Between sets, a question floats through the salt air, half-joking but edged with truth: Who’s local now, anyway?

It’s a question that’s lingered in the air of plenty of coastal towns I’ve passed through, but it sticks in Santa Teresa – an immigrant’s town on a dusty stretch of Pacific coastline in Costa Rica. Everyone’s from somewhere else, and yet, everyone’s calling themselves local.

If you don’t see the issue with a foreigner who’s lived here for two months, two years, or even twenty calling themselves local, here’s an analogy: you wouldn’t call a papaya a local fruit of Australia just because it’s on the shelf at Woolies. So why would a foreigner call themselves a local of Costa Rica?

Just living somewhere doesn’t make you local. The word carries weight – it grants authority over a place. If you’re local, you’ve earned that authority; you know the rhythms, the culture, what’s best for the community. When outsiders claim that, everything warps.

To get a clearer picture, I spoke with two Tico surfers – Lorenzo Wickström and Esteban Chaves.

Before 2020, Santa Teresa still carried the essence of a hidden paradise — unpaved roads, small sodas, fishing boats, and jungle meeting ocean. A surf town with more potholes than people. There were no luxury villas or ‘wellness brands.’ You came here to surf, maybe to find yourself, maybe to get lost. Mostly, you came to belong — or at least to try.

Then came COVID-19 – and with it, the digital nomad wave. Costa Rica’s open borders and “Pura Vida” branding made it a magnet for those seeking both surf and stability.

Between 2021 and 2024, prices shot through the roof. Coastal gentrification drove a sharp rise in inequality. Ocean-view lots that once sold for seventy grand now sell for half a million. High-season rentals climb to $1,200 a night, with occupancy over 80%. Local wages? Around $1,200 a month. Meanwhile, local workers often compete with foreign freelancers willing to work off the books for less. So while locals got priced out of their own coastline, influencers called it ‘undiscovered.’ 

Foreign capital flooded in. Co-working spaces, boutique hotels, and fusion restaurants replaced fishing shacks and sodas. Locals who rented for $800 a month now face $2,000 leases. Many have moved inland, leaving their hometowns to Airbnb investors and real estate agents.

What used to be a fishing village is now part of the global digital nomad network. And while development brings money, it also brings a cultural tension – a quiet resentment that runs beneath the ‘Pura Vida’ smiles.

This is how paradise eats itself.

Still, Santa Teresa hasn’t gone the way of other overrun surf towns – at least not yet. There’s growth, yes, but no single corporation has taken over. “It’s still somehow managed to keep its shape,” Lorenzo, a Tico surfer, says. “But I don’t know if it can keep handling it.”

But let’s be clear: Buying land doesn’t make you local. Opening a boutique café doesn’t make you local. “Working remotely” from a surf town doesn’t make you local. You’re not a local if your cleaner can’t afford to live within 20 kilometers of your villa.

People love to say Pura Vida like it’s a personality trait, but the truth is, it’s a value system – one built on humility, patience, and respect. The opposite of what most people bring when they get off the plane.

You can live here for years and still be a tourist if your only goal is to extract: a lifestyle, a backdrop, a cheap worker. Gentrification here doesn’t wear suits. It wears linen. It talks about sustainability while bulldozing trees to build an infinity pool. There’s a special kind of arrogance that comes with ‘digital nomad’ culture – the idea that your remote income gives you a pass to rewrite local reality. It doesn’t.

You can feel the tension simmering under the surface. Out in the lineup, where the last scraps of real hierarchy survive, it gets clearer.

“When it comes to what happens in the ocean, it’s still very local,” Lorenzo says.

The beach is the only thing locals have left, the only thing they can regulate. “It really blew up around the pandemic,” Esteban says. “The people in charge said yes to everyone and everything. If you have money you don’t need to worry about regulations.”

But you can’t bribe your way into priority. Out there, respect isn’t optional – it’s the unwritten code that keeps the community intact.

“Bring good vibes, you get good vibes,” Esteban says.  “It’s a tourist town, so most people are friendly. You really have to be an asshole to get into trouble.”

“Smile, hoot on a local, and next thing you know you’re sitting at the peak with the locals” Lorenzo adds.

But act entitled – and if you’re lucky – a local will drop in on you with a cheeky grin. If you’re unlucky you’ll get whacked, leash ripped from your ankle, board totaled.  It’s not about aggression – it’s about balance. The sea sorts out what the town can’t.

And it all boils down to intention.

“Twenty years ago, people came because the place was special,” Lorenzo says. “They wanted to live simply, learn Spanish, surf, be part of it. Now people come for money, for opportunity. They create their own community with their own people, and when it comes to the supermarket, they don’t understand shit. Some still get it – others completely fuck the place up.”

If you move somewhere to belong, to contribute, to learn – that’s one thing. But if you move somewhere because it looks good on your Instagram grid or your portfolio or its cheap – congratulations, you’re just colonizing with better branding.

That’s the nuance everyone’s missing. You can belong without claiming. You can respect a place without pretending to own it.

The issue is that most of the people calling themselves locals aren’t. They’re consumers. Colonizers with surfboards. They show up for the view, take what they want, and leave when the next spot trends hotter.

So, are you here to extract? Or to connect? Have you done anything for the place, besides use it? If your only contribution to a town is occupying it, then you’re not a local – you’re the problem.

So yeah, go ahead and move to paradise. Fall in love with it. Live there, surf there, build something real. Protect the magic that brought you there instead of profiting off it. And for god’s sake leave the word “local” alone. It’s not a brand, or a badge you can buy. And the more you use it, the more it shows just how foreign you really are.

Paradise hasn’t been lost – it’s just getting leased out, one villa at a time.