ESSAY
Costa Rica is Not Your “Third World Experience”
The land of “pura vida” carries a magic that is as fragile as we are ignorant.
“How was your third world experience? “
Asked the bulky man who sat in front of me on the plane. Not to me, as I would have gawked at him under my mask, but to the woman sitting in my row with her husband. We had just landed in the U.S. on a plane from San Jose, Costa Rica, and passengers were beginning to stand, lining the isles while waiting for the doors to open. The couple I had ended up sitting with were bird nerds. They spent their flight checking off various hummingbirds they had seen in their guidebook. Innocuous folks, I thought they were cute (despite their initial attempt to get extra space by leaving the middle seat open). To her credit, the birdwatcher stalled at first when responding to the man, uttering a startled “What?” before responding and completely glossing the accented “third world” part of his question over–a common reaction to casual racism in confined spaces.
I was shocked at how brazen he was with such a derogatory term until I looked backward and saw that half of the plane looked and sounded exactly like this man, a handful donning the same pricey fishing brand on their shirts and hats. I realized I was officially stateside, and since visas are so difficult to attain for Costa Rican citizens to travel to the US, there were only a few people on the plane who might have been offended by that comment–had they heard him loudly blurt it out against the noisy murmur of passengers clamoring for the overhead compartments.
Costa Rica is filled with people like this now, they might live there (or visit often enough), but they have truly never left the United States. You can see it in their clothes, the houses they build, the way they speak to locals. The loud man ahead of me on the plane was surely one of them, beer gut taut under his expensive sun-shirt, tipsy from plane drinks, mockingly mispronouncing common Spanish words. I wanted to be angry at him, I wanted to tell him he had entirely missed the point, that CR is not a ride at Disneyland, it’s not just a place for “adventurous” white people to go zip-lining. It’s a place that harbors some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. Its native people, ticos and ticas, protect a culture of gratitude and giving long lost in the US. Its rich forests and coasts produce oxygen that we breathe, even from our congested suburbs and strip malls. It’s one of those perfectly situated places where coffee and chocolate come from- those delicious comforts that make life so much easier to bear. I wanted to say all of this, but I was sure he wouldn’t understand. I was outnumbered, and the conversation had already moved on.
I know these people, some of them personally, and they aren’t “bad” people. Part of them fell in love with a simpler place, where value is drawn moment by moment from a sense of harmonious community shared with the multitudes of life on the rugged, jungle-fringed coasts. At some point, they felt alive in those green singing forests, or before a pristine waterfall. The sunrise might have stirred up their soul with its orange fireball, bright as the yolk of a fresh tico egg. At some point, they felt something. Something that compelled them to pursue that feeling. Unfortunately, in the United States, we are taught that the “pursuit of happiness” is a conquest instead of a dance. That is what we’re missing, the dance, the joy, the communion with the moment in all its circumstances. It is this spirit of what locals call “pura vida” (meaning “pure life”) that cultivates a strong sense of purpose among many ticos and ticas, allowing them to exist more seamlessly with the wild world around them than we are able to back home, where excessive development generates a false sense of separation from the biosphere.
So many of these expats and tourists from “superpower” countries are determined to hunt down this bliss at whatever cost, with minimal understanding of its source. They try to capture it with their cameras, fishing rods, flow toys, and surfboards. Their aim is to feel free, or to appear to. This feeling of abandon can evade us back home, despite the reverence of freedom in our doctrines. I know this personally, as I have given chase to this feeling, this “way out” of what we stubbornly refer to as “reality” — the grinding pace of the western world. I’ve treated Costa Rica like that too, as my own private fairyland, an escape, instead of a place where people and animals live their everyday lives. I feel incredibly grateful to have gradually gained a much clearer perspective on how much I have left to learn from the stunning relations within my favorite land.
“So many of these expats and tourists from “superpower” countries are determined to hunt down this bliss at whatever cost, with minimal understanding of its source.”
I was fortunate enough (and poor enough) as a young woman to spend my first experience in CR with a great friend, camping in nothing but a hammock with a torn, homemade bug net attached to it (and a bag of snacks to share). We volunteered at a turtle camp impromptu, staying up at odd hours and watching baby turtles make their way into long lives or oblivion, under stars or sunrises. I was so overwhelmed by the aliveness and vibrancy of everything, and by the spirits of the people I met, that Costa Rica gained surreal status in my mind’s eye.
It took lots of humbling experiences and conversations over the years to understand many of the nuances of the culture and experience of people who were born in Costa Rica. Life is not easy there. The elements are intense and everyone has a reckoning with them one way or another, usually continuously throughout their lives. This deep recognition of one’s interdependence with nature garners a healthier fear response in difficult or dangerous circumstances. Many people have gardens, or chickens, or some other means of producing their sustenance from the world around them. They often live in tight communities with strong local relationships–relationships that are even stronger in rural areas where remoteness necessitates deep bonds with neighbors. This sense of community is something we’ve sorely missed in the United States, in many places, for generations. “Pura vida”, the greeting/parting phrase and the motto of Costa Rica, constantly accents the essence of life’s objective in Costa Rica: to live purely.
Ticas and ticos get a significant sense of satisfaction from their daily existence in a culture that doesn’t overwhelmingly cater to convenience. Due to the intense geography and climate, managing circumstances moment by moment with the community is essential, this creates adaptable people who worry less. Despite some ingrained social justice issues with sexism and racism, the prevailing spirit of the land — pura vida– has persevered. In other words, it works, in its way. An influx of tourists and expats who refuse to acknowledge this respectfully, who carry too much with them (literally or figuratively), and leave no room for new habits or experiences, cheat themselves and the place they came to visit. There are so many people in Costa Rica right now from other places, fleeing some version of the rat race (myself included), that I worry that the cultural infections we’re trying to escape will follow us and irreparably change the feeling and landscape in one of the happiest and most pristine corners of the world.
“An influx of tourists and expats who refuse to acknowledge this respectfully, who carry too much with them (literally or figuratively), and leave no room for new habits or experiences, cheat themselves and the place they came to visit.”
There are still places that are tough to get to that maintain their rawness, but bridges are being built and roads are being paved, the money-corrupt surf industry is booming, and frothing masses of surfers with poor etiquette crowd breaks even in mediocre surf. The more entitled ones come to see locals as nuisances, rather than understanding the easily-born frustration of having your backyard wave constantly filled with privileged, vacationing, kooks. I learned to surf on my first trip to Costa Rica, and I’ll say that surf etiquette has gotten exceptionally worse over the last 8 years or so with more and more people in the water.
There are many reasons for this, but without getting into all the evils that have risen from mixing money with surfing, one of the main culprits for tourists’ poor etiquette is the vacation mindset. When surfers are on a trip, they’re often counting their waves, focused on their own experience and value for their “investment”, and that makes the moody environment in the water even more pronounced. Even beautiful sights and sparks of wildlife like stingrays and dolphins breaking the surface are often grimly ignored by grumps who aren’t getting good waves.
While deeply invested on a wave conquest, everything can start to seem like an obstacle between a surfer and their solid session. This kind of tunnel-vision doesn’t lend itself to the type of freedom and physical gratitude that surfing can embody when nobly pursued. Enough selfish attitudes in a lineup can create a high-tension environment that totally clashes with the raw intensity and grace of any break in Costa Rica. When I find myself unjustifiably agro while in the water, I take it as an indication that I’m missing the point somehow, that I haven’t been properly balancing ambition and reverence, the spiritual equilibrium of surfing. This imbalance leads to an ugly entitlement and lack of authentic presence that has no place in the essence of wave riding. Reminding myself that every moment in the ocean is a gift allows me the scope of gratitude I need to fully integrate all of my surfing experiences without any toxic claim.
“When I find myself unjustifiably agro while in the water, I take it as an indication that I’m missing the point somehow, that I haven’t been properly balancing ambition and reverence, the spiritual equilibrium of surfing.”
Westernized surf culture has overwhelmed the identities and economies of many little beach towns near popular breaks in CR, but even in pockets without a reliable wave you’re sure to encounter a growing population of bohemians trying to open their minds in the intense serenity of the land. You might see them camping or venturing out of curated yoga retreats, often with large groups of festival buddies. Cultural blind spots are common among this group as well. “Hippies” or other alternative folks traveling in Costa Rica often share a subliminal aim to adorn their identities with the raw beauty and authenticity around them. This personalization of Costa’s pristine vistas and sensory experiences is an attempt to make up for the lack of authenticity we feel at home and within ourselves. I understand this inside and out, I’ve been wearing the same Costa Rican cowrie shell around my neck since 2017, and I’ve grown more careful of disruptive attitudes that arise from grasping at paradise as a means to personal enlightenment. Psychedelics, widely used by the alternative crowd in CR, can also cultivate a self-centered or haughty vibe when used irresponsibly, even with all of their ego-minimizing capabilities. In the scene, there’s even a term for this inflated mindset: “headier than thou.”
This heavy self-focus can manifest through ignorant relations with the local community. I’ve witnessed it in many iterations, things like getting unsuitably naked in the jungle-equivalent of a residential area, or scheduling a fire-dancing drum circle disrespectfully late on weeknights (in said residential area), or even deciding to take a crack at some siren throat singing while the sun is rising and you’re visibly a few meters from others trying to enjoy their morning. This type of shortsightedness can undermine the authenticity of the atmosphere and can really annoy the locals. I met a few tica neighbors on my last visit that rolled their eyes and complained about the retreats at the hippie-friendly camping area down the road from them.
What we have to acknowledge with the more bohemian sect of tourism in Costa Rica is an attempt to bring outside ideas and practices to a place with an established culture. Even if the practices are well intended, and some of them are adopted throughout the country (often in culturally-appropriated ways by expats), the repercussions of this boho-colonialism should not be ignored. The impacts on local communities should instead be uniformly acknowledged at the forefront of the “mindfulness” that is so often touted by retreats, festivals, and other institutions that attract alternative types. The mindfulness in“pura vida” comes from humans living in reciprocity with nature, and any attempts to extract it will ultimately fail, but not before tainting the whole concept by misdefinition. Right now, cultural clash in this arena is widely overlooked because the free-spirited often take for granted that they “naturally” have a minimal impact on their surroundings. The peaceful ethos they’ve aligned themselves with blinds them from points of hypocrisy, and this can lead to repetitive blind behaviors from well-intended people.
“This personalization of Costa’s pristine vistas and sensory experiences is an attempt to make up for the lack of authenticity we feel at home and within ourselves.”
Perhaps the most overtly disrespectful group you’ll find in Costa Rica are the rich people who visit, live, and build mansions there. Wealth (in currency), rarely recognizes itself, preferring to point always to someone richer or more ostentatious. It is incredibly difficult to internalize the sense of wealth that exists innately in the natural cycle of giving when your life and aspirations have come to depend deeply on the abstracted world of currency for a long time. There are plenty of rich people who treat locals like servants, or otherwise as means to some end they’re trying to fulfill. The jobs they offer through home building, rental property management, or housekeeping usually supply just enough to live, instead of providing enough for their means of labor to invest and grow themselves. The ones who don’t have overt mansions often live in expensive, private, “planned” communities whose plans leave out the impending economic toll on native communities. Prices are higher in the supermarkets, at restaurants, in the shops. This bump disproportionately effects ticas and ticos (obviously). More than anyone, the rich take their culture with them, in every fashion, as flamboyantly as they please.
To illustrate this, I will tell you about a conversation I overheard in an upscale beachfront restaurant the last time I was there. Two wealthy couples were speaking loudly to each other from different tables in our section, so it was impossible not to hear. After the initial greeting, which began with an absurd discussion about whose neighboring ghetto was more dangerous (NYC or Portland, OR), they started getting into the next polite pissing contest of who owns what where (you know, rich people things). The woman from Portland started talking about a property in Costa Rica her friends had just purchased during covid. She described it at first as a “small, modest place,” then continued to mention how it was built into a mountainside… and made entirely of glass. Mind you, this conversation is taking place a quarter mile from a local neighborhood on the beach made entirely of corrugated metal and tarps. She then revealed the price tag, dubbing it “only $500,000.”
Maybe I don’t have to say it, but “modest” is not the word to use to describe a glass house erected into the side of a mountain. And, for most of the people living on the planet, a half million dollars is a lot of money. The worst part of this conversation took place after the New York couple left, when the remaining couple started drunkenly berating their tico server about how hard he was working while he was trying to clean up, asking over and over when he would be able to get off and “party.” They seemed surprised when he responded (in his calm service voice through gritted teeth) that he wouldn’t be partying, as he had to go back to work early the next morning. I’ve waited tables in a fancy ocean side restaurant at home in Rhode Island, and I’ve had versions of this same infuriating conversation with very rich people who couldn’t possibly understand my need for 3 jobs at the time. I can’t possibly imagine how much more infuriating that conversation is to have on that level of disparity.
“She described it at first as a “small, modest place,” then continued to mention how it was built into a mountainside… and made entirely of glass.”
Unfortunately, on any level of wealth or type of recreation, people from highly westernized cultures who are already sort of rude and entitled are becoming even more rude and entitled from social media algorithms and AI. The growing addiction to social media seems to be one of the most blatant reasons behind the worsening behavior of everyone, and these behaviors are caricatured when we’re traveling and have something more to prove. There is a growing majority of us who do it, and we’ve gotten worse. We need to collect each “carefree” moment with our viewfinders, capturing ourselves in contrived positions with presentable smiles to attempt to encapsulate our fleeting joy and feed it to our phones.
On one outing from our last trip, my boyfriend and I watched a gigantic blue morpho butterfly, one of the many wildlife icons of Costa Rica, flutter completely unnoticed just above the heads of hoards of continuous, insta-bikini laden, selfie-takers around the pool of a waterfall. On that day, we watched many people put themselves at risk of bodily harm to get good videos of them jumping from dangerous heights or to film themselves free-rappelling the sketchy ridge trail to the falls. Two European backpackers in front of us on the trail backed up the entire line of people trying to walk to the waterfall for over 10 minutes to take a video commentary of their “adventure” during the hardest part of the path.
This behavior is rapidly becoming run-of-the-mill, and is even more pronounced in beautiful places that are perceived as playgrounds or as good backdrops to show ourselves off. We stayed at this waterfall for hours, and watched many people come and go. Most groups would come, get their pictures and videos, and head out within an hour. We watched the cataloging of the place upstage the actual setting over and over. It was sad seeing such a tranquil space scanned constantly by glowing rectangles, being cropped into boxes for restless people to check off their itineraries. We’re so addicted to our online identities that we’re willing to encumber our actual experiences and the experiences of others for them. Across the board, we need to remember that every decision we make affects the world around us, even (and especially) the choices that we squander through inattention.
“We need to collect each “carefree” moment with our viewfinders, capturing ourselves in contrived positions with presentable smiles to attempt to encapsulate our fleeting joy and feed it to our phones.”
In a world with more people, we are going to have to face crowding more and more in our lives–even in the few wild places we have left. Ultimately, we all need to be able to tolerate each other, no matter what class or culture. I’ve been on a crowded Easter-week beach in Costa Rica, a week when it is customary for many ticas and ticos to come down from the mountains and cities to enjoy the coasts, and it was awesome, an experience in itself. The beach was covered with people capable of really enjoying themselves in the surrounding beauty, people who would look you in the eye and smile as they passed by. There was a sense of peace about them fueled by longer attention spans and stronger connections to the land. Most everyone tried to be respectful of each other’s space and recreation (ticas and ticos teach politeness as a deep virtue), and this generalized consideration made it easier to share. This serves as proof that it can be done. A sense of respect and awareness can be achieved even on a crowded beach, as long as the majority have their attention directed toward the value of the moment.
This surreal, abundant paradise, Costa Rica, carries a magic that is as fragile as we are ignorant. Amid a barrage of other impending environmental catastrophes that the entire globe faces, a land that thrives on aliveness moment by moment, on a deep reverence for nature, is becoming overcrowded with overstimulated people who don’t have the ability to value what they ventured out of bounds to try to witness. I’ve just now returned home from a visit to what was once a small and sleepy beach town. In this post-covid, hyper-technological world, has an entirely different feeling -one of people begging to be seen. It wasn’t the place to lose yourself anymore. We’re allowing ourselves to consume the identity of a rare and important place. A place that carries the secret of bliss like a thread through every moment. This essence they call pura vida–the pure living that connects everything. We are desperately yanking on this thread, trying to selfishly extract a joy we don’t understand. And if we pull too hard, it just might unravel.
