Touchdown In Costa Rica — Part One

The first stop of our new nomadic life.

It was October 15, 2017. We had just flown a red-eye flight from Calgary to Toronto, then flown Toronto to San Jose, Costa Rica. We were tired, but man we were excited.

We didn’t get to sit together on the second flight. I was about 3 rows back on the aisle, and Chris was ahead, on the opposite side, also in the aisle.

As we started our descent into San Jose, I was eager to know how he was doing. Was he excited? I didn’t need to wonder too long, because, at one point, he looked back at me with a look that could only be interpreted as

Holy Shit! We are here!

He later told me that he was choking back tears of joy and excitement.

We had just spent the last nine months selling all of our possessions including 2 vehicles and a house. We closed down 3 home-based businesses and said goodbye to family and friends. We had no idea how long we would be gone for. It was a one-way ticket, made possible by buddy passes that one of my friends gave us who worked for the airline.

We didn’t have much left to our names, but we had a yearning and desire to see the world. We had no idea what we were going to do, or where we were going to go, except for our first stop.

And the reason that we went to Costa Rica to start our nomadic journey, was because Costa Rica chose us.

Back in the spring, we had signed up for a housesitting website thinking that it would be a good idea to start looking for opportunities. At that time, we figured that it might take us a year or more to get rid of all of our possessions. We weren’t really in a rush, but we were motivated to get at it as once we made the decision to become nomadic, there was no stopping us.

It didn’t help that a friend had told us that, “Housesitting is impossible. You can never get those jobs.”

So let's just say that we weren’t going to hold our breath on the whole housesitting front anyways.

In the beginning, a few notifications popped up that had decent opportunities, but nothing really felt right. They were either in countries that we weren’t that interested in, or the timing wasn’t good because it was too soon.

That was until a lady messaged us telling us that she thought we would be the perfect fit for their housesit in Costa Rica.

The only catch was that she wanted us from the beginning of September to the end of December, 4 months.

As we both had summer jobs, Chris was a landscaper and I was a house painter, I knew that that timeline would never work. We both had contracts booked out for the summer, and with having to do those, plus sell all of our things, the schedule would be impossible.

To learn about housesitting click below! Please know that we will get a referral bonus if you sign up for housecarers through this link.

It also didn’t help that we needed to finish renovations on our house before we could even consider selling it. We had done a lot of pulling it apart in the previous 4 years of living there, and not enough of putting it back together.

I emailed her back and thanked her for the offer, but told her that it was impossible, further explaining the reasons why. Not deterred, she wrote back and told me that in the past they have split the sit into two parts.

If I can get a couple for the first two months, can you do the last 2 months?

After a quick discussion with Chris, and many deep breaths, we decided to say yes!

We were heading to Costa Rica!

It was a very exciting part of our process! We finally had a plan and a deadline! This spurred us into action like nothing else ever could have! At the time, I had a blog that was documenting our process of selling all of our possessions and closing our life down, and I wrote this post about it.

We decided to arrive a bit early so that we could take our time a little and explore a bit more of the country before settling down in one place.

We first traveled up into the hills of Monte Verde. I had been there back in 2004 with my ex-husband and was keen to show it to Chris as I knew that he would love the lush greenery that the area presented.

We arrived in the dark and woke up the next morning to find ourselves perched on a hillside overlooking vast farmlands below. Greenery stretched out before us in every direction. We could even see a glimpse of the Gulfo De Nicoya, Gulf of Nicoya, glistening in the distance. It was pure magic.

After spending a couple of days up there, we decided that we should head to the coast. It just happened to be my 41st birthday that day, and I looked forward to sunset drinks on the beach that night. However, the day wasn’t as smooth sailing as we had hoped, and we spent the majority of it riding crowded buses in the sweltering heat.

I was quickly reminded that traveling from point A to point B in Central America was not as easy as it looked on the map.

I won’t lie, I definitely had a pity party for myself that day. This was not how I wanted to spend my birthday! However, when we finally arrived at the adorable seaside town of Samara, my mood lifted somewhat. We did end up going out for dinner, but we missed the sunset, unfortunately.

We spent 5 nights in Samara and despite the fact that it was the rainy season and mostly cloudy, we made the best of it and lavished in the warmth of the tropics.

As our housesitting was in the lower portion of the country, we decided to then move down to Manuel Antonio, where I had also spent some time in 2004. Chris hadn’t seen wild monkeys yet, and I knew for sure that we would find them there.

Finding our Air BnB was an adventure in the dark, and I wrote about it in this blog post.

First thing in the morning we saw monkeys all right! They were swinging from the power lines between houses, and having a great old time! We decided to head to the National Park anyways, as I had fond memories of it.

Unfortunately, a lot had changed in the 13 years since I was there last, and the park didn’t have the peaceful vibe that it had had the last time. It was immediately overrun with way too many tourists, and the beaches were crowded early in the day. I was happy that we had arrived in the shoulder season, as we were told that it was worse during high season.

Of course, we did manage to see some monkeys. Predictably, they were also being fed by people, despite there being about a hundred signs that asked people not to feed them (and in about 6 different languages!)

The day had finally come! It was now time to make our way to Matapalo and our housesitting job. We were eager to see this house that we would be caring for and to meet the dog, Omber, that would be in our charge! We really didn’t have much information about the house, and we really didn’t know what to expect. But we knew that once we got there, we could finally start to relax and shed off the stress and craziness of the past nine months!

I decided to write about our time in Costa Rica because Dennett commented on my sunset photo in SNAPSHOTS wondering when we had been in Costa Rica. It was then that I realized that I have mostly been writing about Africa since joining Medium. So now I want to fill in the gaps between 2017 and 2020 so that people can better understand our nomadic journey. Thanks so much for reading!

xo Jill

Read Part Two!

Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We have now been on the African continent for over 2 years! Join our adventure by hitting the links below! Subscribe to Medium to get full access to my writing plus thousands of others’!

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