When Juliet Owen-Nuttall and husband Daniel saw a TV programme showing a new life in the sunshine, they sold up and flew 5,416 miles to start afresh in Costa Rica. Here, Juliet, 48, from West Sussex, tells Sarah Ingram how their TV dream turned into a real-life horror show…
It was a wet and miserable February in 2015 and I was lying in bed with my husband, Daniel, when a TV show came on about moving to paradise in Costa Rica. Over the next hour, we were dazzled by the stunning scenery, endless sunshine and the carefree community, smiling their welcomes.
I was full of cold, approaching 40 and with both of us working 12-hour days, six days a week in our window-cleaning business, we had become disillusioned with the relentless grind of our lives. As I stared at the sunny scenes on TV, something in my head just clicked and I thought, ‘There must be more to life.’
Inspired by the documentary, we scoured the internet for work opportunities and properties for sale. We found a horse-riding business on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, which looked perfect, as I had grown up riding horses.
I thought, ‘I can do that,’ and had visions of riding along a beautiful beach with the wind blowing through my hair. We wanted a complete change of life and change of pace and this was it. Or at least so we thought.
We spent our entire £29,000 savings on the horse-riding business and in December 2015 put all our possessions into storage and packed our bags.
Although we were apprehensive about such a big move, we were also hugely excited.
However, things went wrong as soon as we touched down. We received an email from Eve*, the woman we’d bought our new business from, which said all eight of the horses had fallen sick and had to be slaughtered.
She quickly reassured us she’d help us find more horses, so we settled in our Airbnb in Playa Chiquita and just hoped we could sort things out.
However, every time we met with Eve things felt a bit off. We went through weeks of phone calls and meetings to try to find a solution, but it was futile. It was like a brick wall – and it made me feel terrible.
Eventually, we consulted a lawyer. When Eve found out she accused us of bullying her for answers. I just didn’t know what to do. We had nothing left to keep us afloat, as any cash we had left had gone on lawyer’s fees.
The business was on rented land, and all we had to show for our investment were some bits of tack and a few saddles.
By this point my mental health was in freefall. We were in paradise but there was nothing to enjoy about it. We’d sit on an idyllic beach with the white sand stretched out endlessly ahead of us and the waves gently lapping at our feet, but just felt so stressed and fearful about the future.
Eventually, an American acquaintance lent us some horses for our business – but with no money for accommodation, our only option was to pitch two tents in his stable. It was a smelly, disgusting and depressing place to live.
I frantically tried to keep it tidy but anything I put down would become immediately infested by cockroaches and other insects, while clothes got covered in mould. There was no hot water or proper electricity and because it was the dry season, when the city turns off the water, all we got was an hour a day of brown, undrinkable water.
We’d fill up a five-litre container of water from the stable tap, and that was all we had to wash our clothes, bathe and cook with. It got so bad we ended up washing in a mosquito-infested stream.
We were dirty, tired, covered in bites and living off rice and beans. Sometimes Daniel would go foraging for plantains, bananas and coconuts, but we often went hungry, and I lost a stone in weight very rapidly. Where the horses were next to us at night, we could hear them weeing and pooing. The ammonia smell was terrible. It was complete and utter destitution.
For four months we lived like this – a far cry from our dream of a new life in the sunshine.
We felt such failures, we didn’t even tell our families what had happened, but we’d lost everything. At times I felt as though the only course of action would be to end my life.
The stress affected our relationship, too, and Daniel and I stopped talking to each other. When we did speak, we would argue about money and blame each other for the situation we were in. After weeks of living in the stable, Daniel went up and down the streets, desperately knocking on doors asking people if they wanted any help in return for accommodation.
Eventually an American woman who ran eco-lodges offered us a bungalow at the back of her property with a proper bed, kitchen area and bathroom in return for house sitting.
We packed up our stuff, put it all in a wheelbarrow and within two hours we moved in. It was quite basic but felt like luxury.
However, by then I’d become quite ill. I had a lot of pain in my abdomen, was rapidly losing weight and had a constant fever. I was really scared. Once in a new lodge, my health continued to deteriorate and I couldn’t get out of bed for a month. There was no medical service nearby and we had no money to pay for it, anyway. I tried the juice of a local fruit called noni, as it was said to have anti-inflammatory properties, which seemed to help a little.
After four months, I felt well enough to get back on a plane to the UK for the urgent medical help I so badly needed. I moved in with my parents and saw a GP, who told me to go straight to hospital.
It emerged I had a massive infection in my womb that had been there for months. I was warned I might never have children naturally, which was a huge shock.
Although everything already felt hopeless, worse was to come, as my dad, who had prostate cancer, died at home on January 11.
What’s really sad is that while he was downstairs, drawing his last breath, Daniel and I were arguing on Skype because he’d told me he wasn’t coming back to the UK. He was looking after the animals and helping build up the eco-lodge business.
It was a real blow. I was traumatised and severely depressed. Our relationship was over and I had lost my dad. Daniel later told me that when we got off the phone that day, he went surfing, and sat on the board and just cried. He realised he didn’t want to lose me, so he came back for Dad’s funeral two weeks later.
After, we sat by the seafront in Brighton and talked about what to do next. We decided we might be able to salvage something and I agreed to go back out to the place that had nearly killed me.
However, our plans were scuppered again just four months later after my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer – I knew I had to return home to be by her side. This time Daniel was with me and we came back to the UK for good.
Weirdly, once our nightmare in paradise was over, good things started to come our way. In 2019 I discovered I was pregnant, and in June the next year our beautiful daughter Lyra was born. Mum recovered from her cancer.
Now, I work helping other women as a fertility wellbeing practitioner. My experience made me realise how amazing the UK is in terms of our NHS, our welfare and our legal system. We don’t have the weather and beautiful coastline, but we have the infrastructure to keep people safe.
Both Daniel and I were traumatised for a long time. Do I regret going to Costa Rica? I did for a very long time. I was very bitter and upset. But not anymore. One day I will travel again.
*name has been changed.
Source: Read Full Article
