We stood motionless in our bare feet on the smooth tile of our bedroom, staring silently at the seething river of ants streaming across the floor. I reached down without taking my eyes off the mass of insects, picked up Braeden, and perched him on my hip. He looked at me with huge, clear blue eyes.
“Daddy, what are they doing here?”
And Now, Nosara
Two years on the road has helped me figure out a lot of interesting things about myself.
One is that I can live on canned tuna and eggs for a weirdly long time. Another is that I’m a pretty easy-to-please guy. I’m not picky about the car I drive (that isn’t news to anyone fortunate enough to see some of the shitboxes I’ve owned), most movies have something redeemable in them for me, and I find a way to like just about every place we visit.
The one exception is Sihanoukville. If you want to read about that dumpster fire of a week you can do so here.
So when we were driving across the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, billowing clouds of burlap-brown dust rising behind our little Daihatsu Terios, I knew that no matter what lay ahead of us in Nosara that I’d be ok with it.
As it turned out, I was. My wife Juliann was ok with it, too.
Nosara blew us away, in fact, and it quickly rose to the Pantheon of our favorite places in the world. Thailand. Tuscany. France. Mexico.
And now Nosara, Costa Rica.
Our journey from the Central Highlands in Arenal took us through rapidly changing country, from rolling verdant hills through jungle-covered mountainsides to the dry ranch lands of Guanacaste. Paved highways quickly gave way to bumpy, bone-dry dirt roads as we crossed over the Nicoya Gulf to the peninsula.
We reached Garza, the town in which we were staying, by early afternoon, and we followed our host’s directions and turned off the big dirt road onto a little dirt road bisecting grazing lands for cattle and horses. We nosed the Terios up to the gate and our host Erin let us in with a cheery smile. We tossed our bags on our beds, took a quick tour, and stepped out onto the terrace to admire the view of the Pacific.
Nosara was the next town over, only 7km away, which on a nicely paved road would take about 7 minutes. But this was Costa Rica. No pavement on those roads, thank you very much.
Top speed on the road was about 40KPH in ideal conditions, and I didn’t get comfortable driving at that speed until about two weeks into our stay, when I would fly down the rutted roads with abandon, suspension hammering away, powersliding through curves and scattering terrified chickens in every direction.
But I digress.
We fired up Google Maps on our phones and started driving towards the neighborhood of Guiones in Nosara. TripAdvisor had faithfully found us a restaurant there, Ten Pies, that seemed to fit the bill for travel-day comfort food. Burgers. Pizza. Local food. Perfecto, gracias.
After 15 minutes of dusty, bone-jarring driving through wooded areas dotted with the occasional roadside tin-roofed house, we arrived at a lively intersection with a few perky shops: Cafe de Paris, Coconut Harry’s (a surf shop and restaurant/bar), an organic market, and a tennis club. We passed the intersection, took the next left, and slowly drove through Guiones.
Guiones – Not Green Acres, But…
Guiones’ collection of neighborhoods were tucked into the forest right next to the beach. The roads were all unpaved, and simple homes were mixed in with surf shops, restaurants, hostels, hotels, and bars. There were palm trees and flowering tropical plants nestled everywhere in between the homes and businesses so it felt like we were in a cozy little jungle village, and the pounding surf of the beach was never out of earshot.
Many beach communities scream with the electric wail of a town jammed with twentysomethings on a mission to get fucked up and have an experience. Guiones was gratefully not that. The little town hummed just enough to feel warm, alive. Locals selling chilled coconuts lined the roads, expats took their dogs for slow, meandering walks, howler monkeys bellowed from palm trees at passing motorbikes, and barefoot, still-dripping surfers languidly walked back from the beach, boards tucked under their glistening, tanned arms after a spiritual morning sesh on the water.
That very first day we sat in the leafy, open dining room of Ten Pies and talked through mouthfuls about how taken we were with the place.
Everything we needed was close to our villa, the internet was good (pings to evernote.com were in the 80-100ms range), and the local grocery store, Super Nosara, had just about everything we wanted, including – jackpot! – fresh beef and poultry.
There was also a little market in Garza just a couple of minutes from our house that stocked milk, eggs, fruit, and other essentials.
The villa we rented was a fantastic little spot, a two bedroom with spectacular views of the Pacific and surrounding countryside from every room. The kitchen was perfect for cooking together as a family, and there was plenty of room for Braeden to spread out his Legos, and there was even a desk for his art supplies.
Right away we set Braeden up with a surf lesson at Agua Tibia, a surf school that we had found online. Agua Tibia was two blocks from the beach and staffed with friendly surfer folk who always seemed thrilled to help us out.
Braeden’s first lesson was with Marcello, a delightful guy with a brilliant smile who was great with kids. I rented a board (US $10 for 2 hours), a 9-footer that suited my humble new-to-surfing-again stature, and we locked up the car and walked down to the beach, boards tucked under our arms.
Playa Guiones was a dream of a beach: tremendously wide, flat, fringed with palms, and no buildings whatsoever. Development within 200 meters of the high tide line is restricted throughout Costa Rica, so most of the country’s beaches are unspoiled by hotels, restaurants, houses, and bars. If you go to a beach in Costa Rica, chances are all you’ll see is water, sand, and trees.
Braeden picked up where he left off in Puerto Viejo and was comfortably surfing whitewater again like a pro. It took me a few days, but I loosened up on my 9-footer in the four-to-six-foot rollers of Playa Guiones, then quickly upgraded to an 8.5 foot board, then an 8’2″ a few days later. For the next month I surfed 3-4 times a week, and by the time we left I had stepped up to a 7’10” board that was easy to maneuver but pretty damned challenging for me, particularly on days when the waves were closer to 6-8 feet.
After a few days of poking around online Juliann discovered Nosara Kids Camp, a surf camp run by an outgoing Tica in her twenties named Paola. It was closer to U.S. prices than anywhere else we had been, $350/week, but after his first day Braeden was super excited to go back so we signed him up for a week, then another, then another. He spent a month at NSK and loved every day of it.
In the morning we would drop him off at camp, which was a little kiosk in an open mini-mall area complete with a playground. The counselors would get all the kids in rash guards, cover them with zinc and sunblock, and take them to the beach to surf for two hours. Then they would bring the kids to lunch and another activity, like rock climbing, beach sports, cooking, art, or jiu-jitsu.
By the time we picked up Braeden four hours later he would be tired, soggy and grinning. We would bring him home, give him a snack, and he would rack out for an hour or so before we went out for the afternoon.
He made some great friends at Nosara Kids Camp, mostly the children of American expats or travelers like us. When we first began this journey in 2016 he was shy around other kids that we’d encounter, and two years later it was amazing to see him just drop right into a setting with other kids, regardless of whether he shared a common language with them, and make new friends.
Invasion
Nosara felt nearly custom-made for us, but the little seaside town was not without its challenges. We were there in the dry season, which meant that absolutely everything was covered with a thin layer of dust. Before taking the car out we had to rinse the windows with the hose so we could see. Our clothes felt just the slightest bit gritty when we took them off the shelves. The roads were rough and the going was slow. A journey of ten miles could take forty minutes or more.
And there were the insects.
We’ve lived with all kinds of insects in the places we’ve stayed and now, even though I wouldn’t consider myself exactly chill around creepier insects like Big Hairy Spiders, I’m ok with them. A huge spider in the corner of the washroom or building a nest in a light fixture doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of my neck any more, and a beetle the size of a golf ball making its way across the floor no longer elicits a loud “What the fucking fuck!” from me.
Ants, too, have been part of life just about every place we’ve been. Juliann has mastered the art of keeping the house ant-free, and whenever we land in a place where the little buggers have taken over the kitchen, the first things on our grocery list are a spray bottle and white vinegar. After a few days of spraying down the counters and sink the ants take the hint and go elsewhere.
We learned on one of our many guided hikes that Costa Rica has 1,100 species of ants. We saw aggressive army ants, tiny red ants that would give you a nasty bite if you happened to stand too long near an ant hill, and the nightmarish bullet ant, which looks like it was designed by H.R. Giger when he was in a particularly shitty mood.
One of the first orders of business when we get to a new location is to read the “Home Guide”, a list of rules, helpful tips, etc the host leaves for guests. One paragraph in the guide for our villa in Nosara caught my eye:
A couple of times a year army ants will come through the house. Don’t worry, they have no interest in humans, they only want to clean the house of other insects and their eggs. They are nature’s fumigators. If this happens during your stay, just go out for a couple of hours and they’ll be gone by the time you come back.
We read this with amusement and agreed that given “a couple of times a year” the odds of us experiencing an ant invasion were pretty low.
Less than a week after we moved in, we came home one evening after dinner at around 8pm, ready to tuck Braeden in and have a couple of glasses of wine by the pool. I opened the terrace doors while Juliann took Braeden into our room to floss and brush his teeth. She clicked the light on and I heard her hiss a barely audible, “Holy…”
“Honey, you should see this,” she called out in a calm voice.
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I walked into the room and saw my wife and son in the middle of the floor, staring at the walls. I followed their gaze and immediately saw a couple of ants on the wall. I was about to say, What? It’s just a couple of ants, when I realized that it was not a couple, but dozens. I inhaled sharply. With fascination I saw that it wasn’t dozens, but hundreds. Then thousands.
It was like seeing the first star in the sky at twilight. As your eyes adjust to the light of that first bright star, innumerable others quickly flare into being.
Everywhere I looked there were ants on the walls. They were streaming in from gaps around the windows and the the air conditioner, and as we stood speechless they grew thicker.
Finally Juliann spoke. “I guess this is what she was talking about,” referring to our host and the guide. We looked at each other, picked up Braeden, then carefully worked our way across the thickening carpet of ants on the floor, out into the living room and then the terrace.
For the moment the ants were confined only to our bedroom. We figured they would leave at some point, but we were concerned about keeping Braeden up and having them stay for 3-4 hours or more. I cracked open my laptop to reference our good friend Google and quickly determined that the ants indeed were not a danger to us, though if stepped on they would deliver a nasty bite.
We still weren’t able to figure out how long they might stay, however, so we called our host on the phone. She picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi Erin, it’s Nathan. The ants have arrived.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “They came here about 45 minutes ago, so they’re probably moving down the hill to your place.”
“Do you have an idea of how long they’ll be here?” I asked. “We just got home and were hoping to put Braeden to bed.”
“Oh, they won’t stay very long. They usually are in and out in an hour or two. They’re starting to organize into columns over here, which means they’re on the way out, but if you feel nervous about sleeping over there you can always come to our place and stay in the spare room for the night.”
I told her I would keep that option in mind, thanked her, and hung up.
By now the walls and floors in our bedroom and master bath were completely covered with ants. It was impossible to cross the floor without stepping on any, but they were still confined to the bedroom. Hopeful that they would just clean out our bedroom and leave, we got Braeden ready for bed. He allowed us to tuck him in and turn out his light without a single complaint.
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Juliann and I retired to the terrace to monitor the situation. An hour had already passed since we had returned home. I checked on Braeden every few minutes to make sure there were no ants moving into his room, and we kept an eye on our bedroom door to see whether the ants would start marching out to see what was edible in the living area.
Sure enough, within a half hour the floor in front of our bedroom door darkened with a seething carpet of ants. They flowed like a shining black tide out across the living room floor, up the walls, and towards the kitchen in the direction of Braeden’s room. I kept checking on him, each time stepping more carefully in my bare feet to avoid any bites. We still held out hope that the ants would leave without going into Braeden’s room and we could let him sleep.
At about 9:45 the first few ants crossed the threshold of his room and we decided to pull him out. He was barely asleep and woke with a gentle smile as I carried him out to the terrace, the last place in the house where the floor was not completely covered with ants. He snuggled up with Juliann in the hammock and I sat at the picnic table while we watched the ants streaming out of our bedroom and across the living room floor.
The ants started inching out onto the terrace and I began to get a little worried. If they covered all the floors throughout the house we would have no place to sit or stand and would be forced to leave, and if they got bad enough we might not be able to easily cross the floor, collect our stuff, and exit the house without being bitten several times.
The trickle of ants coming out onto the terrace turned into a stream, and the stream into a tide. We watched as they slowly flowed across the tile and down onto the pool deck, towards us.
“I’m going to have a quick look inside,” I murmured as I stepped gingerly through the minefield of ants towards the living room. I stopped outside our bedroom door and looked around.
Our room was clearer now, and it was easy enough to move around the floor. Only a few ants remained on the walls, munching what appeared to be glassy little balls: insect eggs. I checked our bathroom and found the ants were moving out of that room as well. Then I returned to the living room and looked across the floor, towards the kitchen and Braeden’s room. The ants were clearly thinner on our side of the house, and it looked as if we would have plenty of space to hang out once the terrace was completely covered.
“Our room is almost clear,” I called out, “it looks like we’ll be able to move in there soon.”
I returned to the terrace to find the picnic table surrounded by ants and my wife and son calmly watching the insects from their comfy perch in the hammock.
“How are you doing, buddy?” I asked Braeden.
He replied with a grin, “Good, Daddy. This is pretty cool.”
Juliann and I laughed. Our son had seen quite a bit on our travels around the world, and this was just another weird experience to absorb.
The terrace was overrun, so I carried Braeden to our now mostly ant-free bedroom, followed by Juliann, who carefully stepped around the streams of ants in her bare feet. She and Braeden cozied up on the bed and I sat in a desk chair just a few feet away.
Every few minutes I would go out and check on the progress of the ants. They quickly covered Braeden’s room and the adjoining bathroom. Other bugs, aware they were under attack and clearly wishing to get the fuck out of Dodge, emerged from crevices and fled. Some weren’t so lucky.
At one point the three of us emerged from our bedroom to check out the slowly clearing kitchen, and I peered into Braeden’s room. I looked down at my feet.
“Oh, hell no,” I breathed.
Juliann and Braeden rushed over just in time to see a large black scorpion emerging from the chaos of Braeden’s room, clearly hassled. It stopped in front of us, took a hard left, and disappeared under the refrigerator.
We retired to the relative peace of our bedroom, where the floor was clear and the walls were nearly so. Occasionally an ant would climb up on the bed or fall from the ceiling onto the covers and we would hastily flick it off. Despite our caution Juliann and Braeden were bitten within a couple minutes of one another, but they both shrugged it off like champs. They showed each other their angry-looking red welts like Hooper and Quint showing off their scars in Jaws.
Around 11pm, roughly three hours after the invasion had begun, Braeden’s room was nearly clear and the ants were retreating from his bathroom. We brought him into his room, intending to tuck him in and sit with him for a few minutes. We stopped short just inside his room and stared. The scorpion had reappeared and it was fighting for its life, slowly marching across the floor towards a door that led to the basement. The fierce-looking arachnid was covered with ants and was wildly jabbing at its own body with its tail in a desperate attempt to fend off the attackers. We sat on Braeden’s bed and watched the scene, which if magnified a dozen times would have looked like something out of a 50’s creature flick.
The scorpion was now within a foot of the door. More ants joined their comrades, clambering up on the larger insect, biting its head, swarming over its carapace, clinging to its claws. The scorpion staggered forward, furiously lashing its tail, and reached the crack under the door. It slid through, carrying the ants with it, its tail whipping madly as it disappeared.
We stared at the door for a moment, then shook our heads and tucked Braeden in. The floor of his room was mostly clear now, with only a handful of ants remaining. We snapped off the light and kissed him goodnight, and he rolled over and closed his eyes, exhausted.
With the exception of a few small clusters in the bathroom, the house was almost entirely clear. We ran through the house with a broom to clean up the dozens of dead bugs and wispy shells of insect eggs left behind, then climbed into bed.
I stayed awake with a book for some time, checking on Braeden every few minutes to make sure no ants had meandered onto his bed. On my last trip across the living room floor a stray ant climbed in between my toes and bit me, and it held on while I frantically stomped around the room in an effort to dislodge it. I shook the ant off and got back into bed, my foot throbbing. The pain quickly faded and I soon joined my wife and son in a deep sleep.
Making New Friends
Just as with Cross Country CrossFit in Arenal I was pleased to discover that there was in fact a CrossFit gym in the Nosara area. It hadn’t yet opened when we were originally doing our location research a few months earlier, so I had resigned myself to the fact that I would be doing endless burpees and sprints, and if I was very lucky, tossing around some rusty weights.
The week before we arrived in Nosara, however, I checked online again and was delighted to discover a new gym, CrossFit Nosara, had recently opened in the area. I contacted them and made arrangements to come by for a workout the day after our arrival.
On their website the owners make it pretty clear that CFN is a small operation, so I knew what to expect when I arrived at 7 on a sultry Monday morning. I was greeted by Justin and Elise, husband and wife owners of the gym, and they welcomed me with a smile and showed me around. The gym itself was a well-kept 15’x15′ concrete platform with a tin roof, complete with a squat rack, pull-up bar, gymnastics rings, a rower, and a full complement of equipment to do just about any CrossFit workout. Jackpot.
Classes were usually scheduled for early in the morning to avoid the heat of the day, and because of the size of the gym, most workouts were of the Every Minute on the Minute/You-Go-I-Go variety. Justin was kind enough to suggest that I could come by at any time and work out on my own, and he gave me the combination to the lock on the equipment shed.
I worked out in the mornings, after breakfast with Braeden and after I had finished my writing for the day, before the heat became unbearable. Justin occasionally joined me, and sometimes Elise would as well.
Juliann and I liked Justin and Elise immediately, and the pair took an instant shine to Braeden, who was shy at first but eventually became Elise’s best buddy. We would frequently meet them out for dinner, they invited us to their home for cocktails, we had them to our place for a meal, and they took us on a day trip north to Ostional to check out a couple of their favorite beaches.
On St. Patrick’s Day we met them at Tierra Magnifica, a hilltop resort with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean. The resort had converted their tiny service bar into a St. Paddy’s Day-themed pub, and a fantastic band played Irish music in the sunshine as the breeze swept over the hillside.
Getting to know Elise and Justin was one of the highlights of living in Nosara, and we’re looking forward to seeing them again during our planned stay in the States or on a return visit to Costa Rica. We miss you guys!
Nosara was perfect. Idyllic days spent working in a hammock overlooking the Pacific, playing on the beach with Braeden, throwing some weight around at the gym, dropping in on a killer wave at Playa Guiones, or hanging out with new friends at a chill little restaurant near the beach…this was Nosara for us, and it was just what we needed.
Next: Ecuador!
We miss you guys too! There’s a bunch of pretty awesome places for sale 😉
Lol. See, now we’re going to have to take a look!