Ten Weeks in Costa Rica: Seizing the Moment

It was the summer of 2012 and my husband Luke and I had two small children at the time—our son Devon (3) and daughter Aria (14 months). Luke’s brother co-owned a house in Costa Rica and we had been talking about using the house while we had the chance. Luke had quit his day job the previous fall to work for himself, and he could work from anywhere as long as he had internet. So why not work from Costa Rica? 

 

I was chatting with my friend about this idea, and she told me that she needed to find temporary housing for some missionaries that were coming in town for some training. They would pay rent and needed housing for nine weeks. So we rented out our house and booked our plane tickets. We were so excited! 

We landed in San Jose, gathered all our luggage and crossed our fingers that we’d be able to find the person picking us up—Chris. Chris co-owned the house with Luke’s brother and was currently living there. He offered to come pick us up so we wouldn’t have to try and find the house by ourselves….four hours away from the airport, without street names, at night. 

Thankfully, Chris spotted us as we came out of the terminal. What a relief. (We did not know what he looked like ahead of time.) Then we had to cram all of our stuff into this old jalopy of a car which was to be our mode of transportation for the next two months. We had to strap a bunch of stuff to the roof, but we made it work. 

The drive was beautiful. I don’t know how on earth we would have found the house by ourselves. We were out in a teeny tiny town called Huacas in between two beaches (Tamarindo and Playa Grande). The roads didn’t have names. You had to know landmarks and where other towns were (“take the road that goes to Tamarindo”). 

Once there, we found ourselves in an awkward situation with Chris. He co-owned the house with Luke’s brother, but was living there full-time with his six-year-old daughter. Our arrival meant that Chris and his daughter moved to the unfinished apartment over the garage. They took some clothes up there, but most of their belongings were still there in the main house. That meant that I had to keep my three-year-old and one-year-old from damaging their things. No small feat considering we were there for two months. 

The property itself created more challenges. The house sat on the side of a steep mountain, with a deck and pool that had amazing views but serious drop-offs. I had to watch my little ones like a hawk to make sure they didn’t fall off the deck or into the pool. The house did not have central AC, just a small wall unit in each bedroom that Chris told us should only be run for short periods of time. And it was hot and humid, so we basically were sweating all the time. And because it was so hot, we would leave the doors open to get a breeze. But that meant bugs and things could also find their way into the house….including a big frog, numerous geckos, micro-ants, mosquitoes, beetles and a scorpion. 

  

Our 14-month-old alerted us to the scorpion. She started screaming at Luke and pointing at his shorts. He looks down and sees the scorpion crawling from the back of his shorts to the front. Ack! He knocked it on the ground and managed to scoop it up and get it out of the house. That was quite a scare. 

We also found a tarantula just outside our front door. Yuck.  

The micro-ants were annoying. Feel something crawling on you? You’re not imagining it. Leave food sitting out for two minutes? Covered in ants. 

Though we hadn’t planned on it, we wound up putting Devon into a local daycare five mornings a week. I probably would have gone crazy trying to entertain him if we hadn’t done that. At daycare, he had kids to play with, things to do, and…he was learning Spanish. Yay!  

We went to the beach a lot. That was one of the main reasons we were there….to enjoy the beach. My husband grew up in Huntington Beach (CA) and comes from a surfing family. He was so excited to get in as much surfing as possible while there. It turns out Playa Grande, about 15 minutes from the house we were staying in, is an awesome surf spot. Luke surfed a lot while I played with the kids on the beach. Playa Grande has a strong current, so I had to be on high alert to keep the kids from drowning. 14-month-old Aria had no fear of the water. She would run straight into the waves. I had to let her fall and get her head under water to give her a little bit of healthy fear/respect for the ocean. 

  

  

  

One day at the beach, we locked the keys in the car. We decided to leave the bag of towels in the car and later realized that we had also put the keys (and wallet and phone) in that bag. Thankfully, the police came by plus several other helpful people and we eventually got one of the windows down to get inside. 

The days we didn’t go to the beach, there wasn’t much to do. This was challenging for me, as I am a “type-A” personality. I love to check things off a to-do list. I tend to get antsy without something to do. My need to accomplish something drove me to finally start blogging. My hubby had been encouraging me for months to start a blog, so I finally did.

The sunsets were breathtaking! We took a ridiculous amount of sunset photos. 

  

  

We had monkeys literally in our backyard. We saw monkeys at and near our house numerous times. Here’s a video of them, including Aria talking to them:

We really enjoyed the tropical fruit—papayas, guavas, pineapples, mangos, rambutans. We also ate our fill of just-caught fish from our neighbor, a spear fisherman.  

  

There was a ritzy grocery store in the touristy area. It was much more like a US grocery store than the local places I was shopping at. Lots of imported products with very high prices. For example, Breyers ice cream for $9 and a small jug of pure maple syrup for $32! So if you really REALLY wanted something, you could get it. We mostly tried to eat like locals, though. I learned how to make ceviche, pico de gallo, and gallo pinto (red beans and rice). 

I loved, loved, loved our time in Costa Rica. What an adventure! But by the end of ten weeks, I was definitely ready to come home. I look forward to another big trip like this someday, hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we have been doing lots of road trips.  

Thanks for reading my story! 

P.S. Please forgive the quality of the photos. They were shot with a point-and-shoot camera and I didn't know what I was doing at the time :) (Luke took the ones of me at the beach.)

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Corinne Stokes