Pura Vida! We heard and saw the phrase all throughout the trip to Costa Rica. Hmmm, what does it mean? So, here is Wikipedia’s explanation – “Pura Vida, literally translated means “Pure Life” but means contextually something approximate to “Purified life”, “This is living!”, “Going great”, or “Cool!” It can be used as a greeting, as a word of farewell, to express satisfaction, and in some instances to politely express indifference when describing something. The phrase has become widely known in the USA and Europe; this highly flexible statement is used by many Costa Ricans (and expatriates) since 1956.
Our 7-day trip to Costa Rica, which ended up being a 8-day trip (canceled flight), was a wonderful look into another culture. We had first traveled to Costa Rica 5-6 years ago, by accident and were mesmerized by it’s beauty and promised ourselves that we would go back to do more justice to the country. Off we went to explore it further. 8 days, 6 hotel rooms and 5 cities later, we still did not have enough of it…at every place and every turn there was a wonderful surprise and we took in every bit of it with delight. Costa Rica in English translates as Rich Coast. Very appropriate, but it does not stop there, we got to see Rain forests, Cloud forests, hummingbirds galore, suspension bridges, tons of mangoes, how can I forget monkeys, papaya-size avocados and most thrilling – Arenal (active) Volcano. We got to see it in action…WOW!
A country that has so much and so much to offer, I finally truly understood the meaning of ‘Pura Vida”!
Wow! Great pictures!! Glad you could venture out of your kitchen into a beautiful country 🙂