Crypto Rica

It strikes me how much of my life happens to me, rather than occurring through a well-thought plan. My life took a major turn through a psychedelic accident. It then took another turn through a skiing accident, which led to a near-death experience. I called one of my books ‘an accidental ayahuasca adventure’, and I’ve also written ‘I went to Burning Man by accident’. What does this say about me, the accidental philosopher, simply reacting to life rather than aiming for a long-term goal?

In November 2020, I moved to Costa Rica by accident. Back then I did have a plan. The plan was to move out of London, where I felt bored and lonely. Getting out of London took three years and various failed escapes — I planned to move to India (too hot) then California (too expensive). Finally I moved to Bristol. Not too expensive and certainly not too hot.

I planned to put down roots and develop a better local community than I had found in London. I met a nice group of people, and started to look for a small house to buy. I eventually found a place and we were about to exchange contracts. I was due to move in on December 1st 2020.

Then the second wave of the pandemic happened. I was bouncing between friends’ spare rooms in Bristol and I thought, why not go abroad for a few weeks, and then come back and do quarantine in my new home.

I Googled ‘where is open in the world’. In November 2020, it wasn’t a long list — Namibia, Mexico, Bali, or Costa Rica. Why not Costa Rica? I booked a flight. The next day, the estate agent called me to say the house deal had fallen through. I wasn’t sad at all. I was excited. Maybe if I liked Costa Rica, I would want to stay there. A big mortgage would have just tied me down.

It was not easy to leave the UK. My flight departed the day before the British government introduced its second lockdown. Heathrow was like a scene from a zombie movie, I wore two masks while waiting to check in. And when I got to the front of check-in, I was asked if I had a US green card. For Costa Rica? ‘You need a green card to change flights in the US.’ Huh? I hadn’t realized that the US had blocked all European passengers from even changing flights in America. So that was that. No flight to Costa Rica.

I sat outside the terminal and wondered what to do. I could go back to Bristol, tail between my legs, and see out the winter. Or I could try and get another flight. Was it an absurd plan to travel during the peak of the pandemic? Would I end up stranded God knows where? I discussed with some friends, and they urged me to go for it. So that night, I rented a cheap hotel room in London, and booked another flight to Costa Rica, this one via Spain.

I returned to Heathrow the next day, and expected the mission to fail at every juncture. I expected the flight to Spain to be cancelled, but it wasn’t. I expected to be turned away from the second flight to Costa Rica, but I wasn’t. I expected some paper-work to be wrong, but they all seeemed to work. The flight was redirected, however, and we spent several hours on a runway in Panama. I seriously thought that was that, and asked an air hostess ‘we’re going back to London aren’t we?’ She looked at me like I was crazy. Finally, at 3am, we landed in San Jose.

I ended up staying in Costa Rica for five months, leaving at the end of March 2021. And it was the best trip. My friends and family in the UK were, alas, going through a really hard winter lockdown, that extended all the way to March. And I was in paradise.

Almost immediately, I thought, I should move here and live here. So in November 2021, I came back.

Costa Rica is a small country blessed with extraordinary natural beauty and wild life. It has tropical beaches on its Atlantic and Pacific coasts, with good surfing on both sides. It has rainforest with incredible biodiversity, and hills and mountains that are cool in the summer heat and filled with exotic birds.

It is world-renowned as a leader in environmental policies. By 1987, it had lost half its forests but it is the only country to have reversed deforestation. 28% of its land is protected as national parks and wildlife reserves. All its energy comes from renewables.

The country is a functioning upper-middle-income democracy, with no army. I’ve never seen a gun here. It does not have a problem with cartels. It’s fairly safe, certainly compared to central American neighbours. Its men are free of the machismo of most Latinos.

The people of Costa Rica are, according to global surveys, among the happiest in the world, and consistently the happiest in Latin America. They feel lucky to be Costa Rican. They have higher life expectancy than many western countries — the Nicoya peninsula is Latin America’s only ‘blue zone’, where inhabitants often live to 100.

And, for the visitor, Costa Rica is unusual among Latin American countries for its good customer service. It’s efficient. I couldn’t get a SIM card in four months in India. In Costa Rica it took me 20 minutes. The locals pride themselves on being friendly and helpful. You often hear them say ‘para sivirle’, or ‘it’s my pleasure to help’.

Many tourists come to Costa Rica drawn by its ecotourism, by the promise of being able to see beautiful wildlife in an environmentally responsible country. Or they’re drawn here by some of the many wellness centres, spiritual retreats and intentional communities that are popping up all over the country — Pachamama, Blue Spirit, Rythmia, Synergy, Soltara, Ocean’s Lodge, and so on….

Yet success brings its own problems. The country is now quite dependent on tourism, and was badly hit by the global lockdown. It has 40% youth unemployment now, and crime is creeping up. The state sector is bloated and corrupt. All the rich tourists have raised the cost of living, especially on the Pacific coast, and exacerbated inequality in the country.

Tourists, largely Americans, have basically colonized the Pacific coast. Very few houses on or near the coast are owned by locals. One beach resort, Tamarindo, has long been nick-named Tamagringo. It attracted a lot of COVID-denying Americans during the pandemic, and American bar-owners put up signs declaring they were a mask-free zone. That did not endear them to the locals.

Longer-term expats are complaining that the country is getting ruined by tourism and over-development (although they’re also making a fortune on Airbnb rentals). You can see the development happening at breakneck pace. In the sleepy surfer village where I’m staying, the government has just lifted a moratorium on building new houses, and new places are springing up by the day. Trees are being cut down, wildlife is retreating. Thousands of leatherback turtles used to come onto the beach to lay their eggs, but they’ve all gone now.

Last night, a new bar opened across the way from my apartment. It blared out cheesy trance music into the night. It was set up by foreign owners who have barely spent any time in this village. They told me they’re looking to cash in on the new trend of digital nomads. They’ve only just opened, and they’re already looking to buy several more hotels around Costa Rica.

My friend and I looked at the bar, banging out its house music, and I said ‘well that’s the beginning of the end for this place’. Which is absurd, because I hadn’t even heard of this place a year ago, and already I feel nostalgic and melancholic about it changing.

It’s even worse in Santa Teresa. That’s the resort down the coast, which is especially popular with entrepreneurs and digital nomads. Santa Teresa is a little village that’s been grotesquely overdeveloped by fast money. It still has one main dirt road, yet in the hills all around that one dirt road, there are luxury villas selling for millions of dollars. A new development has built 80 villas in the hills, each going for over a million, aimed at, yes, the ‘digital nomads’. It’s particularly popular with crypto investors. ‘Crypto Rica’, they call it.

You can now read articles like ‘top ten ayahuasca retreats in Costa Rica’. These retreats have nothing to do with Costa Rican life. The entire hippy scene is a western bubble. It’s drugs tourism. You also get a lot of sex tourism here. In Jaco, Costa Rica’s version of Miami, lonely American retirees come to spend their cash on fishing and escorts. The pharmacies have big window adverts for Viagra. One expat, discussing his reasons for living here on Facebook, said ‘at home I could only get 7s or 8s. Here I turn down 9s.’ Why does he think that is?

And is ecotourism really an oxymoron? Every ‘ecotourist’ has to fly here. They then get driven around in SUVs (Costa Rica doesn’t have a public transport system). They get taken off to ‘see the turtles’, but do you think the turtles want to be disturbed? The more tourists arrive, the more the coasts get developed and the more wildlife goes away.

Perhaps there are no good choices in late capitalism. But I have some friends who probably make better environmental choices than me, like my brother, who never flies, or a friend who lives in a houseboat, and devotes his time to planting trees, renewing river ways, and defending climate activists in court. He seems to me to be successfully meeting the challenge of our time.

Me? Not so much. And yet I don’t feel like a ‘digital nomad’. I’ve spent most of my time in Costa Rica in the same sleepy village, with a population of 1000 or so. I’ve never lived somewhere so small, where everyone knows everyone else’s business so intimately. It does feel like a community. My life ambitions have narrowed to trying to get a bit better at surfing every day. And every evening I walk on the beach as the sun sets, and feel a deep sense of ‘bien estar’.

I don’t know how long I will stay. Apparently, around half of people who move here leave after two years. But right now, I feel very grateful for being here. And I’d appreciate if you didn’t come too.