a year ago that all writers will applaud and probably envy. She pared away from her life all but the essential, so that she might, for a year, concentrate on writing the book she knew she was meant to write.

She’d been very active in a few local nonprofits, and she scaled back her commitments, quitting boards and letting people know that she’d be putting her energies elsewhere for a time.

And dammit of she didn’t write that book! In a year. I’m beyond envious—I’m positively inspired. I keep looking at little huts on the side of the road or up on top of mountains, thinking, Now there’s a good place to hole up and write.

The book is Evelio’s Garden: A Memoir of Costa Rica. It centers around a garden on her land on the shores of Lake Arenal, an organic garden a longtime friend, Evelio, tries to create out of nothing. Evelio is a local, born and bred in the Arenal area, and he has a natural talent for planting and tending. But trying to garden organically, and on a plot ravaged by the winds off the lake, turns out to be more than he–and Sandy, as his enabler/landlord/cheerleader–bargained for.

Sandy describes the ups and downs of the gardening project, but more than that, she details how the achingly beautiful land around the lake is at risk of devastation. Not incidentally, a portrait of expat life emerges, as we learn of Sandy’s neighbors from Europe and North America and Costa Rica and see how they all coexist, sometimes peaceably, sometimes contentiously.

It’s a book about how we live on the land, how it nourishes us and how we should nourish it. It’s beautifully written and has a strong sense of place. I’m honored that Sandy let me read it and that she’s allowing me to publish an excerpt here.

Excerpt from Evelio’s Garden: A Memoir of Costa Rica, by Sandra Shaw Homer

All land has a history, and the history around here goes back a long way.  Satellite images have picked up old roads all over this canton, long grown over, made by the indigenous peoples of pre-Columbian times.  One of these roads runs along the south shore of the lake, uphill from the current road and downhill from the ridge that links Tilarán with the tiny villages of Silencio and Río Chiquito.  I have ridden my mare along one stretch of this old road that runs behind San Luís and Tronadora, much washed out and crowded with second-growth forest, and it took a man on horseback with a machete to cut open a way for us to pass.  Artifacts of the native people show up everywhere.  When the lake is low, you can go out in a kayak or canoe and explore along the naked shoreline for pottery shards.  In town, there’s hardly a house that doesn’t sport a metate, or corn-grinding stone, that turned up when the foundation was being dug.  It usually has a potted plant sitting on it.

Modern local history dates from the late nineteenth century, when there were gold mines south of here in Las Juntas and Líbano.  It was rough country then, virgin forest, and the only way in was by horse or mule.  The gold was shipped out in ox-carts.  (More recently it was taken out in helicopters!)  Gradually settlement drifted north, and people carved farms out of the ancient forests, establishing a fiercely independent, frontier life-style.  Even in the 1930s, it could take the better part of a week to get to San José – from Tilarán on horseback (oxcart took longer) to Cañas, where you waited days for a small boat to take you down the Bebedero to the Río Tempisque and the port of Puntarenas, then by all-day train up to the Central Valley.  The Inter-American highway wasn’t completed along its northern reaches until the sixties.  There was no paved road around the lake until the eighties.  (It’s still not finished.)  I have met retired school teachers in Tilarán who remember four-hour treks on horseback to get to their one-room school houses on the lake, sometimes in mud up to the horses’ knees.  The niece of one of these teachers told me that her grandparents owned our farm in those days, and that it was a much bigger property.  A lot of the farms around here were broken up when ICE acquired the land for the reservoir.  Since then, the process of development has been inexorable.  As long as there’s someone to buy, sooner or later a farmer will face the economic conditions that force him to sell, frequently just a small piece at a time, enough to give him ready cash to get along until beef prices go up, or the weather improves enough to let him get a good crop in.  There are still some fair-sized farms around the lake, but since the early nineties development has speeded up and been gringo-ized. (At least in Tilarán, the word gringo can refer to Europeans as well as to non-native-Spanish-speakers from north of the Río Grande. Our nearest neighbors are Germans.)

Earlier this year an 18-wheeler parked its trailer by the side of the road just uphill from Cinco Esquinas, smack in your face where the first grand view of the lake should be.  It was a mobile office with the name of an international real-estate company painted in large letters on its side.  This was beyond ugly, but it never opened.  Instead the world-wide recession brought local real estate sales almost to a halt.  Still the trailer sat there, month after month, until finally some locals couldn’t resist jacking the thing up to steal a pair of off-side tires, leaving it listing crazily on a slender pile of cement blocks.  Just the other day it finally disappeared.  How it was moved, nobody seems to know.  But nobody was sorry to see it go.  This little story – especially the part about getting that trailer out of there – is no doubt already brewing up into a local legend.

We’ve been here long enough to see people come and go.  Some can brave the remoteness, the vagaries of the weather and the strangeness of the culture, and some can’t.  Some people get attached to the land, and some don’t.

When I was growing up, my family never lived long enough in one place for me to become bound to the land.  We lived in some beautiful – and not so beautiful – places, both rural and suburban.  From my early twenties until I came to Costa Rica, I moved almost as frequently, living exclusively in cities.   It was a little shock to realize, when we started building this house five years ago, that I’ve lived on Lake Arenal, and on this particular plot of ground, longer than I’ve lived any place else in my entire life.

You can’t get attached to the earth in Philadelphia or New York.  How many millions of people never do?  It’s this attachment that fires my desire to protect it – but not just my attachment to this particular plot of ground, but to the whole thing, the planet.  It’s not such a giant leap of the imagination from the sight of a growing young forest to the image of a tiny blue speck in the vastness of the universe.  So, finally, it is the sense of place that has captured me and pinned me to the planet.

It is gratifying to be part of the history of the land, to be growing a farm instead of shrinking it, to be building a forest instead of cutting it down.  Here, in one tiny corner of the planet, the question becomes obvious:  do we add something by our tenancy of the earth, or do we take it away?