Swiss woman builds mini-house in the mountains of Costa Rica

Corine Turrini FluryEditor living

When she was 16, Karin Risi (28) discovered her love for travel during a language stay in Australia. “So it happened that I also traveled to Costa Rica in 2019 and fell in love with this country,” she says Blick. Risi raves about the lush and diverse nature with wild hills, steppe-like pastures, rain and dry forests. From the waterfalls and countless palm and sandy beaches on the Caribbean and Pacific Seas in the small Central American country of Costa Rica.

Make plans for emigration

Risi completed a Spanish course in Costa Rica and then traveled the country with her then boyfriend. She met a Swiss woman who emigrated here. “I couldn’t get it out of my head,” says the qualified caregiver, who completed her training in a day care center before working in a day care center in Ethiopia and later traveling to Asia.

Emigration was not an option for her boyfriend, especially since he had just founded his own company. For Risi, however, the plan became more and more concrete. Especially when a fellow rider from Switzerland told her that she was going to move to Costa Rica with her family.

Shortly thereafter, Risi and her boyfriend decided to go their separate ways. Risi, who has also completed training as a riding therapist, and her colleague made plans to emigrate for herself and her horses. “It wasn’t that easy,” she explains. In Germany, the two women then found a company that took care of the transport and permits for the horses.

Search for land on site

For Risi’s parents, their daughter’s emigration plan came as no surprise. «They knew how much I like to travel and were happy for me. Although my mother didn’t expect me to implement my plan so quickly,” she says. At the beginning of September, Risi left for Costa Rica with her colleague and has been living on the Pacific side in the province of Guanacaste ever since.

For the first time she lived with her colleague’s family with her horse, which only arrived almost two months later due to the mandatory quarantine. “I wanted to look around first and then decide where to settle down,” says Risi. She found what she was looking for in the immediate vicinity with a four-hectare property with its own spring and waterfall, a few fruit trees and a view of the sea “Ideal for me and my horse! I was enthusiastic from the start,” enthuses Risi.