I love my life in Costa Rica, so it is more than a little ironic that I also once hit my own personal rock bottom here. Within four years of arriving, my then-wife and I had two children, bought a property, built a cabina, and divorced. I was torn between the need to return to the US for work and the temptation of being a beach bum in 1995 Costa Rica.
I found some cabinas in the mountains in need of a caretaker and lived there for a couple of months. Rainy season had begun, and a well-meaning friend visited one evening and left me a large bottle of orange juice, spiked with mushrooms that had been picked from local cow patties and carefully brewed into tea before being mixed with the OJ.
I remember a night—or five—standing outside in the moonlight, flying through the stratosphere, eyes full of tears, in awe of the endlessness of the universe. Out there in the blinking night sky, I felt at one with everything, forgiving anyone who had ever slighted me and hoping all I had slighted would accept my cosmic apology.
The owner of the cabinas returned, and I made my way down the mountain to the beach. I passed the next few weeks in a haze of ganja and Pilsen, sleeping on hammocks, couches, floors— even the sand of the beach on a few occasions. A friend had a cheap plane ticket back to the States for me. One hundred bucks to Florida.
The ticket was in his name, but he wasn’t returning north. This wasn’t uncommon then. Pre-9/11, airlines didn’t refuse you for showing a ticket with a different name from your passport. The print edition of the Tico Times would typically have a column in the classifieds for people selling unused return tickets at discount prices.
With a few more weeks to kill until my flight, I went into overdrive. At one point, I awoke in a bed in a cheap hotel in Pérez Zeledón, the kind that featured rooms divided by flimsy wood partitions that didn’t reach the roof.
A couple was having sex in the room next to mine, and it was like they were right there with me. With no idea where I was and no memory of how I had gotten there, I had to go outside in the middle of the night and look at the hotel sign to orient myself as to exactly where I was in the city.
The next morning, I washed off in the cold water of the shower, which was nothing more than a metal pipe protruding from a cement wall. There was no soap. There was no towel either, so I dried off with the bedsheet. That morning, I drank about a gallon of coffee and decided to go straight for a while.
I spent my last week in San José, passing most of the day wandering downtown, reading, people-watching, and clearing my head. The biggest protest I had ever witnessed was in full swing.
The national teachers union had taken to the streets in opposition to proposed changes to their pension plan. Avenida Central overflowed with striking teachers—thousands upon thousands—stretching for kilometers.
This was my last sight before boarding the plane that took me back to the States for six months of work.
Compared to other stories I’ve read, my fall was relatively tame. No jail time, no embarrassing sexual situations, no addictions. Pura vida. There may be better places than Costa Rica to have been temporarily down and out, but not in my experience.
