This is not the only reason, mind you, that Costa Rica can be a challenge to food lovers. For the first couple of years, we crammed our luggage with the necessities of food-obsessed Americans traveling to the tropics: enormous frozen pork chops and rib-eye steaks, luscious stinky cheeses from France and Spain and Italy needing only a day or two to achieve perfect ripeness, bottles of aggressive red wines and delicate whites carefully swathed in bubble wrap.
But with each visit, the percentage of our bags devoted to such provisions has dwindled as we have adapted to cooking with the abundant local fruits, roots, and seafood. This transformation began the day we came to the aid of two fishermen as they struggled to drag ashore one of the small wooden fishing boats called pangas. They insisted on giving us one of the snappers they had caught; we insisted on buying a second at three times the asking price. An hour later we had a deliriously good supper, the fish grilled over driftwood on the beach, squirted with lime, and accompanied by a spicy papaya salsa.
After that we began to settle into a regular dinnertime routine. In the hot air, after hours at the beach or on the road, what we really wanted was whatever fish was available, simply grilled and accompanied by a classic Costa Rican cabbage salad; the Tico version of rice and beans, known as gallo pinto; perhaps a side of boiled yuca; and a couple of beers. Anything much more than that felt heavy and somehow alien, out of sync with our surroundings.
We were also able to leave behind most of our Euro-American ingredients because of changes in the local restaurant scene. When we first came to the country, restaurants basically fell into two camps. One served typical Costa Rican food, usually the platter called casado (“married man”) because it is what married men are said to have for lunch every day: rice and beans, fried plantains, a thin pork chop or piece of steak, and chopped cabbage. Satisfying, yes, but not what you go out to dinner for.
We preferred this, however, to the second option—white-tablecloth dining rooms specializing in the dreaded “Continental cuisine.” At one expensive restaurant uniformly raved about in guidebooks, for example, the harsh, tinny canned lobster bisque I had as an appetizer reappeared in the next course as the sauce on an overboiled seafood platter. I’m not exaggerating.
But the situation is improving. Within a few miles of our little plot of land, there are now restaurants serving up not only beautifully prepared seafood but also elegant crisp-crusted pizza, imaginative vegetarian dishes, even high-end, high-flavor Italian. Desserts still lag behind, but after dinner you can wander down to the ocean, perch on fishing boats, and watch the moon make tracks on the waves.
As the years have gone by, our foolish notion of buying land in paradise has come to seem more like a moment of enlightenment. We return every year to the same place, and every year we learn more: where the best snorkeling is at what hour of the day, how to intercept the truck that brings fresh shrimp from down south for a local resort, which beach is most favored by the giant sea turtles. Each year, too, it becomes easier to slip into the rhythm of the place.
On the first morning of our most recent trip, I was awakened just after dawn by the cries of the ubiquitous howler monkeys, which sound like particularly noisy humans growling and inhaling at the same time. On the beach, the young Tico fishermen had already taken up their positions on the wave-splashed rocks, ferociously whipping their handlines around their heads, lariat fashion, before shooting them far out into the surf. I padded across the cool sand to the tidal pools in the lava rock outcroppings and watched swarms of tiny fish, a startling bright blue, sketch the water with neon. Ready for coffee, I headed slowly back to our land, where, against all odds, the foundation of a small house is actually in place. As I walked through the gate onto the property I was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of yellow butterflies. At that precise moment I realized that I had switched, without even noticing it, from hora americana to hora tica, in which showing up for an event an hour or two after the specified time is just fine, and a shower of butterflies is plenty of reason to sit down and ponder.
I also realized that I now hope the cursed roads of Costa Rica stay just as they are; they are perhaps the only thing that will keep this country from being overrun by people like me.
Staying there
Tamarindo has plenty of choices, from surfer funky to deluxe. Top of the line is the Swiss-owned Hotel Capitán Suizo(011-506-653-0075; from $125), one of the finest beachfront hotels in all of Costa Rica. Perhaps the best option, though, for those who plan ahead, is to rent one of the town’s private cabins or villas (tamarindo.com). Casa Cook (from $135; 011-506-653-0125), for example, has cabinas on the beach, a pool, and a wonderfully genial host. In Playa Negra, the Hotel Playa Negra (from $55; 011-506-658-8034) is an international surf haven with simple but exquisite circular cabinas; its large open-air restaurant is also the main location for local gatherings. (The pool here, with its deep blue tiles, bougainvillea border, and view of a world-class surf break, is one of the top hangout spots in the entire country.) Farther south, the isolated Hotel Iguanazul (from $70; 011-506-658-8123) is great for anyone in search of peace, sun, good burgers in an open-air restaurant, and spectacular ocean views in a breezy cliffside location. Get one of the air-conditioned rooms.
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