By David Leija BearWhen I was in high school I read somewhere that Costa Rica was the greenest country in the world. This always peaked my curiosity as I was a bit doubtful and wanted to see it for myself. Then, when I graduated from college, my friend and I were making moves in hopes of moving to Costa Rica for a year. Everything was going according to plan until I got into some trouble. At that moment, I had to stop dreaming and ‘tighten my belt’ as we say in Spanish and get a ‘real’ job. Needless to say, the dream was deferred and I got back on my grind. Fast-forward several years later, and we finally made it. We arrived in beautiful Costa Rica. I never dreamed however, that I would get there by way of land driving 5,000+ miles to get there.
As you can imagine, I shed a proverbial li’l thug tear on arrival .We were greeted by the warmest, happiest, low-key cutest elderly couple you’ve ever seen. The warmth gleamed from them. I wanted to adopt them as my Costa Rican grandparents. After showering and conversing over some traditional Gallo Pinto, I realized that I didn't recognize their accent. This led to the realization that I’ve only ever met two Costa Ricans, or Ticos in my life, and only one of them was actually from Costa Rica. Five days in the greenest country in the world is all it took to find out why I didn’t know any Costa Ricans, which is to say, why they seemingly never leave the motherland. *** Driving up to the house, I eyeballed the courtyard of the place we were set to stay. I knew that our monster-truck van wasn’t going to fit. Then the front neighbor came out, measured the van and offered to let us park it in his garage. When I say measured, I mean, it literally fit down to the quarter-inch; it took us about half an hour to get it in there. Once we settled in, Mrs. Barrantes, our host, walked in casually with one of the neighbor’s six-month old baby and said that the baby wanted to chill with us. The sense of community was really strong. It gave me hope to see how well all of the neighbors knew each other and got along. We slept just as I imagine that baby slept that night since the night before we had stayed in the van somewhere in the sweltering heat of the Nicaraguan Pacific coast and woke up in pools of our own sweat. I’ll never forget the sound of my cousin waking up in the middle of the night sounding like Marlon Brando in The Godfather because he couldn’t breathe, talking about, “I can’t handle this...”. The next couple of days were spent just talking to people from the community and getting to know the capital. People in Latin America are generally friendly and warm but in Costa Rica, there is just a little something extra. Maybe it was the community we were in, but I definitely felt a genuine air of kindness when speaking to people. What impressed me most was that everyone was ripe with pride to be a Tico in a sense that was as far away from arrogance as possible; I think that this stems from true happiness as Costa Rica was ranked as the best performing country in the New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index. Yes, Costa Rica has been recognized as the happiest place on the planet… twice. The next thing that stands out about Costa rica is that it was the first sovereign nation to abolish its standing army and is still one of few in the world to have done this. While all of this might sound like some type of utopian dream, like any other country, it still has its own problems; you’ve still got to use common sense and street smarts, AKA, don’t go talking up a storm while face-timing your boo in the middle of downtown San José at night. It’s just a bad beat. Now, if you get away from the city that is another story. This country has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world that you can visit and be home in time to watch Sabado Gigante reruns (r.i.p.). As we were driving from Nicaragua to San José, we passed up some beautiful sounding places that due to time constraints we didn’t get to visit initially. One of these places was, Punta Arenas… it just sounded like pure beach bliss in Costa Rica, so on our last day, we finally were able to make a trip to it. When we got there we realized that we'd messed up. With an abundance of beautiful beaches, I mean, literally every freakin’ beach that you go to is its own little paradise and we landed on the forgotten step-child of a beach. We cruised the area for a bit optimistically looking for a good place to kick it but never found it. We continued to another bunk beach in the area with the same luck until we finally bit the bullet and went to the further beach area where the gringos go. It was amazing, even with the gringos...(kidding). We went on a Tuesday and there was hardly anyone there. We literally drove the van onto the sand and kicked back, relaxed, until the sun set on the horizon. It was so amazing that we decided that we had to stay another day and purely visit beaches; we beach hopped for the next two days and each beach was somehow more amazing than the last. Aside from the beautiful people, paradisaical beaches and perfect weather, arriving to Costa Rica for me represented something bigger. Much more than just visiting the greenest place on earth, it was a testament for the bigger things that are to come in our lives. I’m always trying to run before I walk. Whether it be with music, language and who knows, probably love too. Todo a su debido tiempo -everything in due time. I wanted to go to Costa Rica as a fresh graduate, but where might that have gotten me? I might have missed my calling. I thought that when I got in trouble I had closed the door for myself, but I think it was just a sign from above. It was a lesson that I needed to learn, in a time that I needed to learn it. Having that dream deferred was the best thing that ever happened to me because during that time, I learned more than I could have ever imagined. I found my career and true calling that thankfully, was also my passion. So for those of you out there that have had your dream deferred, don’t be discouraged. Know that there is something greater in store... it might just be too big for you in that moment. Always keep the dream alive but hopefully you won’t have to drive 5,000 miles to achieve it. -David |
DavidMuchacho simpatico EdgarEdgar is Christian. He loves soccer, traveling, and meeting new people. Archives
July 2016
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