I can't remember all the previous discussions on this thread relating to Costa Rica, or if anyone here had been, but I recently returned from a 3 week trip there. I made a point of passing through Santa Teresa, and in my view this was the worst place she could have gone. It is full of American surfers and very small- just one long street running parallel to the beach. I was only there for a few days but I would imagine those there for longer would definitely become familiar faces.
There are so many other places in CR where it would be easy to lay low, as there are lots of villages and islands off the beaten track. Also, as someone else said, it is very easy to leave. She could have headed north and taken a minibus across the border to Nicaragua, with access to the rest of central America, or she could have headed south through Panama and onto Columbia. There is no way I'd have been hanging around in a popular American tourist resort if I'd killed someone and was on the run!
Edited to add- it's also ridiculously expensive! I couldn't believe the prices. It may have been different when she was there but all the Europeans were shocked. In Santa Teresa in particular, it was all western style cafes and restaurants and you'd be looking at about 20 dollars for a main course. A dorm room in a hostel was 15 to 20 dollars a night without breakfast or towels. Lots of backpackers arrived in CR, saw the prices and were straight back out again, hotfooting it to Nicaragua!
I would not be going to Nicaragua! It's extremely unsafe; it always has been. I have never been more spooked in a country. It always had an extremely high murder and assault rate, predatory, and a woman, in hiding, with no recourse to law enforcement.....terrible idea. People are desperate there, for historical reasons. I shudder.
It's a country with a lot that's random: you could get yourself in trouble just because.
A classmate is currently vice president of Nicaragua. She's known for torturing/getting people tortured.
There is a reason travel to Nicaragua is strongly not advised by the State Department. Dunno for certain, but I don't believe there's an American Embassy there at this time. This would make Americans VERY exposed.
IMO It would be smarter for her to have gone to the Atlantic coast if in Central America. The folks towards the Pacific don't have a lot to do with the folks on the Atlantic (they are a different ethnic group, e.g. the descendants of shipwrecked slaves). She could have gone to the jungle....
She could also have disappeared into a large city: Rio might have worked. There would have been more opportunity there to scrape together a living. She could have taught all the yoga she wanted, with no one guessing her history.
On an island or whatever, she'd have stood out too much in areas where the population is largely local. A Caucasian American would not be exactly incognito.
Guatemala might have worked. But everywhere, she'd have no recourse to law enforcement if she was the victim of a crime.
Even pariah countries might have made no bones about returning a criminal to the US. I mean, what would it do for them to protect a murderer? With abundant media attention, no less? Why would any country want to harbor such a person? And there was a bounty?
Instead, she goes to CR, lol. Of course, she had to go to the most Americanized Central American country: more English speakers than elsewhere, excellent relationships with western countries, much more cosmopolitan than others. She had very little chance to blend in there, but she sure wasn't willing to get out of her comfort zone!
If ever you want to blend in in a foreign country....you'd be at a serious disadvantage if you didn't know a language other than English. You'd be flagellating yourself that you cut Spanish in high school. IMO what's-her-name decided she had to be with English speakers. Overall, she had a sense of entitlement about her comfort that played out in where she chose to escape to. And, natch, US and CR LE picked this up and were able to guess where she went.
The moral of this story: IMO start learning languages in first grade. It may save your life. It will allow you to tolerate things that you aren't familiar with, and you can easily be a target, merely for not being willing to speak anything other than English. You can look super entitled, as Caitlin was.