I’ve always known this moment would arrive. The moment where I’d lose my lifeline, my money maker, my most valuable material belonging: my computer. As I was hunched over my keyboard, typing away in a minuscule dingy room in the Costa Rican jungle, my device simply turned off, never to turn on again.

Normally, this would be a bummer, but not a big deal. I’d probably give it a few healthy taps and cuss words, seeing if it would turn back on, dig deep into my bag of computer tricks picked up in similar situations over the years, and then, finally, give up and head to the Apple store that afternoon to say goodbye to this ancient eight-year-old clunker to buy the newest, fancy product.

But when you are on a remote corner of Costa Rican coast, suddenly this minor problem blossoms into a bigger ordeal. I was in the world famous surf town of Pavones, far from any Apple store, or any computer technician who knows how to work on Apple products in a country where PCs rule the land. After doing lots of consultation with my local contacts, researching online, and contacting repair shops, I realized I was really in a pickle.

The repair shops were far, expensive to get to by taxi, or literally an all day adventure on local buses, the technicians admitted they didn’t work with Macs and couldn’t guarantee anything, the local “computer guy,” who is a university engineering student (the closest thing they got in Pavones), didn’t have the right screwdriver to open up the device, and the closest store that sold Macbooks was in San Jose, a 7-hour bus ride for an extremely marked up product with a Spanish keyboard. No options were ideal. I was about ready to cut my trip short and catch a flight back home to remedy my woes.

But, as is often the case when you travel, there’s always a way to work things out. I ended up borrowing a basic PC laptop from a traveling Australian surfer that held me over for a week. When he left, I went into Pavones Facebook groups and found a gringo ex-pat who was willing to rent me his piece of shit laptop that, to give you an idea of its state, was years behind on its updates and still running with Internet Explorer (yikes). That computer ended up being a waste of money and I pieced together the rest of the time in Costa Rica with my phone and another borrowed PC in San Jose until I connected with my Mom in Honduras to snag her computer, which is my current solution. Things just tend to work out when you travel. How does the saying go, fortune favors the bold?

I’ve always known this day was coming because I’ve really been pushing my luck. I deserved this. As someone who works remote, it’s best to stay in relatively developed areas with access to reliable power, good wifi, and, if need be, computer repair stores. Working remote is a privilege, after all, which I constantly remind myself. But I, instead, have taken my trusty ol’ (now deceased) Macbook to car-less villages in the Indian Himalayas, off-the-grid fishing outposts in Madagascar with essentially no wifi (but surprisingly good cell signal), and South Africa and Lebanon, two countries that share the glorious issue of daily power outages. That said, I’ve always made it work. Rarely did I ever miss work due to technical difficulties, which did however require lots of diligence in testing and planning on my end.

When I was departing Panama and heading to Pavones, one of the buildings in Bocas del Toro was up in flames and nearly burned to the ground. It was a weird, ominous departure, drifting away as a city billowed with smoke in the distance. It was foreboding. So whether the laptop that fried soon thereafter was the result of a bad omen or simply the inevitable degradation of an old computer, in Costa Rica my luck ran out, which, at the end of the day, wasn’t so bad. It resulted in lots of rescheduling headaches and a few late nights, but within a few days I was back on track. Things could have been worse.

But aside from my computer woes, life in Costa Rica ain’t too shabby. It’s hard to complain when you are “stuck” without a computer in a paradise like Pavones. The little village in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast is known as one of the longest waves in the world. Lots of expats gravitate to the area, and some of their Costa Rican offspring are now well-known professional surfers. Sitting at the estuary of a river that forms the famous waves, the village abounds with talkative parrots and the occasional stoic sloth. And despite all the global surfing fanfare, Pavones, for whatever reason, has managed to remain a sleepy, small village compared to similar destinations in Costa Rica. The fact that it’s about the farthest point in the country away from the international airport might be working in its favor.

I didn’t leave the town once during my stay. I only went as far as my feet would take me. I got up with the early Central American sunrise, went for many surfs, did my work, cooked food, and went for strolls around town in my atrociously worn, paper-thin flip flops. That’s all there is to do, anyway. Other than that, the grocery prices gave me sticker shock, an irate local in the water declared that I am a “fucking asshole” for what he disputably perceived as a breach of surf etiquette, and I enjoyed bathing in the unique intonation of Costa Rican Spanish, which interestingly lacks the classic Spanish roll of the r.

I caught several waves that I will certainly never forget, and after feeling a bit dispirited by the tourist vibes of Bocas del Toro, Pavones was a breath of fresh air.