Someone once told me that Tamarindo is a great place to get a coffee on the beach- in fact, it’s the only place in Costa Rica where you can get a coffee on the beach. In a town populated by American and European tourists indulging in acai bowls and expensive yoga classes, you would be hard pressed to find many elements of true Costa Rican life. Despite Tamarindo’s relative inauthenticity, I wholeheartedly recommend a visit. It is a place where time slows down, where one’s day is governed by the level of the tide, where every hour is happy hour and where the burdensome worries of a previous life unravel with the sight of the town’s surfers happily bounding into the ocean. Travel around Central America for long enough and you’ll find countless towns like Tamarindo dotted along various coastlines, towns where people gather from around the world to live outside the laws of normal life.

When I arrived in Costa Rica I was a scared 18 year old truly on my own for the first time in my life. In an attempt at spontaneity I signed up to spend 2 months living and working at Dreamsea, a jungle surf camp right outside of Tamarindo. While a normal person would probably wonder what it might be like to live in a tent during the rainy season or how they might manage living in the jungle with a horrible mosquito allergy, my impulsive nature pushed these doubts far out of my mind. The ‘oh shit, what have I gotten myself into’ moment didn’t arrive until I stepped foot in the rustic wide-open camp on my first day at Dreamsea. Looking around, I spotted countless tents propped up on platforms, dogs and cats running around in the mud, and the wooden outdoor structures that made up the kitchen, bathroom, and dining area. A man in board shorts greeted me at the entrance and picked up the comically large white suitcase I had so brilliantly decided to bring with me to the jungle. After giving me a tour, we all piled into a shuttle and drove hurriedly to the beach for a sunset surf. I ended the night watching the sunset over the ocean with some other volunteers, sharing the stories that brought each of us to Costa Rica. 

From then on, my life became a daily dance of utter simplicity. Joyfully helping prepare the camp’s breakfast each morning; lazily lounging on the beach with a fresh coconut; reading a book on one of the many outdoor hammocks; and sometimes, very rarely, actually surfing. These periods of peace were interrupted by the ridiculous reality of actually living in the jungle. Finding a scorpion crawling across my shoulder; waking up in the early hours of the morning to the screaming howler monkeys; and struggling to find a path to the bathroom with a full on hurricane raging throughout the camp.

One day, on our way back from swimming in a waterfall, the owner of the camp asked us if we wanted to stop at a beach nearby. We weren’t planning on staying long, but we stumbled across a nice bar and decided to stay for sunset. This kind of thing happened extremely often- we’d be on our way somewhere or in the middle of doing something, but if there was a sign of a pretty sunset, we stopped in our tracks. In Tamarindo, there was never any schedule or plan more important than watching a beautiful sunset on a beautiful beach with people you love. As hard as it sometimes was for an anxiety-riddled girl from New York to accept such a laid-back mindset, I had fleeting moments of complete surrender into the harmonious rhythm of the simple life. 

By the end of my trip I found myself discarding my moldy clothes without remorse, forgetting about the mud all over my body and actually enjoying the exclusively cold water that flowed from our shower head. Two years have passed since then and sometimes I still miss that tan, curly-haired girl running around Costa Rica without a care in the world. But while that moment has long passed, I still try my best to chase the sunset, and to embrace the familiar words heard on the small streets of Tamarindo: ‘pura vida’.

Want to have your own jungle experience? Check out Dreamsea’s volunteer program here.