For most people, a trip away to Costa Rica sounds like pure and utter bliss; but for remote workers, it’s a slightly different story – if you’re in San José, at least. San José is the busy, not particularly attractive-looking capital of this wonderful country and like most capital cities in the Central and South America regions, it’s best to use it solely as a springboard destination to the rest of your trip. But if you’re stuck here when you’re working remotely, you’re going to face a problem or two getting things done.
Walking around central San José, you’re likely to be overwhelmed by the noise and the atmosphere of the streets. It’s not exactly ‘pleasant’ pottering conditions, with loud traffic and street vendors echoing through the industrial-style walkways. Remote workers will be looking for an oasis from this uninspiring hustle and bustle, a place where they can curl up in a corner with fast WiFi and the bliss of silence, where they can absorb the culture of the country whilst getting on with the pressing task at hand. And what will they find? Slim pickings, to be honest. It’s an upward struggle to find a suitable place in this town.
Start your walk around and realise the very scarcity of coffee shops in the city centre, to start with. Then peak inside some local ‘sodas’ that seem to serve coffee and notice that their windows are so open and the local men are so starey that you don’t feel comfortable with the idea of getting your laptop out. And then, beginning to falter, you try the slightly larger, more westernised restaurants with coffee and you discover the biggest atrocity of them all – that nowhere in this city seems to have WiFi. The centre of San José is a communicatively barren land. The only place that ticks the other boxes of atmosphere and great coffee, the Club Union café, doesn’t even have it and it’s heart-breaking. (Of course, if for some magical reason you don’t need WiFi to complete your work, end your search here. This beautiful glass-windowed café overlooking the colonial buildings of Parque El Carmen with a fountain by its side is a precious slice of calm amongst the city’s incessant noise (apart from it’s lack of electrical sockets, that is). But sadly, most of us remote workers do need to connect to the rest of the world, so your search continues.
What I would say is though, no matter how desperate the struggle may feel at this point, don’t give up and go to McDonalds like I did. A Mc-Cappuccino is not the famous Costa Rican coffee that you’ve been dreaming about and although they do have WiFi, there are better ways to get it. If you’re stuck in the city centre, head to a local-style hotel like Hotel Fleur de Lys. The incorporated restaurants of hotels like this have to have WiFi because of their guests, so they are the best way to get a local experience whilst actually being able to work in the city centre. Hotel Fleur de Lys still offers a traditional cultural experience, with a leafy courtyard café and real Costa Rican coffee, and it even has the holy grail of power sockets, the second biggest struggle for remote workers in San José. Set just off of the main streets of the city centre, this is the closest to a tranquil yet cultural oasis that you’re going to find. The only problem is that the café closes between 2 and 4 pm for a siesta, so remember this before you go.
But if you can move out of the city centre to work, do. And your first stop should be the university district. This area is set up for students who, like you, need a plug and WiFi when they work, so it’s much easier to find accommodating cafés here. If you’re not desperate to see traditional Costa Rica but to see instead how the young moving and shaking locals do it, get a taxi and head straight for Casa Manga, a comic book store slash café (slash club by night, apparently) right by the famous San Pedro shopping mall. Don’t write it off because of the comic book theme. This place is incredibly cool and buzzing, with a fantastically quirky, work-friendly vibe. The comic book shop is separate from the rest of the café, which serves western favourites like Chai Tea lattes with a Central American twist. The place is set out as a collection of cosy, connecting rooms filled with armchairs, good lighting and good (but unobtrusive) music. There’s even a romantic courtyard garden which still gets WiFi and serves the most delicious sushi in San José (although admittedly it’s the only place where I saw sushi in the city) and the presence of other people working will help keep you motivated throughout the day.
But, of course, the struggle to find a good place to work remotely in San José is real. And in a nation’s capital city, it really shouldn’t be this hard. What helps though is the fact that the situation gets better when you move away from the capital to the country’s other towns on your trip. I promise you there will be better WiFi in suitably kooky yet local-style cafés in La Fortuna, Monteverde and more. You just have to get out of San José to find them – which is for the best, anyway. The beaches and the pristine cloud forest await you, so get yourself and your laptop out of this concrete jungle as quickly as you can.
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