Coffee in Costa Rica

It all has to do with location, location, location.

When I was in my late teens, I had a bad experience with tequila. I was at a get-together with friends and someone broke out a bottle of the stuff, likely swiped from their parents' liquor cabinet.

I had never been so drunk, never so sick from drinking alcohol as I was that night. And after that experience, I could never drink tequila again without immediately being sick.

It didn't matter if I was completely sober and took a shot as my first drink. It went down; it came right back up. And so, I avoided tequila. I had a gag reflex from the stuff and it wasn't worth going through vomiting on it.

In 1989, shortly after DW and I had started dating, she went on a European trip with a friend from high school. The very day that she left, her best friend, Catheleen, visited me at work (I was working at Black's Cameras in the Merivale Mall) and invited me to join her and two other women for a week in Cancun, Mexico.

Without hesitation, I said yes.

On our second evening after arriving, the four of us went from our resort into town to look for a restaurant, and we were enticed into going to one by a man who was offering free tequila shots. I said I was up for going inside but I declined the tequila, explaining to my friends that the liquor and I don't do well together.

Egged on by Catheleen and the man at the door, I was handed a shot and urged to shoot it back. "Watch," I said, "it'll go down but will come right back up." I took the shot outside and stood back so that I didn't spew in the doorway.

The tequila went down and stayed down.

The rest of the night, we were doing tequila slammers and dancing up a storm. I don't even remember the food but I remember we had a lot of fun, and I kept the tequila down.

We all had terrible hangovers the next morning but at least I didn't throw up. And now, I have no problem with tequila in margaritas.

A couple of years ago, I had to stop drinking coffee because doing so would sent my heart rate racing skyward. I had noticed after a couple of cups—usually when having breakfast at a restaurant but even at home—my heart would start pounding and my rate would surpass 100 bpm.

One time, after having breakfast at Gezellig, in Westboro, and enjoying marvellous coffee, my smart watch buzzed while DW and I were driving home. My watch warned me that whatever exercise I was performing, it was time to take a break.

I was only sitting behind the wheel but my heart rate was 140 bpm.

For the rest of the day, when we reached home, I couldn't function. I lay on the sofa, my nerves twitching, my heart pounding, and my head throbbing, and I decided that I had to stop drinking coffee.

I loved coffee: it no longer loved me.

Every so often, afterward, I would permit myself a small cup of coffee. I'd have one no more than once every few weeks to one every few months, just to satisfy my craving. But I wouldn't have more than one cup. Even then, my heart rate would increase.

When DW and I went to Costa Rica in 2024, I told her that I was going to risk the effects of drinking coffee. There was no way I was going to visit one of the best coffee-growing countries on the planet and not enjoy a cup, consequences be damned.

I drank one cup each morning, with breakfast, and that was it. My heart rate went up a bit but never broke 100 bpm. Except for that one day, when we visited a coffee co-op, and I had a large ice latte. I followed that coffee up, at lunch, with another cup from a coffee roastery.

My heart rate jumped to about 124 and I became jittery, but that was the worst of it.

Photo: Perplexity

On this trip, just this past January, I vowed that I wouldn't break my one-small-cup-for-breakfast rule. Each morning, with breakfast, I had a single cup. Before I drank it, I measured my heart rate, which was generally in the low to mid 70s.

As I drank the coffee and relaxed through breakfast, I'd check my heart rate on my watch. It never climbed, and one time my heart rate even dropped to below 70 bpm.

It's got to be location.

I had some really good cups of coffee on this trip to Costa Rica and we even brought a bag home with us. As with the coffee we bought from the roasters in 2024, I plan to have one cup each day.

And maybe, just maybe, I've found the balance for enjoying coffee again. Or, I'll have to move to Costa Rica.

Happy Tuesday!