Costa Rica expat living will change you.
It will change your perspective on things. Well, I guess if you come here with a hard-wired attitude of American-style accumulation, the change might seep in more slowly. But, if you stick it out for awhile, oh it’ll seep in, eventually.
You see, Costa Rica brings out the bohemian in us expats.
What does that mean, you ask?
Let me put it this way, let’s say you opt to live anywhere along the coast…and many expats gravitate towards one of Costa Rica’s gorgeous coastlines. Take the Southern Pacific, for instance, in a popular beach community like Playa Dominical.
It won’t take you long to realize that to fit into the expat community there, you might need to change your appearance a bit…no matter your age. You might find yourself doing things you never would’ve even remotely considered back in the button-downed north…like get a tattoo, or two…visible ones…or grow your hair out into one of those middle-aged-man pony tails…or, god forbid, opt for a few piercings.
You’ll certainly want to attend Costa Rica’s version of “burning man”, called the Envision festival. There you might partake in a mind-altering/expanding drug and dance the night away around a bonfire, like some prehistoric savage.
You’ll probably decide to eat organic. You’ll donate time to save the beaches, or the whales, or the turtles, or the jungle, or something you would’ve considered a bleeding heart liberal waste of time as you struggled up north to grab for yourself as large a share of the “american dream” as you could muster.
You’ll get into yoga, meditate and chant your ohms. You’ll shun commercialism and take up some form of art using recycled materials. You’ll put solar panels on your roof and maybe even install wind or water power, because you now suddenly realize that global warming is real and you must take immediate action to save the planet.
If you continue voting and paying taxes in your country of origin, you’ll certainly do so driven by a more liberal ideology than the one you arrived with.
You’ll become multicultural, as you try to blend in with the locals. You’ll decided that the type of fútbol the rest of the world plays isn’t so strange after all.
You’ll struggle to learn Spanish, even though back home you might have muttered under your breath that those Mexicans should learn to speak American.
And how do I know all this?
Because it happened to me and I’ve witnessed the same phenomenon in many others.
Don’t be surprised when you go back home to visit that friends and family notice something strange about you.
Because, you are strange.
Like I said, Costa Rica brings out the bohemian…
and now you’re one of “us.”
Leave a Reply