Can I be honest with you? I was really worried about dating in Costa Rica for another reason. When I finally did get the chance to meet a lovely nice young lady and we courted and went on seventeen dates and I met her family and got her father’s permission and we got matching tattoos and Googled each other and were finally ready for a special, intimate night together, there was one possibility that could scare Little Norm right back into my drawers: Jungle Bush. You’ve heard of 70s Bush, right? Well Jungle Bush was (in my mind) the tropical equivalent of 70s Bush. I won’t go into too much detail, but for my readers who weren’t born until Puff Daddy started rapping, here’s a snapshot: In the continental United States in the 1970s there was a whole generation of young people who were…how can I say this with the utmost sensitivity…they were all DIRTY. It was hip to wear filthy bellbottoms and man-blouses and everyone went barefoot and slept with each other because, of course, STDs weren’t invented until the second term of the Reagan administration. They listened to horrible music with finger cymbals and three-hour sitar solos and did a lot of drugs. Somehow that was all supposed to stick it to THE MAN and bring the troops home from Vietnam. In my opinion, they should have made THE MAN listen to the music and they would have signed a peace treaty the next day. Anyway, a horrible byproduct of their lax hygienic life choices was that they didn’t have time to focus on personal grooming south of their equators, if you know what I mean. So everyone walked around with 70s Bush, and when they took off their undergarments they all looked eerily similar to Kareem Abdul Jabbar when he fought Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon.” Somehow they found this attractive and kept copulating with reckless abandon—it must have been the drugs.
Yes, it was thirty-something years later, but I was in Costa Rica, a Third World country of rainforest where their main economic exports were bananas and sugarcane. Where were battery-powered personal shavers on that list, I wondered? It was called a Brazilian Wax and not a Costa Rican Wax for a reason. They couldn’t even pave their own roads, for Christ’s sake. Pornography wasn’t legal and I had to smuggle in vibrators for the local women! I was terrified that when I finally get intimate with a nice Tica, she’d suffer from a case of Jungle Bush and I’d have to excuse myself from the festivities by faking a groin pull and climb out of the bathroom window naked and run away and possibly move out of town.
Yup, times we're tough on the dating front in Costa Rica. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room
Yes, it was thirty-something years later, but I was in Costa Rica, a Third World country of rainforest where their main economic exports were bananas and sugarcane. Where were battery-powered personal shavers on that list, I wondered? It was called a Brazilian Wax and not a Costa Rican Wax for a reason. They couldn’t even pave their own roads, for Christ’s sake. Pornography wasn’t legal and I had to smuggle in vibrators for the local women! I was terrified that when I finally get intimate with a nice Tica, she’d suffer from a case of Jungle Bush and I’d have to excuse myself from the festivities by faking a groin pull and climb out of the bathroom window naked and run away and possibly move out of town.
Yup, times we're tough on the dating front in Costa Rica. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room
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