Leaving it all behind

A Kelowna family decided to pack their bags and move across the world about eight months ago.

The family of four wanted to discover a different perspective on what life has to offer.

"It's nice that we can walk to the beach and the ocean," said Chris Dufresne. He moved to Costa Rica with his family.

"Their intention was to change up their life, share their experiences and decided to move to Costa Rica, falling in love with Sámara," said Andy Raeber, uncle of Shayna Dufresne, Chris's wife. "They are building a beautiful container home, along with two or three containers suites as rentals, only minutes from the beach, in farm region."

The couple moved to a town called Sámara is a surfing town in Guanacaste province on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

"We got tired of the so called 'rat race' of the North American lifestyle," the couple said. "We were working so hard to survive and pay for materialistic items that we one day realized were no longer important to us."

"We wanted to work to live instead of living to work."

Chris and Shayna say living expenses are similiar to Canada but their life in Costa Rica is much simpler resulting in them spending a fraction of what they spent in Kelowna. 

"As much as people view Costa Rica as a Third World country, it really isn't," they said. "Yes there are small villages full of people that don't have much, but then you go to San Jose and you see Ferrari's and big shopping malls."

"We have everything we need here so it is easy to survive. We personally found it harder to survive in Kelowna than here in Costa Rica"

The children, Jayden, 10 and Lakai, 6, love their new lives abroad.

"They have met so many new friends from around the world and they also attend an accredited private international school here which they are very happy with and so are we."

When Castanet asked the family how long they plan on spending in paradise, there was no hesitation in their answer. 

"We plan on staying forever," they said. "Sámara will be our home base and we plan on doing a lot more traveling when Jayden and Lakai are on their school break in September and October of each year."

"We want to travel through Southeast Asia, some parts of Europe and of course more places here in Central America. Life can be unpredictable so who knows, maybe we will call somewhere else home at a later time in our lives, but for now Costa Rica is an amazing place to live as well as to visit and we highly recommend it."

The family has started a Youtube channel for family, friends and the public to keep up with their life in Costa Rica.

To follow their journey checkout out their Youtube channel here.