NCS
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When Kema Ward-Hopper and her then-fiance Nicholas Hopper, each from the US, determined to get married in Costa Rica, they’d no concept that they’d find yourself relocating there a number of years later.
But a collection of devastating occasions led the couple and daughter Aaralyn, now 15, to a brand new life in the Central American nation’s very personal “blue zone,” one in every of the areas of the world the place individuals dwell longest and are the healthiest.
Ward-Hopper, a well being and life coach, was identified with breast most cancers a number of months earlier than their marriage ceremony in 2016.
“[I had] started treatment and everything,” Ward-Hopper tells NCS Travel. “If you see pictures from my wedding, I didn’t have hair, and I didn’t really look like myself. But I was sick.”
While she hadn’t been feeling properly earlier than they traveled to Costa Rica for his or her large day, Ward-Hopper seen a change in her power ranges throughout the time that they spent there.
“I just felt the best that I had been feeling since I’d been diagnosed,” she says. “When we obtained again.
“That feeling good… I assumed that I used to be getting higher. But it actually appeared prefer it was environmental, as a result of after a few week, I used to be feeling unhealthy once more.
“So that was the first indicator that there was something special about Costa Rica.”
Ward-Hopper went on to have a unilateral mastectomy earlier than present process reconstruction surgical procedure and the household, who had been based mostly in Houston, Texas, tried to return to regular.
However, they suffered one other main blow when their house was destroyed by a Category 4 hurricane in August 2017.
“I had the surgery and then Hurricane Harvey hit Houston,” she says. “And we ended up losing our home. So it just seemed like a lot of bad things [happening] back to back to back to back.”
After struggling to discover a new house, the couple realized that there wasn’t something holding them to Houston anymore, and determined that it was time to transfer on.
“My husband was like, ‘Well, let’s just leave the country,” provides Ward-Hopper.
They initially mulled over relocating to 4 potential locations – Ghana, Sweden, Mexico, and naturally, Costa Rica.
“Costa Rica ended up winning out over the other places that were on our list,” provides Ward-Hopper, explaining that they had been impressed by the nation’s well being care and training system, in addition to the environmental protections in place – Costa Rica is the first tropical country to have reversed deforestation.
“Ever since we left there from our honeymoon, we just felt like we wanted to get back there and just feel good,” she provides. There’s one thing energetic about being in Costa Rica.”
Ward-Hopper goes on to clarify that the nation’s proximity to the US – Costa Rica is lower than 4 hours from Houston by airplane, was a significant component of their resolution.
“It just felt so serendipitous,” she says. “I feel like if we had chosen one of the other locations, we would have done way more research and preparation than we did for Costa Rica.”
In 2018, round eight months after deciding to make Costa Rica their new house, the household left Houston to begin afresh in Pueblo Nuevo, a neighborhood situated in the Nicoya Peninsula, one in every of the world’s blue zones, together with Loma Linda in California, Italy’s Sardinia, Japan’s Okinawa and Greece’s Ikaria.
“My husband and I came first and we were here for six weeks without my daughter,” says Ward-Hopper, explaining that they’d signed a lease on a property a pal had discovered for them.
“It was like a second honeymoon.”
The couple spent their time tending to their backyard, assembly the locals and getting used to their new environment.
“We were in the jungle,” she says, recalling how they’d to adapt to the sounds and creatures that got here with their new setting.
“It was an adventure. My memory of that time is very fond. By the time we came back with our daughter, it was peak rainy season. So that was a whole adventure in and of itself.”
As they’d entered Costa Rica on a vacationer visa, the couple had been solely permitted to stay in the nation for 90 days at a time, and would often return to the US to renew their visas.
Thankfully, Ward-Hopper already spoke Spanish earlier than they arrived, whereas her daughter had some information of the language, which helped the household to transition extra rapidly.
“I don’t know that we would have gotten some of the deals that we’ve gotten had we not had the ability to communicate,” she says, including that her husband, who runs a logistics enterprise, has been studying Spanish throughout their time there.
As the household settled into life in Costa Rica, Ward-Hopper, who describes their first yr in the nation as “one long learning experience,” was significantly struck by the nation’s sturdy sense of neighborhood.
“I had an idea of what I thought community was, but that was completely obliterated when I got here and experienced true community,” she says.
“The locals were helpful whether they knew you or not… It was amazing. The community really looked out for each other.”
According to Ward-Hopper, Aaralyn tailored in a short time and loved having the ability to spend a lot time on the seashore and occurring “lots of hikes.”
“My husband and I both commented that she was able to kind of have a childhood like we had in the 80s and 90s,” she says.
“Being able to go outside and play outside of the watchful eye of your parents.”
The household additionally discovered that they felt extra energized, which Ward-Hopper attributes to entry to contemporary fruit, greens and entire meals, in addition to cleaner air.
“The health benefits of the blue zone, I think, show up later in life,” she says.
“But we have noticed that we feel better when we’re here. Our cardiac health and lung health seems to be better.”
In August 2019, Ward-Hopper realized that she was pregnant along with her second baby.
“It was a weird turn of events,” she admits. “I didn’t expect to get pregnant.”
When the international Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, shutting down a lot of the world, the household had been granted permission to stay in Costa Rica on their vacationer visas.
Ward-Hopper welcomed her son Nicolai at their house in Pueblo Nuevo in April 2020.
Aside from not having the ability to have prolonged household along with her due to border restrictions, she says that giving delivery in Costa Rica turned out to be an exquisite expertise.
“The birth of my son was kind of like a meditation,” she provides. “Everything was so intentional… I wish I could have had the experience with my daughter.”
Sadly, Ward-Hopper’s sister handed away abruptly a number of months later.
Due to the issues round border restrictions at the time and the incontrovertible fact that Nicolai was born in Costa Rica and would have been unable to depart at that stage, Ward-Hopper made the tough resolution not to return to the US to be along with her household.
“That was also a really hard point in our journey,” she says, earlier than recounting the method the local people rallied round them to make it possible for they “felt loved and supported.”
“That’s the kind of community that we live in,” she provides.
The household of 4, who’ve since moved to a bigger home in Nicoya, are actually settled in Costa Rica and their lives couldn’t be extra totally different than they had been in Houston.
For Ward-Hopper, one in every of the finest issues about the Costa Rican way of life is the method through which kids are embraced in just about each facet of on a regular basis life.
“I feel like in the States, you feel pressure taking your young child out to dinner or something,” she says.
“Here, in case your child desires to play and stroll round the desk, then they let you know to depart them alone and allow them to. So it’s simply totally different.
“They love kids. And I don’t essentially know that I felt the identical when my daughter was little.
“It’s a very family oriented nation. Families definitely [come] first.”
Ward-Hopper, who has been “cancer free” for a number of years, has tailored to a slower paced way of life and realized to not “be so uptight.”
“In the US, everything is super fast,” Ward-Hopper says, noting that she’s had to study to cease apologizing each time she’s a couple of minutes late.
“You know the saying, ‘If you’re on time, you’re late.’ But here, that is not the case.”
The common life expectancy in Nicoya is claimed to be round 85 years and the area has numerous centenarians.
“They’re [the centenarians] delightful to talk with,” Ward-Hopper says, noting that she’s all the time touched to see the method through which the native households handle one another, with the previous taking good care of the younger, and the younger taking good care of the previous.
“The elderly are a part of caring for the youngest generation – their grandchildren, or their great grandchildren, because they’re in such good shape,” she says.
“And it’s that method as a result of they’re hardworking individuals, and so they stroll numerous the locations and so they eat very well.
“So I believe all of these issues contribute to their lengthy life. They additionally dwell with the land and never despite the land.
“So they don’t try to remove all of the nature so that they can exist. They just kind of exist with the nature. At least where we live.”
While Ward-Hopper says that there are infinite advantages to residing in Costa Rica, she stresses that it’s not essentially extra reasonably priced than the US.
“Costa Rica is the most expensive country in Latin America,” she says. “But I also think that depends on how you’re trying to live.”
Ward-Hopper factors out that the price of residing in areas of the nation the place there’s a “high ratio of expats to locals” might be round the identical as the US.
“Where we live, it would be way more expensive, [to have the same] quality of life living back in Houston,” she says.
“So for us it’s extra reasonably priced, it’s getting dearer as extra individuals transfer to Costa Rica.
“But there are still places you can go and live cheaper. But it’s far away from the most popular spots.”
Even after a number of years of residing in the nation, Ward-Hopper says she’s nonetheless as amazed by its unbelievable nature as she was in the starting.
“I’m so grateful, because I was worried that all this will become just the norm,” says Ward-Hopper. “But it hasn’t yet… We’re still seeing new creatures this many years in. So that’s fun.”
Ward-Hopper and her husband and daughter all turned everlasting residents of Costa Rica after the delivery of Nicolai, who’s a Costa Rican citizen.
Although they haven’t any need to return to the US, Ward-Hopper misses her “friends, family, and Amazon,” and yearns for a conventional US winter each infrequently.
“When Christmas rolls around, sometimes I just want to put on fuzzy socks and a big hoodie and curl up somewhere cozy with a mug of hot chocolate while it’s cold outside,” she says. “But that does not happen [here]. It’s a hot Christmas.”
And whereas they’re completely happy to keep the place they’re for the time being, the household don’t essentially plan to stay in Costa Rica indefinitely.
“I think Costa Rica will be [our] home base, but we do have plans to travel and experience other parts of the world,” Ward-Hopper provides, explaining that they’re contemplating spending time in Colombia and Brazil.
“I guess we’re more nomadic than stationary, but Costa Rica feels like home.”