Latin America is known for one thing - the relaxed life style. Social institutions like “siesta” or “manana” are famous. In Costa Rica, it is not different - we call here the the savoir vivre of the Ticos “pura vida”.

Pura vida is like “great, cool and happy alltogether”, pura vida is relaxing times, pura vida is what surfers like: fun, waves and time.

A Canadian guy wrote us about the life style and Zopilote, and one American student, visiting Costa Rica for a social project, described in an article his experiences with Costa Rican life style and “pura vida”:

“As I got to know my family better and communication became easier, I started to realize how similar they were to my own family. Even though they had lived their whole lives in a very different society that practiced a different culture, the people themselves were pretty much the same. Even though my family thought it was strange that I didn’t know the proper way to eat many of their traditional foods, and they always thought I was in a hurry because the pace of Costa Rican life is much more relaxed, we had enough in common that I never felt alone.

“Things like language, culture and traditions felt like barriers between me and the people I was living with. I have realized that these are inevitable developments of any society, and they are what make a people unique. When talking about people of the world we tend to classify people by what country they are from. While this gives us a reference to assume what the person might look like, what language they might speak, and maybe a rough idea of their culture, it’s little more than a geographic definition.

There is no more to say, just a simple “pura vida”!

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