I’ve long wanted to visit Costa Rica, ever since learning that it was one of only a handful of countries in the world to not have a standing army. This, along with its foundational role in promoting worldwide eco-tourism and it’s famous biodiversity,¹ presented an image of a responsible nation with its priorities firmly in the right place. This was all seemingly confirmed during their 2018 elections when, at a time when most other countries were racing to see who could collapse into right-wing extremism faster and more belligerently, the Costa Rican electorate resoundingly rejected the Christian populist candidate.

So far, so good, but the proof is always in the pudding and so I wanted to experience Costa Rica first-hand.

No way, San José ¶

Flying into the capital was a shock after the pristine adobe aesthetics of Arizona. San José is, to put it charitably, a bit of a ‘hole, and it’s worth noting that this is an assessment shared by all but two people I encountered, whether gringo or Tico (the preferred endonym amongst Costa Ricans). I wonder, though, how much it’s a matter of the coat of paint used; the endless gated communities of suburban Phoenix were, functionally, the same as the omnipresent physical security measures around every building in San José (from corner shops to primary schools), but barbed wire-topped chain-link fences are visually much more striking than well-manicured golf courses and discreetly-placed CCTV cameras.

At my hostel (whose front seemed designed to deter ramming attacks) I met my first Tica, a twenty-year old girl who had never left the country and was amazed to learn that the UK has an army and not monkeys. She made a point of warning me to be careful and that not everyone here is pura vida. Later on we went looking for food and asked a guy for directions, who asked his friend, but to no avail. We walked the other way for a while before returning, only to find the guy still stood there waiting for us. He offered to lead us to the place using his phone map and we agreed, but as he led us away from the main throughfare and into the side roads my Spidey-sense started to tingle… and then he brought us to the place and went on his way. He was pura vida, after all.

The girl on the other side of the dorm was unfortunate enough to have the slats of the bunk above her keep falling onto her, and by the morning she had amassed a collection of no fewer than six laying on the floor beside her bed. I only stayed in San José for the night. I chatted to a couple Germans over breakfast and talked about meeting up with the Tica again in Panama. Then I steeled myself for an eight-hour bus ride, the standard of the on-vehicle amenities unknown.

Into the Jungle ¶

The bus ride was largely uneventful, and the scenery pretty interesting, but it ended on a bum note as a baby across the aisle from me threw up all over my shoes about half an hour from our destination. When I arrived in Puerto Jiménez it was dark, and I had a slightly sketchy-feeling 15-minute walk to get to my hostel, in large part down an unlit road.

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Still, though, I was not done. Puerto Jiménez was but my penultimate destination, and as I sat waiting for the bus that would take me to my final one the following morning, drinking a coffee and eating a delicious empanada (shout-out to Nano’s Diner), I took in my surroundings now that I could see them. My first time in the tropics, and it looked and felt exactly as I’d expected: lush greenery everywhere; rusting radio masts like something out of Far Cry 3; and dirt roads with potholes big enough to lose your dog in. I was a long way from the relative swishness of San José now, and the place fascinated me; I made a mental commitment to come back often.

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Eventually, the bus arrived, and by bus I mean a small red minibus that had certainly seen better days. On the 40-minute ride, most of which was taken at around 10 mph due to the state of the roads, I chatted to the driver in halting Spanish and took in my surroundings, from the water buffalo-looking cows to the huge trees. At one point the road narrowed to a single lane alongside the river and the driver explained that the rest of it had washed away in the recent rainfall.

Tomasz Poniży

Finally, I was in Dos Brazos, a tiny gold-mining town located at the point where the two arms of the Rio Tigre converge to form the river proper. I was here for my first volunteerstay organised via Workaway, as a house-sitter at Bolita Hostel—Costa Rica’s only clothing-optional hostel—whilst it was shut for the rainy season… except they had forgotten I was coming, and the rainy season was already about over. Not to worry, I was happy enough to do the normal volunteer work too, and I waited to be told what that would be. The path up to the hostel involved a river crossing and a steep uphill climb, described on the hostel Web site as aggressive and taking around 45 minutes in all, and I found out the hard way that US dollars do not get on well with water.

At the hostel were three couples: five Poles who had never met previously and one Greek guy. As there were no guests yet, the only jobs we had to do were generally keep the place clean and bring stuff up and down as required when making a trip. I had the dorm area to myself (unless you count the trail of leafcutter ants passing underneath my bed) and settled in to sleep.

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The next couple days were a little stressful, as I had to return to Puerto Jiménez to buy groceries and things I had forgotten. Things improved after this, particularly once I had adjusted to the din of the jungle at night and was better able to sleep. I started to explore the surrounding area, tackling a few of the trails and hunting for wildlife in the evening, as well as continuing to study Spanish.

At some point, and I’m not sure why, both of my big toenails fell off.

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Then, whilst out hiking the trails in the buff (as you do), I managed to get my phone wet and kill the display.² It was back to stress as I wandered around Puerto Jiménez the following day looking for repair stores, none of which were able to do anything with my Fairphone; I realised to my frustration that the phone and its replacement parts are only sold in Europe, and that I had paid a premium for a allegedly repairable phone that isn’t repairable in most of the world.

Realising that it would be quite a faff to set up a new phone, I looked on Workaway for a nearby host somewhere less remote. As luck would have it, I found a French couple living in Puerto Jiménez itself and, after meeting the husband in town whilst I was there looking for new phones, I had a new plan all lined up.

Puerto Jiménez ¶

So, much earlier than anticipated, I found myself back in Puerto Jiménez for a longer stay. I had a place to stay and meals provided in exchange for helping the couple around the house, painting, cleaning and walking their dogs. They had three dogs and three cats, including one kitten with whom I became best friends. As I gushed about my new pals to my two-legged friends back home, I found out that most of them were surprised and seemed to think I had something against animals; I’m not sure what I have done to garner such a reputation.

I also realised that it wouldn’t be feasible to order any specific model of phone that I actually wanted online, and so I had to settle for the cheapest that they had in the local electronics store. Thus I ended up with a Samsung Galaxy A13 which, like all normal consumer tech. fills me with disgust every time I use it. Adjusting to stock Android after using /e/OS was hard enough, but I would later discover that Samsung phones really do go above and beyond in an effort to suck as much as possible.

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I quickly settled in to my new routine: I would work through the morning, usually alongside the husband, and then head off to the beach in the afternoon (or, perhaps more often, say I was going to and then take a nap or get distracted by something). I was trying to put my finger on what I liked so much about the place when I read the following description on WikiVoyage:

That’s right, I had found myself in Costa Rican Deadwood!

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One day I met a German tourist at the beach and we became pals, and so I added bar-hopping to my free time itinerary. For some reason we couldn’t work out, he kept getting charged more for things than me, such as paying ₡2,000 (~£4) for an espresso (compared to my ₡300–500 filter coffees) and even, one time, ₡1,000 for a black coffee that had been ₡500 at the same place the day before. Prices in general were weird, and at least one place clearly set prices in dollars and converted them into colones, leading to prices fluctuating slightly day-by-day.

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Our favourite haunt quickly became a beachfront dive bar called Bar de la Purraja. With his much better Spanish we invited the two barmaids to come out with us after work, and we ended up playing some frames of pool because they assumed that, as an English person, I was super into that. We also learned that whereas I—at least until I opened my mouth—could be mistaken for a Tico due to my tan and attire (shorts, flip-flops and sleeveless vests), everything about my pal screamed gringo and that that was why we were experiencing such different treatment.

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November came and went, and I finally shaved for the first time in a long while; I hadn’t been intending to do it for Movember, I was just lazy and testing my genetics to see if I could grow proper facial hair with enough patience (nope). I saw the Germany–Costa Rica game with a group of Germans in a bar full of Costa Ricans, and few things in my life have ever been as loud, although the French guy did put in a good effort during the England–France game later on, and the France–Argentina final. I even met up with one of the couples from Bolita as they transited through the town after finishing there, and with the ending of the rainy season I started to notice more gringos about (he says, as though he isn’t one).

Día de la Abolición del Ejército ¶

I hadn’t realised this when planning my trip, but I discovered that the the Día de la Abolición del Ejército—the national holiday celebrating the day that Costa Rica abolished its army—fell on December 5^th and was coming up soon. This was the event that first interested me in the country, and my German pal had left for pastures anew, so I decided to spend the day reading up on Costa Rican history.

The story goes that, in 1948, Costa Rica decided to abolish its entire armed forces, the President symbolically smashed through the wall of their former headquarters with a sledgehammer and all the former defence spending was redirected towards education. Costa Rica then went on to have the best 20^th and 21^st centuries of any South or Central American country, remaining peaceful in spite of the trends of the rest of the region and seeing huge leaps in its standard of living.

Of course, the reality of living without an army is a little more complex than just everyone decided we were too nice to hit. Unlike elsewhere in Latin America, Costa Rica hasn’t really ever seen the kind of leftist leader who threatens US corporate profits with the possibility of expropriation and wealth redistribution,³ so Washington was never compelled to support right-wing death squads, military dictators or genocides here. It’s easy to be a happy little hobbit when you’re not drawing Sauron’s gaze.

Plus, Costa Rica has had to bend the knee to the US a number of times, such as backing the Contras in Nicaragua under Monge. This marked the end of the Reform State period, and since then Costa Rica has followed the neoliberal economic line. Not unrelatedly, the generation of artists and writers stretching from the 1980s to now is known as the generation of disenchantment.

So, Costa Rica’s peace and prosperity is a little more complicated than it may first appear, and some of those contradictions are likely to intensify as Chinese investment in the country ramps up, threatening its thusfar successful strategy of play nice with the local nutcase. Like Japan, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for their constitutional pacifism to become a subject of debate.

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But, on that day, I walked the dogs along the beach and spent the rest of the morning painting the kitchen to the sounds of Israel Kamakawiwoʻole and toucans outside. It was about 30 °C, there was barely a cloud in the sky and on that day 74 years prior, Costa Rica made a very cool decision and hasn’t (yet) looked back; I celebrated with a beer on the beach.

Happy in Jiménez ¶

I wanted to find some more people to hang out with and so set myself up on Tinder. I tried Bumble too, as I’d heard good things about it and I find Tinder itself hugely unpleasant, but due to its limited penetration into Costa Rica thusfar they have ingeniously decided to disable the ability to filter based on location, making the app. utterly useless unless I fancied a 60 km trip to San José for the sake of a date.

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Before he left, the German and I had gone on a night out with a Uruguayan Workawayer who was also in the area and I had been surprised to find that I could mostly follow the conversation in Spanish. After successfully managing to conduct two dates with a Tica entirely in Spanish without accidentally calling myself a jelly doughnut (although I did slash my thumb open attempting to open a coconut) I realised just how unreasonably effective a tool immersion is for language learning, having learned in a couple weeks more than I had in months of Duolingo or years of Spanish lessons at school.

Alizon

Unfortunately, that was as far as things went as our schedules never aligned again. Much of my social life for the remainder of my time there revolved around the animals, although the German did come back to visit the barmaid he’d started seeing and we all headed to the centre of town for the Festival de la Luz; then she taught me a bunch of bad words in Spanish, as is the responsibility of every language speaker when encountering a learner. On my final night with the French I cooked a risotto (with the husband later calling me le roi du risotto in his feedback on Workaway) and said goodbye to my new furry friends.

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It was time to return to Bolita…

Back to Bolita ¶

With my phone issues quickly sorted, I had found my thoughts regularly drifting back to Bolita. Partly this was because I kept coming into contact with it: the German had stayed there one weekend, and the Polish–Greek couple had told me about how the vibe had changed now that tourists were present. I was curious to see the change for myself, and I also didn’t have any pressing need to move on yet, so I planned to spend the holidays naked in the jungle, as everyone should.

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All the volunteers I had been with before were gone, replaced by a Swiss guy and two pairs of Americans, each of ambiguous couple-ness. Also present now was the owner, who had been away in Canada before. Now that we were out of house-sitting mode we were excacipected to do normal volunteer work for 20 hours per week, but after a rambling three-hour briefing and repeated questions we were no clearer on how we were expected to make up 100 hours per week between us when there was a ratio of one volunteer per guest, and the guests were all pretty tidy.

There was a lot of talk about there being loads of projects, but never any information, and the one time I tried to take some initiative (by hanging up a poster we’d been told to hang up), I got into the owner’s bad books because I had used a knife rather than a hole punch (though none were available) and had apparently put it up in the wrong place. Someone else tried to put it up on another wall and it again got torn down, and the owner seemed to assume it was my doing again. The poster was still laying on the floor when I left, where I expect I shall remain until the jungle steals it away one windy day.

Two of the Americans were coming off the back of a season spent wildland firefighting in Washington and, as someone who one considered applying to be a firewatch lookout, I immediately decided I wanted a piece of that action; one for another trip. Now that the rest of the world had effectively halted for holiday period, I was able to really sink into the tranquil jungle retreat vibes and enjoy the glacial pace of life there.

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There had been a fair amount of drinking with the house-sitting crew, and I kept that tradition alive with the new group by bringing a couple litres of rum and cacique with me. By day I lay in a hammock or went hiking, by night we drank and played card and/or drinking games. One advantage of not being with a bunch of couples was that people were more amenable to cooking together, and I even organised a couple film viewings: Clara Sola, because I wanted to watch a Costa Rican film; and Y tu mamá también, because I love it (and now I want to go on a Mexican road trip). The owner disappeared shortly before Christmas Eve, never to return before my own departure, and as a result we basically self-organised ourselves exactly as we had done when there were no guests and didn’t bother to track our hours.

For Christmas Day itself I organised a volunteer meal back down in Dos Brazos, and on my final morning there I woke everyone up at 4 a.m. so we could hike up to a viewpoint and watch the sun rising over the Golfo Dulce:

Panama, Ho! ¶

I had heard enough people tell me that I should go to Bocas del Toro that I decided to cut short my second stay at Bolita so I could spend New Year’s there; I felt I was overdue some proper partying.

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Before that I spent the night in Puerto Jiménez, and the hostel owner—a Canadian-accented Scotsman with a big bushy beard, who seemed to have a side hustle of videocalling children at the end of December as Santa on holiday—told me and a pair of Dutch girls who were heading the same way how we could make it all the way to Bocas in a single day.

The next day I said goodbye to Costa Rica, having seen an awful lot of one very small part of it, and certain that I would be back some time for the rest.