Where the Roads Have No Names, Only Reputations
We stopped to ask for help more than once and were given arm-waving directions in Spanish with references like “go past the mango tree, then two houses down from where Tito’s uncle used to live.” Super helpful if you knew Tito. We did not.
The first 48 hours in Costa Rica: I awoke at sunrise. I always do. Usually, a few birds chattering like caffeinated middle managers kick off the day. But that morning, my thoughts were racing—ten madmen circling one folding chair, each of them me.
There would be no boredom for the next few months.
I was in Liberia, Costa Rica. Not Liberia-the-country (although that would be a plot twist) but the city near the airport. My son was in Costa Rica on a property hunting mission for his permaculture school and I was there tagging along for fun along with two of his friends.
We had arrived late the night before and landed in a modest motel run by a New Jersey family who’d transplanted themselves decades ago and never looked back. Their accents were unmistakably Jersey East Coast, but their lifestyle was Pura Vida. They managed three or four motels, all a little worn, all clean, all cheerful in a slightly patched-up kind of way.
Our first night, we gathered in Steve’s room to celebrate our arrival. Landon brought rum. I found glasses in the bathroom. Steve was hunched over his laptop searching maps to find the stats on Los Pargos, our destination for the first part of the adventure. Josh played guitar. We all sang. It was the kind of moment that you knew was the start of something big.
My room surprised me—it was clean, cool, and mostly bug-free except for a few water flies in the bathroom that had died a poetic, speckled death across the tile. The polyester curtains were knotted in the middle to pull them off the floor (as they always are in Costa Rica), and the smell of humid dawn drifted in from the air unit above the bed. I could feel my toes. I felt real.
We woke early—no hangovers, just high expectations and half-baked plans. Steve and I went to get the rental car. Josh and Landon chatted with the motel patriarch who told stories about moving from Jersey and buying land before the boom, back when the biggest worry was termites, not tech bros.
The drive to Playa Negra should have taken two hours. It took five.
No GPS. No signs. Just vague caretaker instructions and the phrase “turn left at the soccer field,” which—if you’ve ever driven in Costa Rica—you know is like saying “turn left at the tree.” Every town has a soccer field, and every road is a suggestion.
Roads didn’t have names, only reputations. We hit potholes deep enough to register as small sinkholes and dodged cows, dogs, iguanas, motorcycles, and children with better reflexes than we had. We stopped to ask for help more than once and were given arm-waving directions in Spanish with references like “go past the mango tree, then two houses down from where Tito’s uncle used to live.” Super helpful if you knew Tito. We did not.
Finally, we found Caramar—a faded sign marked the entrance to a development that looked... abandoned-adjacent. Parts of it were unfinished but among the ones in disrepair were beautiful luxury homes. A rusting gate. A guard who didn’t have a key to anything. The whole place gave off strong “real estate ghost town” vibes.
After a few phone calls and one wrong house, we spotted her—the caretaker—standing like a lighthouse keeper in front of a blue metal gate, drenched in the soft tropical rain.
We’d made it. The house wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even finished in some places. But it was steps to the beach at Playa Negra, known worldwide for its surf break. And at that moment, it didn’t matter that the toilet wobbled or that the kitchen tile was the color of wet Band-Aids or that there were bugs to be discovered (many of them and all perfectly normal living companions for this part of the world).
That moment was the beginning of everything. A new adventure. A different kind of life. I didn’t know yet what would happen over the next few months and years, or how deeply Costa Rica would etch itself into my bones.
But I did know this:
I would never again trust a road described as “the main one.”
And I would always, always check for bugs before showering. Or putting on clothes. Or shoes. Or, well, before doing anything.
