Pura vida.
This literally translates into "pure life," but after hearing this phrase daily for a month, I'm not sure it's really translatable. I've heard it used as a greeting, a farewell, a thank you, an encouragement and as an acknowledgement of agreement. It reminds you to live your life in a way that's pure in a Costa Rican sense. Pura vida beseeches tranquility and nature, a taking of your time that I, as an unrepentant urbanite, have difficulty grasping. Along with the word "mae" (meaning something like "dude"), pura vida distinguishes the Spanish of Ticos and Ticas (Costa Ricans), though the phrase itself originates from a 1956 Mexican film of the same name.
Pura vida may claim responsibility for the highest quality of life in Central America. It is definitely responsible for the extreme passage of time between a waiter collecting your finished meal and bringing you the check. Pura vida also demands the acceptance of inconvenience when you inevitably come across a delay in the narrow roads that criss-cross the mountainous country. Pura vida and its free-spiritedness may run counter to social responsibility during a global pandemic, but cases were relatively contained here and as of November 1, tourism was fully reopened.
Traveling during the pandemic opens oneself to risk and disparagement, and I very much had to battle wanderlust with my obligations as a public health citizen before committing to work remotely in Costa Rica for a month. Though the packed flight to Miami was unnerving, arriving in San Jose I knew I'd made the right choice. The temperate climate and strict adherence to masks and hand-washing made socializing less fearful. Indeed it was strange to interact with a populace, that while cohabitating this same pandemic reality, had not been through the same degree of suffering. I never got sick in Costa Rica, and I tested negative when I returned.
San Jose has its charms - plazas that love their sculptures, tropically-vegetated streetscapes, baristas mixing flat whites, and a gaudy Chinese-built stadium (that doubled as a bribe to unrecognize Taiwan) - all surrounded by green hills. However the bulk of the urban area consists of unremarkable stretches of crumbling concrete interlaced with barbed wire and a smoky commuter train that blows through town at 20 MPH and 100 decibels. The Museo Nacional de Costa Rica itself used the word "backwater" of the Spanish Empire in describing the history of the region. As a result, it lacks the stately buildings and charming old quarters of Panama City, Bogota or San Juan. Many American tourists never spend a minute in the city. I spent ten days there, working from my Airbnb apartment in a high rise in Barrio Escalante. I arrived to an Indian dinner on Diwali (which I dubbed chicken tica masala), attended a Peruvian protest, played ultimate frisbee, picked coffee beans, climbed to the rim of a volcano only to see fog, and spoke a lot of Spanish.
My main adventure began with renting a car on Thanksgiving Day. By strict UN member nation accounting, Costa Rica is my 40th country visited, but this was my first time extensively driving outside the United States. I had been apprehensive, but like the rest of the trip, once I got started I knew it'd been a good idea. The streets of San Jose are chaotic, but outside the city they are fairly straightforward. The danger was getting distracted by the verdant scenery, which ranged from novel to breathtaking. Though Monteverde is to the northwest, my journey started due west down jungly mountains to the sparkling Pacific coast that left me gasping and craning my neck left.
By now my Spanish was good enough that when I saw signs saying "Puente Angosto," I knew to slow down. In Costa Rica, most roads taper into a single laned bridge over water. Perhaps originally this made engineering or financial sense, but by now short two way bridges surely can't be hard to construct, even in remote areas. I suspect people have become so accustomed to them though that they can't cross water in two directions anymore.
Continuing up the coast, I turned onto the grand-sounding Pan American Highway. This stretch was basically a humble two-lane backroad. The turnoff to Monteverde was even more minor, to the extent that I missed it completely. I continued down the "highway" looking for a turnoff, but found nothing suitable until suddenly the car in front of me stopped. As far as the eye could see, some mysterious event had frozen traffic. As I sat there idling on the wrong road, I wondered, can I pull a U-turn on this Pan American Highway? I slowly got the courage to peek over the meridian, and seeing no oncoming traffic, pulled an excruciating 10 point turn and scampered out.
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| Driving views |
Later I drove past a peaceful cow pasture and realized I'd missed another turn, this one even more unobtrusive. Doubling back, I saw a shortcut on Google Maps. However when I turned onto the shortcut, I screeched into a stretch of gravel and dirt leading into a farm, complete with roving cows. Were it not for a pair of tire tracks going through, I wouldn't recognize it for a "road." Instant regret. As I jackhammered my way over the rocks, I could hear my bumper getting scratched and hoped the rental agent wouldn't get too particular.
Monteverde felt like a small ski town, with lodgings scattered across miles of thin winding dirt roads but a built up downtown belying its population. My two night stay at the Selina hotel (a Portuguese chain that has caught fire over Costa Rica), was punctuated by hot tub drinking with a Dutch couple, an American couple, and a German-educated Costa Rican programmer. The Tico programmer, whom I offered a job, explained pura vida as well as he could. "Sometimes you get to a road and they're doing repairs for an indefinite amount of time, and you have to go pura vida and wait. But I'm not sure this is good. The Germans wouldn't like it."
The vaunted Cloud Forest preserve was within walking distance of my Selina, and I set out at 7am for I was told that the mountaintop would get foggy quite early. I beelined to a pinnacle quickly, from where I was supposed to be able to see both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. For the second time though, I hadn't the foggiest idea where they might be. On the way back, I aimed to cross an iconic red hanging bridge, that bridge that occupies slot #2 in a Google image search for "Costa Rica travel." However I found that the path was blocked by yellow tape printing out "PRECAUCION." This just sparked my curiosity, and I walked around the tape ad hiked toward the bridge. Arriving at the bridge, I found this:
Why was it closed? Why hadn't anyone, including the guide who recommended this trail, warned me about this? Was this worth sneaking onto? Taking a hard look at the whole bridge, the far end did not look entirely flat, I figured it was closed for good reason. Typical 2020. Pura vida.
Monteverde is also famous for canopy zipline tours. I booked one and arrived early, chatting with the guides David and Raul until I realized I was the only customer. Still two guides are needed to run a zipline safely, and bashfully I wondered if they were losing money on my transaction. I'm not a big fan of heights-based adrenaline activities, like roller coasters, but I'd gone ziplining once before in Laos, and hadn't found it scary. However the start of the tour was a "Tarzan swing," in I was tied to a rope and aggressively pushed off a high structure to pendulum down and up 50 feet over the jungle. After recovering from that, the ziplining was fantastic. The longest line spanned 800m across a valley, over a public road, with spectacular views of the thick jungle. The path of the tour included climbing up the inside of a hollow tree - actually a Ficus tree that had long since surrounded and strangled another tree. Most surprising to me was the platforms with no guard rails. Zipping in with momentum, I would land and cling to the cables with an illogical sense of fear. I recall the ziplines in Laos having more built-up landing platforms. I wonder if Laos had ever been compared favorably in the development game before.
One night, I found a roadside chicken griller who sold me a pincho de pollo (chicken skewer) for 800 colones ($1.30), and wrapped it in a flour tortilla for free. At an adjacent convenience counter I asked for a glass bottle of coke for 500 colones. That cashier asked me where I would drink the coke. Confused, I pointed to the grill, and she gave me a set of instructions that I gradually understood to involve returning the bottle to her. I took this as another example of Costa Rica's environmentalism. While eating the skewer and chatting with the griller, Antonella, a black Escalade pulled up. An Asian-American woman got out and misinterpreting what I was eating, asked for a taco. When she didn't understand Antonella's reply, "con papas o con ensalada?" I found myself translating from Spanish to English for the first time in my life. I finished the skewer and returned the coke bottle with a "pura vida."
On Sunday I began my leisurely drive down to Puerto Viejo (de Talamanca) on the Caribbean coast, where I would spend the week working. I had researched wifi availability on this small beach town, and learned that Banana Azul, the fanciest resort, did have a high speed connection. However, they were full on Sunday, so I booked them for Monday to Friday and found another place for Sunday night. I was slightly worried about the logistics of Monday morning work, but I figured pura vida, it'll be alright. I took my time, stopping in a random remote restaurant outside Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui (it's confusing) which doubled as a house, and befriending the staff/residents. Later I found the road filled with stopped cars and a couple motorcycles. Clearly unspecified roadwork was going on, so I shrugged and thought, this requires pura vida. Slowly cars accumulated behind me until I couldn't see the end of the line, while the motorcycles ahead of me multiplied. 45 minutes in, my pura vida was expiring and had I trusted my Spanish more I may have started yelling at the construction crew. There was no communication whatsoever. Finally they let us through, and we drove through a half mile of windy dirt road being paved and passed an even longer vehicle queue on the other side. When I reached the main Route 32 to Limon, I saw construction doubling its width, often assisted by massive machinery with names in Simplified Chinese. The scenery evolved from rainforest into endless banana farms. The Boston-based United Fruit Company's (now Chiquita) had built the railroad from San Jose to Limon and birthed the term "Banana Republic" into existence. I wondered if they still owned these farms. Suddenly, my phone, with a Costa Rican sim card installed, rings and I perplexedly answer. "Hello this is Alamo....are you going to return your car today?" Like that, my pura vida was interrupted by contractual obligations. I found out that the Alamo in Puerto Viejo closes at 5pm, figured I was on track for about 4:05, and said no problem, pura vida.
I quickly drove through Limon, past a massive cemetery and a small airfield, and alongside the ocean. Driving along the Caribbean coast was another spectacular experience, especially having driven along the Pacific only a few days before. Approaching Puerto Viejo, the road got smaller but the cars got wider. Not long ago Puerto Viejo was a small fishing village that wasn't even connected by road to the rest of Costa Rica, settled largely by black Jamaican immigrants. Many had arrived during the railroad-building in the 1870's, and their descendants still generally speak English and Spanish. Now it is a destination internationally well-known for its surfing waves, but as I discover the roads have not grown proportionally. Puerto Viejo is essentially a one street town, and that street lacks the width for cars and bikes to cohabitate. Further space competition comes in the form of large tour buses and pedestrians, the majority beach drunk. The townspeople seem to be embodying pura vida but as it ticks past 4:15 I am increasingly not. I end up putting my car in neutral and edging into the trespassing pedestrians, one of whom slams my trunk in response. I took deep breathes, and repeated "pura vida" to myself, though I was bursting with anxiety. I couldn't wait to check in, ditch the car, and drink on the beach.
I finally reach my lodging and execute a painful parallel park. "Qué tal Rasta?" the receptionist greeted me in an Afro-Caribbean manner that I absolutely love. "Tengo una reservacion," I respond, and the receptionist gives me a quizzical "reservacion?" reply. Frustrated, I pull out my confirmation email and the receptionist goes "ah, Expedia. They do this a lot. They allow you to book, but there's no room to book." I was fairly stunned - this has never happened to me before. I would've been angry, but I figured there's been so little tourism, I'll find something else. The hotel next door had 1 room remaining. "I don't think you want it though," said the receptionist. "It's our honeymoon suite." I felt a bit judged by that and inquired about the price. "$160." I figured I'd find better options elsewhere. Looking around the unpaved side streets, I found I didn't, and authoritatively strolled back into the hotel offering: "$140." The receptionist got on the phone with her boss, and came back with, "sorry but no." I huffed away and got in my car. I had only 5 minutes to get to Alamo.
I did make it in time, and despite that pounding on the cattle farm, incurred no damage fees. I grabbed all my bags and started going door-to-door, from hotel to guesthouse to inn. Each one was full. Finally I asked a guy, "what's going on here? Why is everything full?" In Monteverde everything was at like 30% capacity." The guy looked at me with profound sympathy. "Ah mae, it's a holiday tomorrow." That's when I knew I was in real trouble. If I had a set of rules for traveling, somewhere below "never take your phone out in the bathroom of a moving train" would be "be aware of local holidays." This has happened to me before. Puerto Viejo was not full of international tourists - it was full of Ticos/as at the beach for the 3 day weekend.
I hurry back to the hotel with the honeymoon suite and I sweep in, sweaty and disheveled, proclaiming, "I'll take it!" The receptionist looks at me again and says, "I'm so sorry. I just gave it away." "You're kidding me." I sit down in their lobby couch, dejected. "Have you tried Rockin J's?" suggested the receptionist.
That wasn't even the end though. I went to take a shower, and heard two French voices occupying the two shower stalls and patiently waited my turn - until I realized the two voices occupied the same stall. I entered the other stall, and found instead of a showerhead and faucet, there was just a PVC pipe, and a spigot. The spigot would allow no flow of water whatsoever until suddenly it would allow a slice of Niagara Falls to spurt out. As I stood getting hosed by PVC water in this Costa Rican beachside hostel/refugee camp with thin shower walls, I thought to myself, this wasn't even my first time getting too close to a lovemaking French couple in a cheap lodging. What sort of life decisions had I made to end up here? Later as I sat alone on the beach, sipping a beer and watching the Caribbean waves crashing down, I felt like a stereotypical middle-aged divorcee.
The next morning, I got up early, called a cab, and moved from the cheapest hostel to the nicest hotel in town. I settled in the hotel lobby, connected my air pods and got on my 10am zoom with my boss as if it was a normal Monday morning.
Pura vida.
