You’ve done it. You successfully left behind the traditional life that you were most likely going to live. Instead of getting the job, signing up for the mortgage, and settling into your old neighborhood, you’ve upset your whole family and moved to Costa Rica. That’s for sure the hardest part. But expat life, like most things, comes in levels.
Moving to Costa Rica is level one, but as you strive to make a life for yourself in Ticolandia, you’re going to have to climb to higher stages. While I’m sure different folks mark their ascension through different metrics, these are a few of the badges of honor my family and I have accomplished/lived through during our 12+ years of tropical living.
Scorpion Sting
This is an easy one. You don’t even have to try, it just happens. Every member of my family has been stung more than once. I spend most of my time slashing through the underbrush, so I’m obviously just begging for it. My wife, on the other hand, has only been stung while inside the house. Both of my boys have been stung multiple times.
My youngest has a knack for getting tiny ones inside of his shirt and thus getting numerous stings at once. I just asked the older son about his scorpion run-ins, and he relayed a really long story about getting stung in his trampoline. I feel like you haven’t really lived in Costa Rica until you’ve been christened by a scorpion. Don’t worry, it’s not that bad.
Strange Disease/Physical Ailment
This is another badge that fits more into the ‘it happens to you’ category rather than the ‘earned’ category, but I feel like it’s still an integral part of the expat experience. Anybody can catch a cold or flu, but you aren’t experiencing the real ‘I live in an exotic place’ experience until you’ve come down with something you hadn’t previously heard of.
I was only in Costa Rica a year before an afternoon when my heart started racing, my breathing got weird, and my body started turning red. After a shot in the butt from the pharmacist, I learned that I had eaten bad fish at the local soda and had a case of scombroid fish poisoning. Who even knew that was a thing?
This badge is even easier to earn once you have kids, they find numerous exotic maladies to scare you with. When my older son was just 18 months, he was lying sick on the couch. When he tried to get up, it turned out that he couldn’t walk. After a fairly terrifying trip to the clinic, we found out he was having a rare reaction to a virus called myositis that impedes one’s ability to walk.
Thankfully, he fully recovered, and we thought we had a story, but at least we’d never have to deal with that again. Then, several years later, the same thing happened to my younger son!
A Tico Compliments your Spanish
This badge of honor is for sure earned. Learning Spanish is an extremely important part of long-term living in Costa Rica. I’m sure it’s possible to get by without it, but if Costa Rica is really going to become your home, you really need to attempt to learn Spanish. The only problem is, for most of us, it’s tremendously difficult.
There are different ways to go about it, but I chose a combination of private classes, apps, books, and forcing myself into situations where I simply had to try to converse in Spanish. It’s a slog, but I can tell you, if you stick with it, there will come a glorious day when a Tico says something like ‘Where are you from? Your Spanish is good. You’re practically Tico.’ This will swell your little heart with pride and make all of your second language learning efforts worthwhile.
These are just a few of the expat badges one can earn while living in Costa Rica but the list goes on. There’s also the becoming a permanent resident badge, the only gringo at a Tico event badge, and oh my goodness I actually successfully completed every item on my list of errands badge. Which badges have you earned?
About the Author
Vincent Losasso, founder of Guanacaste Wildlife Monitoring, is a biologist who works with camera traps throughout Costa Rica. Learn more about his projects on facebook or instagram. You can also email him at: vincent@guanacastewildlifemonitoring.com
