One of the most frequent questions we get from friends and family is what we're going to do when we get to Costa Rica. It's a valid question, and of course there's the obvious: We hope to spend time touring this beautiful, environmentally rich nation populated by friendly and interesting people.
But I think the questions they are really asking are...
Will we dine out with friends? How will we make those friendships? Where is there to eat out, anyway? With our families on a different continent, how will we spend our holidays? What about TV? Won't we miss NCIS and our other favorite programs? Will we have access to the Internet?
You get the picture. We've asked ourselves the same questions, of course. In fact, pretty much on a daily basis we find ourselves visualizing what we think our daily routine in Costa Rica might look like. Here's what we've come up with.
Breakfast will no doubt include what might be considered the national dish of Costa Rica: gallo pinto, or fried beans and rice. Add an egg, some fruit, and a cup of one of the best coffees on the planet, and you just might have the most perfect start to any day.
Instead of weekly trips to Costco and large corporate grocery stores, we'll shop at produce vendors, the central market, and small local food stores for the most part. When necessary, we'll reluctantly head for the Pali, Mas x Menos, or Hiper Mas -- all owned by WalMart and amply stocked with essentials like bathroom tissue, cleaning supplies, and products like Helman's Mayonnaise and Kraft salad dressings. Hopefully, we can do it all on foot, leaving the car (if we decide to have one) parked in the carport until we need to head for San Jose or the remote countryside.
Who's going to clean the house and do the laundry is still up for debate. Hiring help around the house will be inexpensive and provide jobs for our Tico neighbors. At the same time, it still feels a bit decadent to shirk those jobs by handing them off to someone else.
Of course, we expect to spend a good amount of time reading while waiting in line at ICE, CAJA, the bank, and just about everywhere else. But that's okay. One of our goals for this experience is to learn to relax, slow down, and accept those minor inconveniences as exactly that - minor.
Holidays? Who knows. We're open to new opportunities.
Television? We'll have cable or satellite - with American stations. But we're not sure how much we'll want to watch them. Staring up at the sky or into the trees in the hope of spying a colorful bird or lizard might be much more interesting.
Internet is a high priority for us and a high speed Internet is a non-negotiable pre-requisite for any place we might consider settling.
Without question our silver craft and lapidary hobbies will continue to occupy much of our lives. But there will be more:
- planting a vegetable garden and fruit trees
- becoming fluent in Spanish
- building or re-doing our new home
- leaning to cook Tico-style
- sitting in the park
- becoming a regular at the heladeria (ice cream shop)
- welcoming family & friends when they come to visit
- finding a way to give back to our host country
Perhaps most of all, we hope to enrich our lives by getting to know our neighbors - the ones who live near to us and the ones we encounter in our travels. And to learn from them new ways to live our lives that will allow us to focus on what is truly important...
It is tempting to try to finish that last sentence, but somehow we suspect that we've something more to learn first.
Pura Vida
