Atenas and Grecia: Costa Rica’s Retirement Towns

By Taraji Abroad · Move Abroad Rentals

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A Tuesday Morning in the Hills

It is a Tuesday morning in Atenas and nothing is happening. That is the point. A woman from Mississauga is walking to the central market in sandals, past a papaya tree heavy with fruit, past the pharmacy where the owner greets her by name. The air is 24 degrees and dry. No jacket, no sunburn, no sticky humidity that follows you indoors. Just a clean warmth that has been roughly the same since she arrived five months ago and will be roughly the same five months from now.

She buys tomatoes, a bag of local coffee, and a block of white cheese for what rounds out to about $8 CAD. On the walk back, she passes two other Canadians she knows by name. By ten o’clock, she is on her terrace with a book and a second cup of coffee, and the loudest sound is a parrot complaining about something in the mango tree.

Her rent is $650 a month. Her total monthly spending is about $1,900.

Twenty minutes up the road in Grecia, a retired couple from Edmonton is having a nearly identical morning, except their view is of the town’s famous red metal church and the hills beyond it, and their coffee comes from a finca they can see from their kitchen window. Their rent is $600. They have not been bored once — but they have also not been to a restaurant that stays open past nine.

These are Costa Rica’s quietest retirement towns. And for a certain kind of retiree, they are exactly right.

Where These Towns Are (and Why It Matters)

Atenas and Grecia sit in the western Central Valley, about 30 to 45 minutes from San Jose and 20 to 30 minutes from Alajuela, the nearest city with a major hospital and the international airport. They are hill towns, not beach towns — Atenas at roughly 700 metres elevation, Grecia at about 1,000 metres. The elevation is the reason the weather works.

At 700 metres, Atenas hovers around 25 degrees year-round with low humidity. It has long been called “the town with the best climate in the world” — a claim frequently attributed to National Geographic, though the original source has never been conclusively verified. What is not in dispute is the weather itself. It is genuinely, consistently pleasant in a way that people who have lived through 40 Canadian winters find almost suspicious.

Grecia is a few degrees cooler, especially in the evenings, and gets a bit more rain. Some retirees prefer the extra coolness. Some prefer Atenas’s drier air. They are 20 minutes apart, and most people considering this area visit both before choosing.

The proximity to Alajuela and San Jose matters. These are small towns. You will not find a Costco, a specialist doctor, or a sushi restaurant in either one. But you are never more than 45 minutes from all of the above. The Central Valley’s infrastructure is close enough to lean on without paying Central Valley prices to live in it.

For a detailed look at costs across the broader region, see our Central Valley cost of living guide.

What $550-825 CAD Gets You

Rent in Atenas and Grecia is the cheapest in the Central Valley. A furnished one-bedroom apartment runs $550 to $825 CAD per month. At the lower end, you get a basic but clean apartment — tile floors, a small kitchen, maybe a shared garden. At the higher end, you get mountain views, a private terrace, and a landlord who speaks enough English to explain how the water heater works.

Two-bedrooms range from $750 to $1,100 CAD. Some retirees use the second bedroom as an office. Others use it to host visiting family — a surprisingly important budget consideration when your grandchildren discover you live somewhere warm.

The monthly budget for a single retiree looks roughly like this:

Expense (CAD/month)	Budget	Comfortable
Rent (furnished 1BR)	$550	$825
Groceries	$300	$450
Dining out	$50	$120
Transport (bus/gas)	$50	$120
Utilities (electric, water, internet)	$80	$120
CAJA healthcare	$80	$80
Health insurance top-up	$0	$150
Phone/SIM	$15	$25
Entertainment/misc	$75	$150
Total	$1,200	$2,040

This is one of the few places in Costa Rica where CPP and OAS income alone — typically $1,900 to $2,200 per month for most Canadians — can genuinely cover a comfortable retirement. Though keep in mind the 25% non-resident withholding tax Canada applies to pensions sent to Costa Rica, which has no tax treaty with Canada. For the full picture on that, read our Costa Rica retirement budget guide.

When you are moving money from Canada, the exchange rate matters more than you think. A big bank wire to Costa Rica can cost $25-45 in fees plus a 2-3% markup on the exchange rate. Wise typically charges under $10 for the same transfer at the real mid-market rate — on $2,000 CAD, that difference adds up to $50 or more every single month.

The Expat Community: Potlucks, Not Nightclubs

What makes Atenas and Grecia different from other retirement destinations is not the weather or the rent. It is the community. These are small towns — Atenas has a population of roughly 7,000 in the town centre, Grecia about 18,000 — but both have disproportionately large expat populations, mostly retired Canadians and Americans who settled here over the past two decades.

The social life revolves around things that would sound boring to a 30-year-old and deeply appealing to a 62-year-old: weekly potlucks at someone’s house, volunteer groups that build housing or run an animal shelter, a bilingual book club, Saturday morning hikes organized on a WhatsApp group, and a Tuesday coffee meetup at the same cafe that has been hosting it for years. Several expat social clubs hold monthly mixers. If you are new, someone will introduce you to someone who will invite you to something within your first week.

English is spoken in many shops, restaurants, and services — a direct result of the expat density. You will manage day-to-day life in English. But learning some Spanish goes a long way, both practically and socially. The Costa Rican locals in these towns have been gracious hosts to the expat community for years. Meeting them halfway with even basic Spanish is a small courtesy that opens doors.

For language learning strategies, see our Costa Rica destination guide.

Healthcare: Plan for the Drive

Both Atenas and Grecia have EBAIS clinics — the local primary care centres that are part of Costa Rica’s universal CAJA healthcare system. For basic appointments, prescriptions, blood work, and routine care, the local clinic handles it. Wait times at small-town clinics tend to be shorter than in San Jose, which is a genuine perk.

The limitation is specialist and hospital care. The nearest major hospital is in Alajuela, 30 to 45 minutes away. For complex procedures, you may be referred to a hospital in San Jose. This is manageable when you have a car and are in good health. It becomes a more serious consideration if you have a chronic condition that requires frequent specialist visits or if you are uncomfortable being 45 minutes from an emergency room.

Most retirees on the pensionado visa enroll in CAJA, which costs roughly $80 CAD per month and covers nearly everything. Some add private insurance for faster access to specialists or to use the private hospitals in San Jose, which are excellent. For Canadians who have not yet enrolled in CAJA or who are spending the first few months on a tourist visa, travel medical insurance is essential — our comparison of SafetyWing and other options covers what to look for.

For a deeper look at the Costa Rican healthcare system, see our healthcare guide for Canadians.

Safety and Getting Around

Atenas and Grecia are safe. Property crime exists — as it does everywhere — but violent crime targeting expats is rare. The small-town dynamic helps: people know each other, unfamiliar faces get noticed, and the community is tight enough that problems tend to be addressed quickly. Most expats report feeling safer here than in any Canadian city of comparable size.

A car is recommended. Both town centres are walkable, and local buses run to Alajuela and San Jose regularly. But the buses are slow, the schedules are not always reliable, and the mountain roads connecting to larger towns are winding enough that taxis add up fast. Many retirees buy a used car locally. Budget $5,000 to $10,000 CAD for a reliable used vehicle — and know that cars hold their value well in Costa Rica, so you can resell when you leave without losing much.

If you choose not to drive, you can manage, particularly if you live close to the town centre in either Atenas or Grecia. Just know that your world will be smaller. The weekly trip to a larger supermarket, a doctor’s appointment in Alajuela, or a dinner in Escazu all become logistical events rather than casual outings.

The Honest Trade-Off

Here is what every guide about Atenas and Grecia should tell you and most do not: these towns are quiet. Very quiet.

If you want a choice of restaurants, you will drive 30 minutes to Escazu. If you want live music, a cinema, or a shopping mall, you will drive to San Jose. If you want a beach, you are looking at 90 minutes to the Pacific coast. The nightlife in Atenas consists of the bar at the one hotel and whatever your neighbours are doing on their terrace.

For some retirees, this is a feature. They left Canada specifically to escape noise, crowds, and overstimulation. A quiet terrace with a mountain view, a tight community of people in the same life stage, and a total monthly cost that their pension actually covers — that is the whole dream, and Atenas and Grecia deliver it honestly.

For others, it is too much quiet. If you are coming from Toronto or Vancouver and you thrive on variety — new restaurants, cultural events, the energy of a city — these towns will feel confining within a few months. The Central Valley cities of Escazu or Santa Ana offer a more urban experience at a higher price point. Our Central Valley cost of living guide covers those options.

The best test is a scouting trip. Rent a place in Atenas or Grecia for a month. See if Tuesday-morning-coffee-on-the-terrace is your speed or if you are climbing the walls by week two. The people who love it here really love it. The people who do not knew within weeks.

Getting Started

If Atenas or Grecia is calling to you, here is the practical path forward:

1. Understand the visa. Canadians get 180 days on a tourist visa. For permanent retirement, the pensionado visa requires proof of $1,000 USD/month in pension income — the lowest threshold in the Americas. Most Canadians on CPP and OAS qualify.
2. Run your real budget. Use the table above and our $2,500 CAD retirement guide to see where you land after the 25% withholding tax.
3. Do a scouting trip. Rent a furnished place for one month through local expat Facebook groups or property managers. Both towns have short-term rental options in the $600-900 CAD range.
4. Set up your money transfer. Open a Wise account before you go. You will use it to send money from your Canadian bank to your Costa Rican account at a fraction of what the banks charge.
5. Get insured. Until you have CAJA coverage through the pensionado visa, you need travel medical insurance. Compare your options here.

The woman from Mississauga on her terrace did all of this about a year ago. She spent three weeks in Atenas during a scouting trip, went home, sold her car, packed two suitcases, and came back. She still has mornings where the quiet surprises her. But she also has mornings where she checks the weather in Toronto, sees minus 18, and pours another cup of coffee.

Important: Visa requirements, healthcare policies, and tax rules change regularly. The information in this guide reflects our best understanding at the time of writing. Please verify current requirements with official government sources or a qualified immigration professional before making decisions. All costs are in Canadian dollars and represent approximate ranges based on community reports.