On our way from a new year party on a tiny Caribbean cay off the Honduran coast to Panama my girlfriend and I came to Costa Rica. It was early 1995, long before Costa Rica became a tropical playland for wealthy American tourists. For ticos, as the inhabitants of Costa Rica are called, life seemed to be “pura vida“, at least in comparison to its more tumultuous Central American neighbours to the north. We first visited the Poas Volcano, a first, as this was the first drive-in volcano we so far experienced. For fun we ran the last meters up to the crater rim, like boisterous children. From Poas we hearded to Manuel Antonio national park on the Pacific coast. Those days there were just a handful backpackers. We pitched our tent in the middle of the tiny village, right on the beach, where we were enjoying every evening our prime position to watch a glorious sunset. Next morning we hiked from our beach to another, passing dense rainforest where cute little Capuchin monkeys were scurrying through the trees. Back on „our“ beach, we watched a pelican sailing in low-altitude flight above the water surface, trying to catch fish for his lunch, failing to do so again and again. Getting good food was a challenge for us, too, as the diet in those days, was mostly rice and beans, and when it was time for a change, beans and rice.