Today we visited La Fortuna Waterfall, a pineapple tour, and Baldi Hot Springs. The pineapple tour was pretty cool, and you could tell the people running it really cared about what they do, with a ton of knowledge about how everything grows and works. That said, with the pineapple lollipops and everything priced in dollars, it was somewhat designed with tourists in mind more than locals, which is not necessarily a bad thing but worth noting.

That actually gets at why younger Costa Ricans are probably moving toward tourism over farming. The tour guide mentioned that the physical labor is so hard on their backs that they bring in workers from Nicaragua who need the jobs. That stuck with me because it shows that farming is not just less appealing, it is very hard work that locals are actively stepping away from. Tourism is cleaner, more social, and probably more consistent money. On the visitor side, younger people are naturally drawn to experiences like waterfalls and hot springs because they are exciting when you are young. As you get older, you tend to get more out of actually learning how something works, like a real farm tour, than just doing the fun tourist version of it.

The risk is that if everyone shifts toward tourism, the actual farming gets left behind. Costa Rica’s identity is deeply tied to its agriculture, coffee, pineapple, and chocolate, and if the next generation is not interested in maintaining that, the country becomes more dependent on outside labor and imported goods. There is also the risk that farms slowly turn into performances for visitors rather than real working operations, which is something worth paying attention to as tourism keeps growing here.