We’ve been here for almost a week now and here are the things we learned about living in paradise 🙂
- No sleeves and no pants. T-shirts are still too hot, we have to wear tank tops or muscle shirts to survive the day. Pants are also a big no no, except if you want to faint in the heat. Shorts only.
- NEVER ever leave food outside. Even if it’s in a bag. NEVER! Because you’re gonna get a new friend that you might not like… (Ex: When a monkey wakes you up at 3 am because it’s breaking one of your bowl, trying to get to the plantains (in a bag) that you left outside on the counter. It scared the HELL out of me! )
- Spiders are not that bad. Actually, spiders are our new friends. There’s some strange flying creatures here and when I see them in a spiders net, especially inside the house, all I want to do is high-five the spider!
- Even if you only have three legs, you can be the happiest dog ever. All you need is dog friends and an ocean. Here, dogs come and go whenever they want and I’ve never seen happier animals! They belong to someone, but they’re friends with everyone. All they want is someone to play with them in the waves. And ever those who got hit by a car and lost a leg can run as fast as their 4 legged friends.
- You don’t need a gym to stay in shape; an ocean can do that for you. We make sure to “work out” in the water every day, which doesn’t seem like a chore at all. Just being in the water does a lot for us, swimming and running against the waves is going to get us top shape!
- No rain: no waves. Depending on the weather, it’s better to surf or to snorkel. It does take a few days for the ocean to calm down, but we should be able to go snorkeling soon! (As soon as I get rid of my ear infection… Yeah -_-)
- Sunscreen. SUNSCREEN. All the time. 24/7. Even in the shade. Otherwise, you’re gonna end up like a lobster, I guarantee it.
- Try to avoid fruits and vegetables from the grocery store. Apparently, pesticides that have been banned for a long time in North America are still used here, so we try to get most of our fruits and veggies delivered from an organic farm. They taste much better too!
- Nothing happens on time in Costa Rica. If you want water delivered at 10am, it’s going to be here at 4pm. Same thing with the fruits & veggies. So be prepared and show up late too, why not!
- Coconuts are magical. The water and the skin inside have magic properties, according to locals. They make your inside so much healthier and cleaner. I have no problem believing that. I’d be living off coconuts just for that, but unfortunately, they are not as cheap as they appear. Even if half the trees here have coconuts in them, you can’t get to that magic stuff inside without a machete. If you don’t want to pay $1 every time, you have to invest in a really good knife. Or sharpen a rock, something like that. Depends if you want to do it modern times or caveman times. (Chris appears to like caveman times.)
- Sleeping in is a bad idea. The sun rises around 5am and goes down at 6pm. So if you want to sleep until 10am, you’re not going to be able to do much. It’s better to go to bed around 9pm (it’s so dark anyway) and wake up around 7am than to sleep in. You can go to the beach, go in town, spend time outside and feel like you had a real day!
- If there’s sun, spend as much time in it as you can, because you don’t know when it’s going to leave. We didn’t have any sun for the first three days we were here and now it’s been three days without any rain. I don’t feel like it’s going to stay like that for a long time though, because we happen to live in the rainforest…