Van Rheenen - Moon Living Abroad Costa Rica

beach town abundance on the Caribbean Coast

Talking politics with taxi and Uber drivers.

Learning Costa Rican slang, like chunche, tuanis, and mae (thingy, cool, and dude).

Waiters and shop girls calling me mi amor (my love) or mi reina (my queen).

In small towns, women carrying umbrellas against the tropical sun.

Its okay if you have a dayor a weekwhere you dont get much done.

Erupting volcanoes, bubbling hot springs, and the occasional earthquake all remind you that the earth is still a work in progress.

Youll never catch this country declaring war; it has no army.

At an outdoor caf in San Jos, the capital of Costa Rica, a tourist is talking about his travel plans. I want to get out of the city, he says. See the rest of the island.

A few hours north, in the town of La Fortuna, another visitor walks into a tour agency within sight of perfectly conical Arenal Volcano. What I need to know, she says, is when they turn the volcano on.

For all its popularity, Costa Rica draws many people who have a somewhat distorted view of the country. You probably already know that despite lucking out with a disproportionate amount of coastline for such a small nation, Costa Rica is not an island. And if youve picked up this book, chances are you want to know more.

Much of what youve heard is true. Costa Rica is the most stable and peaceful nation in Central America. It abolished its army in 1949; when Lyndon Johnson visited in 1968, the Costa Ricans had to borrow a cannon from Panama so they could give him the customary 21-gun salute. The countrys national health care system covers almost all of its citizens, and the quality of care at private clinics is so good that medical tourists flock here for treatment they cant afford back home. A world model for green development, it protects 25 percent of its territory in parks and aims for total carbon neutrality by 2021.

In 2010, this country of 4.5 million inhabitants chose its first female president. Shortly after Laura Chinchilla was elected, she asked, Who gets to decide if a country is developing or developed? Who indeed? For Costa Rica is more developedin ecological efforts, pacifism, medical care for all, and gender equity in politicsthan many supposedly more-developed countries.