Settling In (Pt. 1): Early Lessons & Adventures

A stark contrast from our lives in Florida

Kevin Chung

Oct 17, 2025

We spent many weekends at Goodwill finding ways to update our gallery wall

Monday to Friday: work, cook, tv, repeat.
Weekends: breakfast, Goodwill, gardening.

Occasionally an adventure, but mostly… routine.

Our biggest break from the routines were Discovery Fridays where we’d find a new restaurant we’ve never tried before.

It’s not that we hated our routine. It just felt stale and safe.

That feeling of home we discovered at the dog park hasn’t disappeared. It’s just evolved. Home here isn’t just about comfort and routine. It’s also about expecting the unexpected.

In Costa Rica every day is a new adventure. You would think not having a car would limit what we can do, but when you live in a big city there are endless things to explore.

Each corner a new cafe. Each week a new set of events. Each neighborhood its own flavor.

And, as we are about to find out, in Costa Rica, every day comes with a surprise—and not all of them are fun. But before we go into all that, we have to talk about our new home.

I’ve already mentioned all the great things about our new home: the gym, the pools, the coworking spaces, the three dog parks, and restaurants 100 feet away.

But just because we love our new home doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its flaws.

The day we got our key to the apartment, we also got our keycard access. This gets us in and out of the garage and the building’s entrances – at least it’s supposed to.

Even that first trip to Walmart as new residents of the apartment didn’t go as planned.

The parking garage has a bridge to the living areas of the complex on the third floor. That floor also has shopping carts to get your things across the bridge.

We enter the elevator, hit the third floor… and nothing. Great.

We press the help button. “We’ll send someone right over,” they say.

We can get to the ground floor without the key, so we ride it down to meet the attendant there.

Anita explains the situation. He escorts us to the third floor. We grab our carts, and takes us back up to the sixth floor. Victory… kind of.

Carts full to the brim, we head back to the elevator. No luck. Guess the keycard really doesn’t work.

As we fiddle with the buttons, the elevator starts descending on its own. Through some stroke of luck, it lands on the third floor. We push the carts out, cross the bridge, and finally reach our apartment.

I breathe a sigh of relief—but the parking garage isn’t done testing us yet.

Just another day at one of the grocery stores here

One of our favorite things to do in any new country? Go to grocery stores.

Sounds strange and boring, right? But grocery stores can tell us so much! They’re like stepping into a cultural time capsule.

Funny enough, this tradition started right here in Costa Rica.

At grocery stores every aisle gives you a glimpse into how people live there.

Instead of plums and blueberries, it’s mangos and papayas. Instead of Doritos and Ben & Jerry’s, it’s plantain chips and Pops ice cream. Instead of cajun and BBQ, it’s sazon and adobo.

So it should come as no surprise that we’ve spent a lot of time exploring supermarkets here.

Each trip feels less like an errand and more like a tiny adventure.

During our apartment scouting trip, our realtor’s partner pointed out a grocery store called Auto Mercado.

“You should shop there. It’s very nice inside. You can find almost anything you need,” she said as we drove by.

So of course, that’s where we went for our first big grocery run.

And yes—Auto Mercado did have everything we needed. But with every item we tossed into the cart, our excitement turned into quiet panic.

“This is going to be expensive,” I muttered, dropping a giant bag of rice into the cart.

“Yeah, but our fridge is empty. We need to stock it,” Anita reminded me.

We braced ourselves. But nothing could’ve prepared us for the total.

The clerk read it out. I did the conversion in my head.

$450.

I knew it would be a lot. But that much? In Florida, we could fill our fridge at Aldi for $100.

Only later did we learn Auto Mercado is basically Costa Rica’s Whole Foods. Suddenly, it all made sense. We weren’t prepared for Costa Rican prices when we first got here, and we’d unwittingly chosen the premium option for our first shopping trip.

Now we only stop by when we need something special—just a couple of things we can’t find anywhere else.

But stocking the fridge was only one piece of the puzzle. There was still more to figure out.

Our apartment came pretty well decorated since it used to be a short-term rental. But one space felt empty, almost forgotten: the balcony.

Which is ironic because the balcony overlooks the bustling market across the street. And every Friday and Saturday night, live music drifts up from below. All we have to do is slide open the door and we’ve got a front-row seat.

So we decide to turn it into more than just a balcony. We want a little sanctuary. A table, a couple of chairs, some plants. A spot to sit, sip, and soak it all in.

That mission takes us to Novex—part hardware store, part home goods, part treasure hunt. Think Lowe’s meets Kohl’s.

We wander the aisles and fill our cart.

“This place has everything we need,” Anita says as we put a stick fan into our cart.
“Everything but what we came for,” I joke back.

Our cart is full of things we don’t need but not the one thing we came for. We’re ready to give up when we spot it.

A wooden table set with two seats.
Perfect size. Perfect look. Perfect price.

Into the cart it went.

At checkout, the cashier gives us a knowing smile. She pointed at the set.
“You can put that back. Someone will bring you a box from the back.”

We pick up the furniture and awkwardly return it to the display.

A few minutes later, a man appears with a large box in a shop cart. Our balcony set had officially arrived.

What we don’t realize is that one of those chairs is about to become its own story.

The infamous parking garage and bridge to our apartment building

Remember that fun elevator story? Well, the very next day had another surprise waiting.

The morning we head to Novex, the garage elevator is out of order. And the stairs are locked from the inside.

So our only option is to trek three floors up the garage ramps just to reach the car.

“At least we’re getting some exercise,” I joke.

Anita doesn’t laugh.

Fast forward to the return trip. The elevator is still broken. Which means not just walking three floors but pushing shopping carts up and down those ramps.

By now it’s clear: our move here is anything but mundane. In Florida, we searched for ways to shake the routine. Here? The routine shakes us.

And just when we think we’ve got things figured out—the prices, the furniture, even the elevators—Costa Rica finds other ways to surprise us.

We wouldn’t want it any other way. Because sometimes the best kind of home isn’t the one without problems. It’s the one that keeps you awake, alive, and curious.