¡Pura Vida!

It's time to pick up where I left off with my adventures in Costa Rican Spanish.  I probably should have started with this one, but it's never too late so let's get to it.

Pura vida is practically the national slogan of Costa Rica.  Pura vida is more than just words, it's a way of life. It's all about taking things easy and just enjoying life.  Kinda like "Don't worry, be happy".  Here are the basics of how it's used.

Hola mae, ¿cómo va?  ¿Pura vida?
Pura vida mae

Hi dude, how are you?  It's all good?
It's all good dude

By the way, mae is pronounced "my".  And tuanis (two-juan-knees) is considered a synonym of pura vida.

¿Cómo está mae? 
Tuanis

How are you dude?
Great

If your Spanish is good or you're up for a challenge, here's a good (and relatively short) read about tuanis.  But if you want some insight from the experts then click here to learn more cool Costa Rican slang.

Let's move on to the next topic.

If you happen to be driving in Costa Rica, there is no shortage of parking, which I know as estacionamento, but in Costa Rica it's known as parqueo.

Here's an interesting street sign:

At first I thought "Is this a typo?".    I had never seen the word virar before, but it's meaning (thanks to the sign) was pretty obvious:

No virar a la izquierda
No left turn

This jumped out at me because I'm used to seeing signs that say "No girar a la izquierda".  But it's always nice to have options right?


While walking through downtown San Jose I saw a shoe store named Cachos.

Cachos is not only the name of the store, but it's also slang for shoes.  When I confirmed it's meaning with my tico friend he also told me they use caballo for jeans and chema for shirt.

Like any other city San Jose has it's share of corner stores and in Costa Rica these corner stores are called pulperías.

I was fortunate enough to get a candid shot of Costa Rica's new presidente.  He just happened to be campaigning downtown.  If you're curious about the details of the election, here's an article, in Spanish of course.

The last thing I'm going to talk about in this post is Costa Rican plata.  Plata is slang for dinero.  If you want to learn some more slang words for dinero, you can read my post Más minutos menos lana.

Costa rican money is called colones.  Here are some pictures:

I love the currency of Costa Rica, it's very colorful.  Way more fun than our boring American dollars.

That's it for today.  I think one more post will wrap up my Costa Rican adventures, so stay tuned.  If you missed the other posts, you can find them here:

1.  Tiene que cancelar la entrada
2.  ¿Vas a poner la maría?

¡hasta la próxima!