Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Best Local Hangout in Quepos
Best Weekly Event, and Best Bartender(s)
DOS LOCOS
VERA JONES
If life gives you limes make margaritas.
Jimmy Buffett
If Jimmy Buffet landed his private airplane at the Quepos Airport today, Dos Locos is just
the perfect kind of Margaritaville bar Jimmy Buffet would head to.
When a name search company suggested 'Dos Locos' for the bar that Vera and her late
husband Don were about to open, it just seemed right. Dos Locos means 'two crazy people'
and it was the perfect name for two gringos from California who had never run a bar before,
and certainly not in Costa Rica. Vera and Don hoped that like the area's Jesus Christ Lizard,
they'd somehow manage to 'walk on water' and pull off a minor miracle.
What they had going for them was a passion for meeting and serving local people, and
so Dos Locos opened its doors in downtown Quepos in 1994. And it wasn't as if Vera was
entirely new to running a business. Growing up in small town California, her mother had
managed her own grocery enterprise, supporting Vera and her brothers.
“We were all part of the business,” Vera recalls. “We all had our chores.” Her brothers
oversaw orders and delivery, while Vera looked after the accounts — good training for her
later career in corporate accounting. Knowing her mother had been successful in 1940s
America — hardly an easy time for a woman on her own — inspired Vera. “I think because
I grew up knowing about business, this is not foreign to me. I never dreamed that I would
own a bar or a restaurant, but Mom did it and I can do it too.”
She and Don moved to Quepos to recapture some of that small town spirit that she re-
membered from childhood. Also, having lived in Recife, Brazil for a few years while her
husband taught school, she knew she wanted to be in the tropics and missed the sort of com-
munity where everyone knew everybody else and had a sense of belonging.
