Lovely photos! I'd like to hear more about how you ended up in this place. More backstory, please!
Gladly.
As for landing in Jaco in particular, that's because of a few wise words from Uncle Jimmy.
Like any kid with dreams of traveling the world for longer than a week, any job I could find, I took. All throughout college, I worked full-time (or as close to full-time as I could get) as a deli clerk, butcher's assistant, factory laborer, waiter, and dishwasher. I donated blood plasma for extra cash because I had dreams of one day riding a gondola in the canals of Venice.
After all that work (and college tuition) I was left with only about $2k when I graduated. It would get me a ticket somewhere nice, but when you factor in accommodation, food, and everything else, it wasn't much to build a trip around the world on. Even Nomadic Matt said I'd need at least $10-15k
Then I heard about this program called Workaway. You do odd jobs in someone's house (cleaning, painting, yard work, etc) and they put you up for a month or so. This was my ticket out without having to save -- and then spend -- a ridiculous amount of money.
I signed up and found someone willing to host me in Ireland.
Here I am messing around with a power drill in Kinnitty, happy as a clam but covered in paint and cow shit, after taking apart a concrete wall:
https://imgur.com/a/dmQzwY8And here I am with one of my friends, when we first arrived to help rehab a Georgian mansion built in 1777 to turn it into a modern hotel:
https://imgur.com/a/6afsxc7I used Workaway to travel all around Ireland, and then I started making pretty significant money writing online for a water softening company (weird, I know), so I traveled around Switzerland and Italy for a couple months while I wrote.
I came back home in July dead broke (except for retirement savings, which are borderline untouchable) and ready to start a career.
That's when my Uncle Jimmy said, "Wait, you can make $1k online just by writing? Why don't you go to Costa Rica?"
It didn't seem feasible. It sounded too good to be true. A couple days later Spirit Airlines sent out an email advertising one-way tickets to San Jose, Costa Rica for $87. I checked AirBnB to find a rental near the beach. A week later, I bought both the one-way and a month-long stay in the AirBnB.
And now here I am, struggling not to dip into retirement savings. I am up $500, though, which will cover rent for next month, and I think I can keep it going. Worst case I go back to Workaway, which isn't even real work.
So I should probably get to work on the type of writing that people actually pay me for now, but for Dicey and anyone else who listened to my rambling, thanks.
And, by the way, I did get to ride that gondola:
https://imgur.com/a/F5E8HDE