The Accidental Expat

By Dan Lee, former journalist and author of Indian Shadow

I was sitting in a tree house, which was cozied up to the jungle, when Adelia came in. I'd known her for years, but we'd never met in person. She looked into my eyes and said, "I need a margarita." I felt empathy right away.

Los Gatos Locos restaurant and bar is in Ojochal, Costa Rica, and is a tree house in the jungle. We go there to visit our son who owns the place. Adelia was in Costa Rica, scouting out a place to live, but had been visiting over several years. She was going to make the jump from Washington state for personal reasons.

These vignettes give a flavor of what it's like to leave the US in your seventh decade, with what you can take on the airplane, and ship the rest in a container. Of course, you might be just sixty or even fifty, with a taste for adventure. The jungle will lower your blood pressure, and expat society is far better than looking at the UPS man on a bell cam.

Behind the vignettes, the brightly colored houses, the friendly natives, and the ecological consciousness, there is the reality of the jungle. There are jaguars that follow the banks of a river, flocks of rainbow-colored parrots, bands of monkeys, snakes, caymans, and termites.

I'll let you make up your own mind about eating termites. Adelia says they taste like peanuts. Or was it popcorn? Anyway, she's adventurous. You can be too. Buy this book.