How I traded my west London flat for a beachfront paradise in Costa Rica

When Felicity Morse swapped her gloomy London life for the sun and sands of central America, she expected a culture shock – but what she got instead was a lesson in how to live her best life

In Costa Rica, being happy is a pastime and a point of national pride (Getty/iStock)

Last September I swapped a one-bedroom flat in west London for a treehouse in Nosara, a surfing and yoga town in Costa Rica. It was a radical move, but my heart had fallen out of love with the city. And meanwhile, I’d fallen in love in the true romantic sense, and he spent his time between Costa Rica and Britain. He raved about the healthier lifestyle and asked me to come and join him. I was ready for a change, and it was too good an opportunity to miss.

However, just because it was what I wanted doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shock to the system. Forget having a fancy postcode, I now had no address at all. No postal service. No Deliveroo. No Uber. No Amazon (but plenty of actual rainforest).

My new pied-a-terre also had no air conditioning, no proper doors, and no windows – only mosquito netting around a large elevated concrete room separated me from the jungle. I slept under a corrugated iron roof, with large sliding steel plates below me, complete with padlock, offering me Mad Max-style security. It was a baptism of fire for my first digital nomad experience – but discomfort is worth it if it’s in service of something you truly love.

And I did love it here. I came back again in January, to live in a small village in the mountains (in a more luxurious space this time, admittedly), living the pura vida, or good life.

You can’t go a day in Costa Rica without someone saying “Pura vida” to you. Those two words cover hello, goodbye, thank you – and can be used ironically, too. Maybe some errant tradesperson has just done the opposite of what you’ve paid them for and disappeared with your cash, (Pura vida!) or maybe you’re muttering it under your breath because a rude tourist has just stiffed you on a tip (Pura vida, you b*****d).

But it is a good life. What I couldn’t have grasped about Costa Rica from London was quite how beautiful it is here. There’s an hourly real-life encounter with the kind of exotic creature that captured your imagination as a child. Toucans, monkeys, iguanas, whales; you name it, they are all colourfully incarnate here, and hanging from trees (well, maybe not the whales). In my first few months here, I felt like I had overdosed on fantasy and woken up inside my own dream. The old gods were real.

It is a community tradition to watch the sunset on the beach every night. But honestly, when I first arrived, I would see the huge glowing red sun disappear behind the shimmering ocean and struggle to take it all in. I felt like I could handle about 10 per cent of the beauty.

In England, nature is just more politely understated. Here in Costa Rica, the trees have spikes, and the ants bite, and the sky bursts into flames every night. Then, when it rains, there are big thunderstorms with forked lightning that shake the ground beneath you. Nature here offers you daily reminders of just how big it is and how small you are, and that can help you to “right-size” your worries and put you in touch with quite how extraordinary it is simply to be alive.

And there is just so much life. It’s harder to stop things from growing here than it is to grow them. This means I can pick up mangos off the side of the road, and have an avocado tree promising a Fulham Road’s worth of brunches in my back garden. But it also means that I left my bra out overnight once and it grew mould. Repulsed, I left it another day before I went to tackle the situation, by which time some kind of mothy wasp insect had made a clay nest in it. That was the end of my bra. Pura vida.

Although life is life wherever you live, Costa Ricans make embracing its goodness central to their philosophy. Being happy is a pastime, and a point of national pride. Compare this to Brits, some of whom treat gloominess as a national sport (with extra points for being witty about it).

The parameters of success are different here. It’s more about happiness instead of GDP or international power. And when the way that you define success changes, you make different decisions. On a micro level, that means being welcoming and friendly to whoever you meet. But on a macro level, it impacts the way the whole country is run. Costa Rica has no army, and spends that money on education, the environment and healthcare. It’s still a central American country, so I don’t want to romanticise the issues that do exist. But it has still taught me a lot about how to live a harmonious life. Pura vida!