https://sundayeveningreview.com/tags/pensionado/Recent content in Pensionado on Sunday Evening ReviewHugoen-usSat, 20 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0500https://sundayeveningreview.com/living/retire-in-costa-rica/Sat, 20 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0500https://sundayeveningreview.com/living/retire-in-costa-rica/<p>The bus from San José to Atenas takes about forty-five minutes and costs a few dollars. It climbs out of the Central Valley through coffee farms and hillside towns and corridors of plantain trees, and by the time the driver announces Atenas and you step off into air that is cool and clear and smells simultaneously like rain and flowers, you understand something that no retirement guide had told you: the elevation is doing all the work. Costa Rica means rich coast in Spanish, but the richness that surprised me wasn&rsquo;t the coast at all. It was this valley, four thousand feet above sea level, where the temperature never seems to get unreasonable in either direction.</p>