The pearl of Costa Rica
Canadian shares memories of bar she started that has become a hub for locals and tourists
PLAYA POTRERO, COSTA RICA— Pearl More parks her 5-foot-3 frame on a bar stool in her local watering hole.
She looks fetching in mini white shorts, red T-shirt, and matching pearl necklace and earrings.
She orders her favourite beer, Costa Rica’s Imperial cerveza, and sips it in ladylike fashion. Soon enough, she’s got company. “I got a good compliment one night,” she tells me on my recent visit there. “A patron walked into this bar, spotted me and said, ‘Don’t she look like she’s 35!’ ”
Not bad, since Pearl is a spunky 85-yearold.
Pearl is a minor legend in these parts. The bar, La Perla, is named after her and, for years, the landmark on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast has been a meeting place for Canadian tourists fleeing the harsh winters back home.
La Perla is so popular among this crowd, it’s known locally as “the Canadian Embassy.”
And Pearl reigns supreme. “They call me the Queen of Potrero,” says the petite blond, so named after the town of Potrero, in Guanacaste province.
Nearby is Playa Potrero, one of about 300 beaches that dot Costa Rica’s breathtaking Pacific and Caribbean coasts.
Unlike the more developed beaches that draw the surfing crowd, Playa Tamarindo, Playa Grande, Playa Avellanas, to name a few, Playa Potrero is laid back.
Stroll the quiet beach in the early morning hours and watch the local fishermen at work.
Later, take in the stunning sunsets farther up the beach at Bahia Del Sol hotel. At happy hour, order yourself a Cacique guaro sour. The bartender here makes the best around.
But it’s not Costa Rica’s national drink that intoxicated Pearl so much that she’s been coming here every year since 1978.
“That old sun up there,” she says. “That’s what brought me here, and that’s what’s gonna keep me here. Every day. Sunshine.”
Costa Rica is close to the equator, and the sun does shine, for about 12 hours a day. The dry season is from December to May, with temperatures into the 30s. It’s even hotter in April and May.
You really can’t blame Pearl; she was born in a tiny settlement called, Winter, Sask. in 1930.
In the late 1970s, Pearl, now retired, heard that Canadians were travelling to Costa Rica and investing in land. She did the same, buying three “cheap lots.”
Potrero wasn’t much back then, just pasture and a few houses. “There was nothing. Nada. There was some corn fields, some cotton.”
To fill the void, she started feeding the tourists, “gringos” she calls them, who came to Costa Rica on charter boats to fish.
“I used to feed a lot of fishermen and they go out early. I had a pretty big house with a dining room and kitchen. I cooked bacon and eggs and hashbrowns, Canadian-style.
“I was always open, seven days a week. They could always have coffee, or toast, and then they went fishing. I had cold beer all the time. If they wanted one at six in the morning, they got it.”
Pretty soon, Pearl’s makeshift diner became too popular; at times, she was serving up to 60 breakfasts.
By 1980, she secured the appropriate licences and opened La Perla on a nearby commercial lot. The place wasn’t fancy. One stove, one refrigerator. But the food, says Canadian regular Greg Myers, is what kept customers coming back.
Canadians keep returning to the area, he says, because of the proximity to the beach and the tight-knit community.
“We’re just very impressed by how warm and friendly people are. We feel very welcomed,” Myers says.
“Everybody wants to get back,” adds his wife, Gladys.
Five years ago, Pearl sold her namesake bar to a former customer. “At 80, I said, ‘I’ve had it.’ ” But she’s not done with the sunshine of Costa Rica and plans to stay here permanently.
“I meet more friends and people down here,” she says.
What will she miss most about Canada? Her grandkids and great-grandkids, who live in British Columbia.
But not the winters, she says. As the locals say, “pura vida.”
Kas Roussy is a Toronto freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter at @kasroussy, and on Instagram at kasroussy59.