All this use of pura vida makes me kind of twitchy.
About 12 years ago I was a partner in a retreat center in coasta rica, had plans to move there full time and everything.
It turned into a learning experience.
The kind were possibly lucky to survive. I learned a lot about partnership, honesty, integrity and good judgement. The hard way. I’m no longer involved with those partners.
CR isn’t just chill and wonderful locals and surfing, it’s also frequent gunfire in the jungles, smugglers, drug runners and bandits beating holes in the walls of your house with machetes if they’re not directly attacking you walking home from market.
There was also our carpenter Jose and his incredible good humor and his wife’s gifts of blocks of rough chocolate wrapped in banana leaves, and the sound of the jungle birds at night.
So much wonderful and a lot of Wild West too.
The was the wild side mind you, the east side called the reggae coast. Not where the fancy gringo retreat centers are.
People say it’s changed and puerto viejo isn’t so dangerous anymore, but every time I hear pura vida my mind alternates between cutting fresh bananas from the trees in the yard, and the smell of my own rancid sweat laying in bed at night listening to the gunshots get closer wondering what’s next.
