The Conscious Traveler: Costa Rica
Costa Rica — the place every tourist1/ vacationer2 wants to go to and every traveler3/ backpacker4wants to get away from. In my travels, besides expats5 and Americans that are going on vacation, I have only met one couple of backpackers who actually enjoyed their time in Costa Rica and it was because of how proud they were to only spend five hundred dollars in the five months of being there. That feat in itself is remarkable, but to do that while also being in the most expensive country in Central America besides ,maybe, Belize, is almost impossible. That is the main reason why travelers who are out for extensive amounts of time with no income dodge this country. That and from what many other people have told me, they feel as if the country itself has become too commercialized and Americanized. Yet, on the contrary, I feel a lot of the travelers who are not even giving Costa Rica a chance are missing out on some of the best experiences Central America has to offer.
Johanna, the motorcyclist?
The Costa Rican people are warm, inviting and very sociable. From the time I arrived at my stay the woman who cleaned the rooms ,Johanna, treated me and my dog with such grace and we to her. She worked in her friend's network of boarding houses, keeping them clean and never had a chance to rest. On my first day there she had gotten into a motorcycle accident so I wrapped and bandaged up her wrist that had gotten a severe sprain. She was not allowed to take any time off from working for this “friend” so she couldn’t go to the doctor. I am no doctor of course, but I have been wrapping sprained wrists my whole life and wrapping hands for years two times a day five days a week for Muay Thai, of course this is a different style of wrapping. Within a week of being there she had crashed her motorcycle spraining her other wrist and swelling her knee. It was hard to see someone so sweet go through motorcycle crash after motorcycle crash, but she was relatively okay so in some ways a bit comical. She had once offered to take me somewhere on her motorcycle, but I, in some ways cherish my life a bit, so I had to decline. She had a name for me “ James, ojos lindo” which is more of a title than a nick-name.
An illustration Johanna made of me on the wall of where I stayed in San Jose
Eat Everything
One of the things that any traveler or tourist should do is try out the local street food and cuisine. I have met some people that are opposed to doing so because they are afraid of getting “consuela's revenge”. I would have to say a small bit of stomach bug or virus ,and maybe the occasional one that will put you down for a week or,is worth it when you get to try new things that you wouldn’t be able to get while at home. Even for the more common foods such as empanadas. There is something about eating them on the streets of a different country, in the middle of the day or night, that feels different than eating them frozen out of the freezer aisle in a ShopRite.
San Jose
San Jose, the place where I spent a good amount of my time, is from my experience an underrated city. I think all the bad things travelers I met in Nicaragua had to say about Costa Rica turned me off from what San Jose had to offer, but I apologize San Jose, I was not familiar with your game. From the museums to the nightlife, San Jose is absolutely amongst one of the better capitol cities in Central America. Another friend I had made while there, LuLu, showed me around to a couple of places for her favorite late night meal and also one of the places she likes to go to dance. One thing the other travelers did get right though is the fact that things there are very Americanized even more so than the other countries in the region. In San Jose the nightlife is still very Costa Rican, but the American influence is definitely there. It’s like the saying, if the US coughs the rest of the world gets sick. Meaning, whatever the US does, is hurt by, or even deems “cool”, the rest of the world, especially Central America and the Caribbean are affected by it. If that be some sort of cultural exchange or influence, or foreign policy that affects countries in these regions negatively or positively, the U.S. has a say in almost all of it.
Costa Rica’s Game-plan on Combating Climate Change
Recently, if you have been keeping up with environmental news, you would have seen that Costa Rica has been the face of Environmental Protection and Sustainability. In the 80s Costa Rica had lost nearly half of their forest land and had faced one of the worst deforestation rates in history, but within a decade of that happening, they were already in the process of slowing down and eventually reversing deforestation. How did they do this? They created a paid incentive to the indigenous communities to take care of and preserve the nature within their communities.by 2021 sixty percent of the deforested area has returned. They have also been able to turn this into a viable sector of the tourism industry there. Turtle hatcheries and animal & bird sanctuaries are two of the things most backpackers I have met who actually spent a considerable amount of time in Costa Rica spent their time doing. This craft of doing the right thing from an environmental standpoint while getting the travelers from your tourism economy to do it for you is what has made this ploy successful in the economic sense. I am aware that other countries in the region of Central America do this as well, but not as efficiently and not at the scale Costa Rica does it at. I think that many other countries all over the globe can learn something from Costa Rica in this regard. But, wait is this a direct sign of capitalism leading to the betterment of nature and ecosystems. Yes it is, but capitalism was the thing that lead to the deforestation in the first place and it should be noted that it’s also do to the capitalist nature of tourism that these lands have not been returned to the native populations, although they are directly the ones that have combated the deforestation in the first place. It’s almost like capitalism is nothing more than a social economic system that people in power use to do what they want with it, like any other system. A topic for another day. Are the Costa Rican People onto Something?
The Different Types of Traveler and how They Interact
I want to revisit earlier when I talked about friends. Making friends and getting to know people while traveling is crucial to really understanding where you are. Knowing the people around you can teach you things that no tour guide or pamphlet can. Many people can go on vacation without interacting with people or making friends outside of transactional acquaintances. Many travelers can set out on months-long itineraries, only hanging out with people they meet from their own country, other travelers, or pretty much no one at all. What did they gain from this experience? History? Locations of certain landmarks? Maybe, local cuisines at best? I say, if they were to make one friend in the area or get to know the locals a bit more, I think they could learn and enjoy a lot more of what that place has to offer.
I completely understand the travelers I have met, reasons for skipping out on Costa Rica. A week's worth of travel in Costa Rica can last three to four times as much in Nicaragua. That money can go a long way in Panama as well, but you don’t hear too many stories about travel in Panama for some odd reason, but that is a story for when I highlight my time there. There is also the idea that Costa Rica, more so than the other Spanish speaking countries in Central America, is the most Americanized and if there is anything a European backpacker loves, it’s shitting on anything American. So anything associated with the U.S. would turn them away. From my experience this tracks well, though. Most Americans I know who vacation (rarely do Americans backpack) have gone or plan to go to specificity Costa Rica out of all the other countries in Central America. The main reason being that I can think of is that out of all the countries in Central America, besides maybe El Salvador recently, Costa Rica is the only one that national security departments in the U.S. deem as safe to travel to.
The alleged safety of Costa Rica, the publicity of being so safe that they don’t need a military and the influx of US corporations has created a playground for most Americans, similarly to Belize. Now although Costa Rica is expensive compared to other Spanish speaking countries in the region, Belize may still have it beat in that regard. There is no mistake or coincidence that these two countries are very Americanized in their own ways. The injection of the US dollar at this magnitude allows for these economies to thrive all while being slightly cheaper or half the price of what it would have been for the American back home. I talked a lot about American vacationers in this article, but rest assured there are high levels of expats there as well. In Costa Rica it is a blend of the older American expat that is visible in Belize, but also this younger expat that I am seeing here in Panama City, Panama, while I type this. This is an archetype I have not talked about often. This is the young globalist, capitalist, economist, or what have you, who is there to work for his gains. If this be in crypto farming, imports/ exports, or any other form of business they deem lucrative enough to have moved to a new country. This can also be the employee at a company who has an open international position and the employee takes advantage of it. This is not to get confused with the older expat who has gone to these countries to get more OUT of their dollar. These younger expats are there to gain MORE dollars.
I find these younger expats to be more ethical than their older counterparts. Of course I have a bias towards a handful of them because I have become friends with a couple of them, but in a way I feel that there is something better about someone working for a business that makes it necessary to live in a foreign country and you get paid in your native currency. I think being able to use your stronger currency to spend in the local economy is a good thing. I know, a complete one eighty from what I normally say about expats, especially older retired expats or families. Like I said, I have a bias towards them. Some of them are my friends and I don’t want to make them cry, at least not in this article. On the other hand it would be much more ethical for these businesses to give the opportunity to someone who is native to that country and pay them in the currency that is stronger.
The illusion of Safety is Silly Sometimes
In my article about Honduras I talked about a friend LuLu who lives in an apartment complex where the security guards have guns that shoot blanks. On one hand it’s alarming, on the other it is a Marx brothers bit. The cat got out of the bag when a group of thieves came to steal material from a construction site in the complex. While these thieves were — well, thieving, the guards proceeded to shoot at them. The only thing is the thieves had real guns which got the guards into a bit of trouble.
My Boom Boom Boom, against their Pap Pap Pap.
-Kool G Rap, Ghetto Knows
Luckily the bandits where only after the materials and no one was actually hurt during the caper.
Leaving Costa Rica
While leaving Costa Rica I had one of my most surreal travel experiences. I left San Jose on my way to the border town of Sixaola. It was a typical all day travel situation me and my dog go through. When I got to the border it was around midnight and it was time to find a hotel to stay in, but in this town there was not a single place to stay. Hotel owners do this thing in a lot of Latin America where they just close up with no staff in the hotel till the next day. So me and my dog were forced to sleep on the ground at the border station, but of course it started to rain. Luckily enough we were able to find shelter there and wait till morning to cross over to Panama. That month I often found myself homeless for one reason or another. That is a story for my Panama piece I plan to write in the next few weeks though.
What is Coming Next
Sorry for the long delay in writing. I had a few things that held me back and I had to attend to these past few weeks. Next post will be apart of the Throwaway series and will be about what Gil Scott Heron meant when he said “ the revolution will not be televised” and the moment in my life when it clicked for me what he meant and how I was able to see that within myself when it comes to radical thought, CRT, or leftism.
Tourist- A person who travels to see attractions and go on excursions not necessarily ever interested in interacting with the local population outside of the service industry.
Vacationer- A person who goes into a place for a short period of time, often in a resort, whose sole purpose is to lounge around and relax. This person is not necessarily interested in anything besides the comfort aspect of travel.
Traveler- Someone who goes into a place for a period of time. This person shies away from resorts and tourist attractions.
Backpacker- This is a type of traveler oftentimes having multiple places on their list that they want to go to over a period of time. This person may possibly choose routes and modes of transportation foreign to people who are not backpackers.
Expat- Someone who has moved to a foreign country to take advantage of said countries, economic climate, weather, way of life, etc.