The Precariate: Welcome to Costa Rica

I arrived in Costa Rica yesterday, and was met at the aeropuerto by Cesar, the youngest son of my friend´s extended Tico family. We went to lunch with his friend Marco and then to his Dona Francisca´s house, which sits across a tiny bridge over a river at the end of the street where 3 of her brothers and sisters live with their families. There we met Karolina and Santi, and various uncles, cousins & aunts, and ate thick handmade tortillas made of fresh corn and served with salty cheese and a rich sour cream.

The beautiful Iglesia San Blas in Nicoya, built in 1522

a house in Nicoya

Nicoya is s a charming little town, very picturesque, with tiny wood and stucco houses sloping side by side along the streets, painted all the colors of the caribbean rainbow: turquoise, orange, green, yellow, and surrounded by trees and flowers of every description. Besides the houses the town is thick with cinderblock schools, clinics and vendors of every thing imaginable: carniceria, panaderia, ropas, almenas, frutas y verduras, repuestos. Everything seems to be either public or a small business; the largest private entity so far is a CocaCola bottling plant, surrounded by barbed wire.

Today Cesar has to study (he´s in law school) and everyone else is at work, so I borrowed the car and came to Samara to see what I could see. I love driving alone through unfamiliar countryside, and I stop often to take pictures. The scenery reminds me alternately of Hawaii and Laos -- it´s lush and green, and the houses are built to let the cooling breezes through while keeping the daily rain off. I stopped for lunch at a little roadside restaurant atop a gorgeous green gorge, with a waterfall visible across the gorge and green parrots flying beneath me. I sat outside even though it was drizzling ever so lightly, and the couple inside laughed at me but it was so beautiful out on the balcony, and then the drizzle stopped anyway.

Now I´m in Playa Samara, a surfing town on the Pacific Coast, about an hour´s drive south of where I´m staying in Nicoya. Samara sits at the end of a wide bay rimmed by tropical jungle, with a small island offshore. The waves are small but constant, which makes it a perfect place for the dozen or so young gringas learning to surf. The water temperature is perfect: warm yet refreshing. For some reason I came without my bathing suit, so I walk into the waves up to my hips in my cotton dress.

Now I´m in an internet cafe attached to a surfers hotel, where young men with astoundingly well-defined hips and torsos keep passing the window. A young Israeli woman in a pink dress sits at the next terminal, reading news from home.