I think retirement is a pipe dream...
so--renee and i are seriously fed up. our neighborhood is going to pot and i got 200K plus in healthy real estate. Costa rica vacation in 4weeks.
looking into a retirement home---and see no future in this culture.
thoughts?
Anywhere you go there'll be pros and cons; you'll love some things, you'll hate somethings, miss some things from back home (like cheddar cheese, can't find it here in Merida to save my life), some big, some small...
If you are going to spend 4 weeks in CR and you are seriously considering moving there, I'd suggest to spend 1/2 day or day with a real estate agent, not just looking at houses, but asking the kind of questions that you wouldn't be able to ask in the U.S. and get a straight answer, like good/bad neighborhoods, which areas flood, which areas experience power/water outages, etc ...
Also, I'd find out about banking... which banks are there, how U.S. banks there are connected with U.S. banks (in MX, for example, your U.S. account is completely separate from any account you open here, even if the same bank corporation - Citi, Santander, etc...- ; how easy it is to transfer money back and forth, any special rules for bank accounts (for example, in MX, you can't transfer money from the U.S. until 6 months after you open an account); where to exchange money and how much you can exchange at the time... personally even though I have a local bank account, I keep all my money in the U.S., have U.S. credit cards, and every month or so I wire myself some cash via Western Union.
Also check on medical care... you can do that in an hour from your laptop... pharmacies, drug prices, hospitals/hospital ratings (a real estate agent may be able to tell you about good/bad hospitals).
I got more, but last thing for now, given what you posted about culture: expat communities can and do bring their culture with them. Many embrace the culture they migrate to, but many bring their prejudices and ideologies as well... some even do worse: in the U.S. people think Canadians are for the most part nice people, while here in Yucatan people think Canadians are butt crevasses, because that's how they behave here.