Carlos García Portal, better known as Charly Sinewan, is a Spanish youtuber, with 1.4 million subscribers, who has been traveling the world on a motorcycle for 14 years.
Fate brought him to Costa Rica, specifically to the North Pacific, where he spared no adjectives to describe some of its areas, including Santa Teresa.His tour of this tourist destination on the Nicoya Peninsula was published three days ago on his YouTube channel as well as Instagram and TikTok.There he highlighted not only the scenic beauty of the site. He also spoke with some foreign residents who have made Santa Teresa their home.
Reconfiguring the social landscape
No less important, Charly Sinewan talked about how surfing has reconfigured the anatomy of this town in the province of Puntarenas and also famous for hosting the summer home of supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
In his full video on his YouTube channel, the 47-year-old native of Madrid can be seen visiting Manzanillo and Montezuma beaches.He even spoke briefly about Cabuya Island where there is a cemetery. This piece of island land is located between the Cabo Blanco National Park and Montezuma.
The other side of Santa Teresa
The countless beauties of Santa Teresa have a “dark” side, according to what the Spanish newspaper El País published three weeks ago.With the title The dark side of Costa Rica’s tourist paradise, the outlet ensures that the area is experiencing a phenomenon called gentrification.
It is nothing more than the displacement of its original population by another with greater purchasing power.In this case, they are European, South American, North American and Israeli emigrants, who have raised the cost of living in the town.
This opinion by the influencer was published on January 7th:
“Almost overnight, Natalie Harker saw how the rent for her house in Santa Teresa (Cóbano, Costa Rica) increased from 375 euros to 844 (125%).The old fishing village located in the northeast of the country, where this 38-year-old Colombian has lived for the last eight years, had been one of the favorite destinations of international tourism for years”.
In 2016, an article in The New York Times called it ‘the next Tulum’ for ‘its pristine beaches and delicious seafood.But the Covid-19 pandemic accentuated the arrival of European and North American emigrants, who sought to establish themselves in idyllic paradises as investors or who could work from anywhere in the world where they had an Internet connection”.
“As a result, the cost of living in this surf town on the Costa Rican Pacific coast has skyrocketed. This has meant a displacement of the local inhabitants and Latin American workers to other municipalities or to cheaper housing”.
