Hey World! I haven’t managed a blog post for quite some time, but we’re still here! We got chewed up by the busy season, and then…we had to move! But don’t worry—we didn’t move far enough to change anything about our work as Tamarindo Grill Master.
The middle of the busy tourist season is a terrible time to pack up and relocate, especially if you have as many refrigerators as we do!
You may wonder if we got thrown out of our old place for not paying something or for having too many rowdy parties on our days off. Ha ha! Not even! It’s interesting. The exact same industry that feeds us—the tourist industry—is in many ways a hungry beast that gobbles up everything in its path. The building we lived in was sold, and guess what the new owners want to do with the apartment we lived in. Just guess. Come on—what would you do if you bought a building in Tamarindo with a 2 bedroom apartment across the street from the beach? Of course! Throw out the locals living there, revamp the place, and make boatloads of money renting it to tourists on Airbnb!
I get it. But it’s kind of sad. Nobody who “lives in Tamarindo” can afford to actually live in Tamarindo anymore. You can pay hundreds of dollars per night on vacation, but we can’t pay it to live. Or most of us can’t. So Hernan and I packed our bags, stuffed the cats in their carriers, cleaned out the refrigerators, found a guy with a truck, and moved out of town.
I miss the beach. I miss riding around on my bicycle. But the new place is nice. It’s peaceful, which is one thing Tamarindo is not. If you’re planning a trip here and you thought it was going to be peaceful—sorry. It’s fun! It’s lively! It’s fantastic, really, but I wouldn’t use the word “peaceful” to describe it.
I remember some years ago when I was in Italy, listening to the Airbnb dilemma being argued about on television. As I understand it, at least some cities created a legislation capping the percentage of living spaces that could be dedicated to tourism through platforms like Airbnb. The case in point, I think, was Florence. The government intervened to stop Florence from becoming a city inhabited purely by tourists.
Tamarindo is no Florence—I am clear about that! Most of the Costa Ricans got priced out of the Tamarindo rental market years ago anyway, so there’s really nothing tragic about pricing the rest of us out of it too. It’s an interesting concept to ponder. How tourist destinations where “culture” is part of the draw would do well to keep some locals living in the mix.
I know—I’m a chef now and I’m supposed to be writing about food. I’m supposed to be writing chirpy tourist info with a list of 5 or 10 things it would really be helpful for you to know. But I thought maybe the internet already offers you enough food blogs and enough chirpy tourist info, and you might like to read the actual thoughts of an actual person who likes to think and write and cook, and isn’t using the blog (at least not directly!) to try to sell you something.
Zoom in.
I’m at my desk in this new funky jungle house. Hernan is somewhere in Tamarindo with a shopping list of what we need for a dinner for 10 tonight in Pinilla. The cats are somewhere sleeping in shady places. When he gets home, Hernan will prepare the kabobs and stuffed chicken breasts for tonight. I will take the pile of receipts and prepare the food bill for the clients. We’ll pull something together for lunch, and then for sure Hernan will take a little nap which is one thing he cannot function without. I’m a terrible day-time sleeper, but maybe I’ll try.
Change is a given. It’s the common denominator of all things living: they change. Sometimes they like it; sometimes they don’t. But there’s no sense blowing against the wind. Before I was a chef, I worked in a property management office. I’ve been a Spanish teacher, a surf instructor, and a nutrition educator, to name a few. I’ve been married, divorced, widowed…everything. All of it leads to right here, right now.
Sometimes I feel like a bit of a poser in the kitchen, hoping no one asks me a question I should know the answer to but don’t. But mostly I just smile to myself, because I know the answers to a lot of questions no one asks me.
