Payin' for It in Costa Rica: Why Are Sex Tourists Getting Younger and Younger? Tim Rogers - Fusion
go to original February 5, 2015

Costa Rica’s sex tourism industry used to be the exclusive province of graying gringos groping their way through their final throbs of virility.

Elderly American sex tourists — or “mongers,” as they call themselves with a touch of pride — travel to San José for catch-and-release “fishing trips,” only not the kind you’re thinking of. Instead of heading out to sea, most mongers spend their days and nights sweating on barstools in Costa Rica’s landlocked capital, casting amorous lines at young sex workers in hopes of reeling in a curvy “Tica” in a low-cut cocktail dress.

San José’s Hotel Del Rey and Casino is sometimes called the most famous brothel in Costa Rica, or —in more breathless moments— the world. That superlative might be a bit of a stretch, but the Del Rey certainly has a far-reaching reputation as an international house of tryst.

Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica, but pimping is not. That makes meet-up places like the Del Rey and the neighboring Key Largo bar so popular. On any given night of the week, legal-age sex workers from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Panama, and occasionally Eastern Europe mix it up with beer-breathed gringos in their 50s and 60s and — thanks to the wonders of pharmaceutical advances — occasionally guys in their 70s or 80s.

But that scene is starting to change. Recently a newer generation of prurient 20- and 30-somethings are starting to elbow out the geriatrics at the bar. They aren’t exactly unsung heroes of their day, but these younger sex-minded tourists are breaking the generation barrier and tearing down old prejudices that have long made Costa Rica’s mongering scene an old white man’s game.

“The U.S., with its Puritan roots, looks down on this type of behavior. But it’s normal in many parts of the world,” says Michael, a 31-year-old sex-tourism proselytizer who brought five buddies to Costa Rica for a vacation in late January — his sixth such trip in seven years. “I have some friends back home who don’t like the idea, but the vast majority do, even if they think they’re not going to at first. Once they try it, they get over their preconceived notions pretty quickly.”

Read the rest at Fusion

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