How Costa Rica Captured My Heart and Became My Home in 1995

Me, my baby Gwenaëlle (Lexi) and husband Hervè on our boat in Turkey, shortly before moving to Costa Rica. 1992.

A Few of my Impressions of Costa Rica

Many people come to Costa Rica, several of our students and guests visit and come back again and again, and many to live.

They all ask me of how I came to Costa Rica and why? And so here I would like to tell my story of my first impressions and what life was like here 30 years ago and  a little of my journey and impressions since then.

I first came to visit in 1992. My mother Liz and her husband, Jean Paul, a Frenchman, had recently moved there and were building their small private hotel, what would be called today a boutique hotel.

I can still remember the damp, humid smell of the jungle as I got off the plane near the city of San Jose. It was midnight, and there was a light drizzle as I walked the tarmac from the airplane to the terminal with my two-year-old daughter in tow.

We hopped, or more accurately, crawled into the back of my Mum’s small Toyota pickup. With Jean Paul at the wheel, we headed to the Caribbean coast. Jean Paul drove like a true Frenchman, zigzagging and racing through the Zurquí mountains that separated the central valley of San Jose from the Caribbean. It had begun to pour buckets of rain; you could hardly see in front of you. Yet, Jean Paul continued to drive furiously. For some reason, I felt safe. In the end, he was a good driver, and I had never known him to be in an accident. He held our lives in his hands as my little girl Gwenaëlle, now known as Lexi, lay fast asleep curled up in my lap.

At some point, the rain cleared, and I remember seeing waterfalls crashing onto the road from the sides of the mountains. Gigantic trees and leaves were dripping with rainwater. I was awestruck by this display of the power of nature.

When we reached the Caribbean Coast, I saw the seas and the beaches that were just beginning to be tinged by the orange and pink of the sun peeking over the sea's horizon. The beaches were lined with coconut trees and dense jungle. There were very few buildings, if any at all, and no cars to be seen.

There was something about the energy, the feel, the smell, the intensity, and also the serenity and peace of this coast that made me know in my heart right away, this was home.

First visit in 1993, Jean Paul with baby Lexi and Terry, at the time the same age as Lexi is now.

I have been traveling since the age of 12 and for the first time, I felt I was coming home, coming to a place I was meant to be, and that feeling has never changed in the last 30 years.

However, it wasn't until 1995 that I finally moved to Costa Rica with my daughter and my husband, Herve, who is also French. We settled into a small property next to my mum's and Jean Paul's Magellan Inn Hotel and built a two-story home with our restaurant on the first floor. I was a chef by profession, and back in those days, there were hardly any restaurants. In Cahuita, there was a handful, and in Puerto Viejo, just one or two, imagine! It seemed the obvious choice at the time. We designed our house after the old Jamaican houses that could still be seen in some areas and also the French Caribbean islands. We painted it pink, with purple trim and white gingerbread all around, and named it La Casa Creole.

La Casa Creole in Cahuita, Costa Rica. 1990s.

Neighbours Walter and Patty, with my mother Liz at Casa Creole.

Cahuita was a small sleepy village and in many ways, it still is to this day, just with fewer houses and businesses. However, there's something about the energy of Cahuita that never changes, almost as if it were in a time loop. Locals and foreigners who have lived there for a long time still walk with a slow pace as if there's nowhere to go or nothing important to do. When you pass someone along the dirt beach road, you acknowledge each other with a slight lift of the chin and the eyes. It's too hot to move more than that. Sometimes you might get a "good, good" or a "Wha' appen" as a welcome, but that would take a lot of effort. The nod is easier.

All those years ago, it was often referred to as the Wild East. Very wild stories took place in those days, before I arrived and during my time there. Nothing was off-limits and eccentric people did some pretty crazy things. Everybody knew each other, local and foreigners living in harmony together, day by day, with no thought of tomorrow. Beach parties and house parties where adults and children danced, laughed and told stories with the faint aroma of marijuana in the air. Dancing til the early morning to the vibes of Calypso and Reggae. Life was simple back then, and sometimes it was challenging, but whatever it was, you lived it fully and completely.

Cahuita at that time was the place to be, Puerto Viejo was much smaller, with one restaurant. Saturday nights everyone came from Puerto Viejo to party in Cahuita at the famous Vaz Bar. An old wooden house on stilts, with a very wobbly wooden terrace, and old dusty bar and in the back a little disco light where music played and people danced. Because it was often hot, people would also be dancing in the streets to the music echoing from the dance room. It was mainly locals and foreigners who had settled there, black sheep running away from the control of their respective countries escaping the world they did not fit in and a few lost tourists who had discovered the area by chance.

Stanford’s, Puerto Viejo in 1983. Found this online here uploaded by my friend Christina Zingrich. Definitely have a look, lots more great old photos of the area.

Back then the Caribbean was the forbidden part of Costa Rica, the so- called “dangerous place of drugs and scary people”, a story that was shared and proliferated by the rest of the country, with definite racist undertones. Tourism and investors were told to go to the Pacific. Which was really the main reason my Mum and Jean Paul and then myself and Herve decided we needed to come to the Caribbean! Danger, wild, unknown, yes, lets go! Plus just the word Caribbean Sea, thats enough there as it is. We were very lucky to have been travellers and adventurers and dared to go where others did not. We were able to experience the raw beauty of nature, the small community of locals who had dared to settle on the Caribbean coast back in the 1800’s where there was nothing but jungle, they were fishermen from Jamaica and other places, they would travel back and forth each year then eventually would settle and build the little villages of Cahuita, Old Harbour (Puerto Viejo) and Manzanille (Manzanillo). And then the few foreigners who had discovered these little pearls of beauty in the late 70’s, some came as surfers, and others just through their wanderings ended up here and never left.

Complementaria Cahuita School, originally only a kindergarden, 1995. Lexi and Hervè in the white t-shirts.

Jean Paul and my mother, Liz at Magellan Inn. 1993.

My second husband, Topo, discovered Cahuita while traveling the world to photograph and discover new species of poison dart frogs in the 80s. He’d gone deep into forbidden Amazon jungles for that purpose. I know it sounds weird, but it's true! And he never left. He, too, had found his home.

My mum Liz and Jean Paul found Cahuita during the big earthquake of 1991 - and never left. Neither did I.

Slowly but very slowly life began to shift, as more wandering tourists found their way to the Caribbean. More bungalows, hotels and restaurants started to sprout up. Puerto Viejo which had been a very small village started to turn into a bustling little multi cultural town. The dirt road that led to Puerto Viejo, the small rusty bridges, some only would be two metal beams that you drove very very carefully over, would become paved and slightly bigger bridges would be built. Beach Break and Cocles Beach where not even one hotel stood, only a few small homes began too to change. I remember the first time I drove along that little dirt jungle road , and seeing the incredible blue of the Caribbean Sea and the white sand beaches of Cocles and Beach Break, I was struck by its beauty, the jungle at the edge, the coconut trees lining the beach, the parrots, iguanas, monkeys and  the little coral coves of Playa Chiquita. I wanted to live there, and knew someday, that this place would be popping. And yes, I actually did move to Cocles 20 years later.

Now Cocles is very different, but there is a charm and vibrant energy of its own that is very different from other surrounding places. It’s multicultural, the local black community, Ticos and free spirited foreigners. Surfers and dogs, horses and pelicans. Sunsets with fire throwers and jugglers, people walking on tight ropes between two coconut trees. Swimmers and children, laughter and frisbees, volley ball on the sand, the sea breeze moving the big palm leaves that give shade below. The sea is still blue, the jungle is still near, and yes there are many homes and businesses, but they are mostly all small and family run. From the food stands of Rastafarian Jamaican food, to ice coffee and cakes, falafel pitas and Rice & beans, all intermingled with little restaurants lining the other side of the beach road. Trees and wild life still grow  here between each place. Its charming, its fun, its alive, here no big resorts or hotels are welcomed. Here it is a way of life and all of us are very attached to keeping it so.

I mentioned when I first moved to Costa Rica, and arrived on the Caribbean coast , I felt I was coming home, that this was home. It was even more than that, this feeling of coming home. I remember a big part of my life, traveling in different countries, speaking many languages, living on our boat, yes that was part of it, this feeling of having roots. But there was something else.

My soul literally felt it was home.

During those years I was to discover and learn more about this feeling. I wasn’t the only one who had it.

Every time I would go to San Jose and then come home, there was a certain area before reaching the coast, that I would feel as if I entered another world, another dimension, but I did not have the words or the knowledge at that time to explain this feeling. Literally the hair on my arms would stand up.

It was in 2010 that I was attending classes for 2 1/2 years on the Metaphysical School of Energy that I began to learn something about this peculiar feeling and what it meant. Our teacher, the founder of the school explained her experience upon arriving in Costa Rica, for the first time. She had come to visit on vacation and was traveling down from San Jose towards the Caribbean coast, when she felt a very powerful shift in the energy frequency. She realized she had entered a zone of the 5th Dimension. When she got closer to the coast it became even stronger. For those of you who have no idea of what I am talking about, don’t worry about it, for those of you who do, pay attention, this is very interesting.

To put it simply, the Earth is shifting from the 3rd Dimension, which is a place of duality, ego, possession, materialism, and separation, to the 5th Dimension. The 4th Dimension is a place of love, unconditional love, and healing, while the 5th Dimension is the energy of the new world. One might call it the Golden Era. There are many names for this in many cultures, traditions, and religions. The Earth is transitioning from the 3rd Dimension to the 5th, and the founder of our school felt this very strongly in certain places in Costa Rica, specifically in the Caribbean.

What does this mean? It means a lot, but I won't delve into that now. Suffice it to say that there is no easier place to meditate and advance spiritually than where we are on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. This explains why so many people on spiritual paths of transformation - healers, teachers, shamans, and the like - are attracted and have started to come here from all parts of the world, myself included. Yes, I was coming home because I had a purpose. This purpose revealed itself through the years, but now I see it had started from when I was a little girl, until I finally found myself home.

I have also taken some courses in Radiesthesia, also known as Dowsing. This involves using metal rods to detect water, but they can also be used to discover the energetic lines of the Earth. Just as we have chakras, meridians, and nadis, so does the planet Earth. Maybe more on that in another blog?

The professor, a faculty member at the University of Costa Rica, had traveled the world writing books and was even contracted by NASA to investigate a large black hole that kept appearing on their satellite when passing over a specific area in the Costa Rican jungle. It turned out to be a gigantic portal. As we explored the area and the beaches, we discovered a huge number of columns, energy channels, and gateways that rose from the earth into the sky. The professor was very intrigued by this, as he had never seen such a concentration of energy columns in one place.

Sometimes, I would share the sensation I felt upon nearing the coast with others. To my surprise, many had similar experiences but different interpretations and understandings. My mother felt it very strongly; to her, it was the smell of the Caribbean that made her feel happy and at home. My daughter Lexi described it as being sucked into something and squeezed out the other side. One day, while driving from Arenal with some friends, I was sitting in the back seat. As we passed the area where I always felt this sensation, both of them reached out and grabbed each other's hands, their hair standing on end. I hadn't mentioned anything to them, but they turned and stared at me. I laughed and said, "Oh, you felt that too, did you?" Since then, many have shared their unique feelings when they enter this area. For some, it's just a feeling that they must live here, and they give up everything back home to risk it all just to live here, never regretting it.

Others are drawn in by the beauty and perhaps a certain feeling, but they soon discover that there's another side to the coin. They realize this place isn't for everyone and decide to leave. The beauty and nature here are perfect and wondrous to me. Not a day goes by where I'm not mindful and grateful for everything that surrounds me in this incredible place. For me, it's magical beyond words. But it can also be challenging. Life conditions can be harsh for some. As a woman alone with two children, it wasn't easy to survive, let alone thrive. But even through the painful, abusive, and grief-stricken times, I always felt supported, loved, and protected. Something was here, is here, that wants me here. I know I'm in the right place. I'm home, and I'm ready for the next chapter of my life and whatever it may bring.

Maybe this place is for you, maybe it's not, but if it is, you will know without a doubt. Your soul will speak to you; this I know with all my heart.

Namaste beautiful souls, may you find your way, may you transform and see and realize the beautiful being you are, all your gifts and all your potentials.

We have the privilege to be a live, don’t take it for granted.

PS: I’ve been writing a lot, so if you have anything you’d like me to write about, let me know in the comments! Also any questions you have, I’m happy to answer :)