This US couple moved to Costa Rica. Then they found a Central American country they liked even better

(CNN) — CoCo and Deitrick Bates have made some pretty big leaps of faith in the past few years.

They married within three months of meeting in Kansas City in 2019. And the “big bang” of the pandemic in 2020 brought a lot of new stress and upheaval.

CoCo said Deitrick was “so wound up” as he was getting ready to head to work as an FAA air traffic controller in February 2021, “I could tell he was about to crack.”

Deitrick, a US Army veteran who served in Iraq in 2003, didn’t go to work that day or in the days that followed. Instead, he went on unpaid leave. With an uncertain future and the start of a medical journey that would result in a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis connected to his service, the couple started to think of other paths for their lives — outside of the United States.

“We can figure this out somewhere else,” CoCo told Deitrick as they dealt with his reduced income, which was limited to the disability benefits he began to receive that spring through the Department of Veterans Affairs. “There are places that it’s less expensive than the US, just the climate of the US, the stress that’s here.” But she said she didn’t think he would agree to moving out of the country.

“And he looks at me and he goes, ‘Yeah, like well, where we gonna go?’ and I was like, ‘Well, I didn’t think you’d say yes! I never thought about where we were going to go. Give me a second.’ ”

CoCo, who was working as a project manager at a taekwondo studio at the time, started researching online. Soon they had purchased $69 one-way tickets to Costa Rica. Three months later, in May 2021, they were starting a new life in Central America.

“Neither one of us had ever been to Costa Rica before, no Spanish at all whatsoever, no friends, no relatives, no one, just the two of us. And we just kind of made the leap,” said CoCo, who says she’s “always been very optimistic by nature and a free spirit.”

It was a bold — and scary — move.

“It was absolutely nerve-racking,” Deitrick told CNN Travel during a Zoom interview with the pair. “I can’t believe that I held it together but …” and they both burst into laughter about whether he had really succeeded in keeping his cool.

That move — to the mountainous town of Atenas west of Costa Rica’s capital of San José — was CoCo’s first time leaving the United States. And while Deitrick and CoCo loved Costa Rica and the peace they found there, three years later their journey took another unexpected turn — south to Panama.

Costa Rica’s allure

The couple, who are in their 40s and have children in the United States from previous relationships, went from a US city to “complete solitude” when they made their first big move to Costa Rica.

And that sounded great to them after the anxiety and division of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests related to the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, coupled with Deitrick’s PTSD and medical leave.

CoCo said she first recognized her husband’s symptoms because she had been diagnosed with complex PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder herself. She had prioritized her own mental health after a 2017 divorce. In leaving the United States, they were seeking a place to live inexpensively while Deitrick healed.

“It was mostly just discord that we were trying to get away from,” said CoCo, who is originally from Louisiana and made the move to Kansas City from Houston in 2018 as part of a push for a fresh start.

“We were ultimately trying to find peace, and it’s so funny when we first met, like when we would talk about our pasts, Dee would always say, ‘I just want peace, I just want peace,’ and he never really elaborated on what that meant, but I understood and so we were literally searching for peace.”

They found it on a mountaintop above Atenas, which is renowned for its excellent climate.

After arriving in the country with reservations for only a rental car and a short stay, they quickly found a house to rent above the town, surrounded by mango and banana trees, goats, chickens and a coffee farm next door.

It was a “relief” to know that the simpler life they were now leading was even possible. They were eating more naturally off the land, with time to truly unwind. CoCo started painting and brewing beer. She kept up with her passion for cooking and put her degree in hospitality and tourism to use by working as a private chef for vacations and wellness retreats organized by a new friend, Amina.

“It was totally night and day from anything that we had ever experienced before, but it was wonderful because we needed that time to decompress, to just kind of decompartmentalize from all of the stress, all of the things we’ve been kind of taught through technology and consumerism,” CoCo said.

Even today, several years later, CoCo said she’s still “very much disconnected on purpose from the politics because there’s a lot of fearmongering that goes on in the US” that people easily get swept up in watching TV and looking at social media.

Yet the pair started to crave a bit less isolation, eventually moving down from the mountain into a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in central Atenas, where their rent was $500 a month.

Deitrick officially medically retired from the FAA in 2023 and started receiving a pension.

Along the way, they developed a community of friends — mostly other Black Americans living abroad. Their new friends include Amina and her husband, EJ, an American couple that shares a similar dynamic as CoCo and Deitrick. “We are very much the fire, and they are the ice,” CoCo said of the two women and their more mild-mannered partners.

It was a trip with this couple, to celebrate Amina’s birthday, that led to their next unexpected leap.

A new city that feels more like home

In January of this year, the two couples visited Panama’s San Blas Islands. At the end of their trip, they had a day in Panama City, and the two women went out to explore.

What they found, CoCo said, was a vibrant city where life was way more like what there were used to back in the States. Busy streets, a mall and the availability of conveniences that CoCo realized she had missed in Costa Rica.

Uber Eats delivered to your door, for example. And access to imported goods at a much lower cost than they found in Costa Rica.

“It was that ease of life that I kind of missed,” CoCo said, noting that getting around the country in Costa Rica was more difficult than it is in Panama and the currency conversion became much less favorable in Costa Rica in the three years the couple lived there.

So just by chance, a celebratory vacation led to a fork in the road — and both couples chose a new life in Panama City. CoCo and Deitrick moved to the city’s Avenida Balboa at the beginning of May, and they now live just a short distance away from Amina and EJ.

Both CoCo and Deitrick had glowing things to say about Costa Rica. “It was perfect for us for when we were trying to shield ourselves from the world,” CoCo said.

But so far they’re liking Panama even better.

“It’s more comfortable here for me because it’s more of what I’m used to,” said Deitrick, who is originally from Arkansas.

Deitrick, who as CoCo says “is not a man of many words,” doesn’t speak Spanish. CoCo — “the talker” in their relationship — speaks “struggle Spanish,” she said.

“People are very willing to help me out, and they appreciate that we’re trying,” she said, adding that having residency in Panama seems to make a difference in how they are perceived.

Permanent residency

They got the ball rolling on securing residency with the help of Expat-Tations, a relocation firm that helps people with immigration and other aspects of getting settled in Panama and Costa Rica. The firm is managing their application for Panama’s Pensionado program for retirees.

To get retiree residence status, applicants must show they have an income or pension of $1,000 a month, plus an additional $250 per month for each dependent. The program offers perks to participants in the form of discounts on travel, utilities, professional services and more.

CoCo and Deitrick never had official residency in Costa Rica, but it’s easier and less costly for them to obtain that in Panama. They’re currently waiting for their permanent pensionado residency visas.

Their new life in Panama is a trade-off when it comes to the cost of rent. The rent on their two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in Panama City, with a “partially obstructed view of the ocean,” is $1,100 a month — a little more than twice what they were paying in Atenas.

But the more favorable currency situation and lower prices on many other items offset the rent, they said. Life in the city has been more convenient for them, and they can get around easily to explore the country.

While they are retired, “we’re not like retired, like we want to be at the top of a mountain alone forever,” CoCo said. “We still want to be able to have life experiences, to be able to do things,” and being in Panama City makes that easier.

The city has rooftop bars, and they live right across the street from the Cinta Costera, a walkable public recreation area.

They’re very happy with their latest move and the security they feel being on the path to permanent residency, but they’re not prepared to say they’ll stay forever. After all, last year they would have said they’d never leave Costa Rica.

“I wouldn’t say it’s permanent only because I like to keep the options open because you never know what we might run into in the future,” Deitrick said.

CoCo’s advice to others considering a move to another country?

Do it. Don’t wait until everything in your life lines up perfectly. Do your research and take the plunge.

“A lot of people don’t recommend moving abroad without first visiting and going over the different areas. And I agree that is what works for most people,” CoCo said.

But that’s not the route she and Deitrick took.

“We kind of took like the just-hold-hands-and-jump path, you know, throw it all against the wall, see what sticks,” she said. “But it worked for us.”

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