What do you think of when you hear the word luxury? Sleeping wrapped in satin sheets? Sipping Dom Perignon while soaking in a bubble bath? Shopping online while enjoying the view from your enclosed climate-controlled living room? My friend Tara has her own question: Does the word luxury even belong in the same sentence with Costa Rica?
Tara recently left a job where she attempted to sell Costa Rica as a luxury destination, both in tourism and real estate. She has lived here for over 20 years, worked a variety of jobs, and was ready, in her words, to make some real money. In recent years she worked as a one-person tour company, handling reservations, pick-ups, and also served as the tour guide herself.
I once went on one of her tours, a full day of hiking up and down hills to see monkeys, sloths, toucans, and more in areas where few tourists ventured. It was a down-and-dirty tour, slogging through jungle areas of the Southern Pacific Coast and the Osa Peninsula. It was not a tour for the faint of heart.
Now we met for breakfast. “I live in a cabin in the campo, no a/c, most of it open to the surrounding nature,” she told me. “I am not sure what I was thinking. I have nothing in common with anyone looking for luxury. I was like – Can a person with no feet sell shoes? Can an illiterate review books? I felt like an impostor, an actor playing a role and not doing it particularly well.”
She had arrived for breakfast driving the same car she has had for years, a battered 1999 Pathfinder in need of a paint job. “I am trying to imagine you picking up a prospective client and taking them to see some high-priced property, in that car,” I said.
She laughed. “I would always lie, and say, my main car is in the shop, so we’ll be using my farm car today. I’d give it a quick cleaning, vacuum out the dog hair, and be on my way. I remember one client, all he wanted to see was high elevation ocean view properties. Every one of them reachable only by unpaved roads full of craters. I was worried more about my car overheating than what the client thought of the properties!
“I was truly a fish out of water. We had these meetings, Zoom calls, and the first time a couple of the other agents mentioned a property going for 3.5, it took me a moment to realize they meant 3.5 million! My own bank account at that time was like 3.5… dollars!”
But the breaking point came, ironically, when she was offered a chance to, as she had already put it, make some real money. Her agency had secured an exclusive, selling ocean view lots for a development that overlooked the little beach town she had once sold her tours from.
The initial excitement quickly gave way to shame when she realized that all of her old friends in the town had banded in opposition to the massive development, arguing that the infrastructure needed for the project would not only destroy the ambiance of the local village but also negatively affect the surrounding flora and fauna. So she resigned. “In my heart, I am a person who loves nature,” she concluded, “When I hear the words luxury real estate, I imagine another small piece of nature hacked away and replaced by concrete mountains and swimming pools.”
We finished our breakfast, and she gave me a hug and walked to her old Pathfinder for the drive back to her cabin in the campo, where she would be at home with her dogs, chickens, and the shrill, early morning wake-up call of the Yellow-throated Toucan.
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Don Mateo
