Pura vida
Hello, goodbye, thanks, you're welcome, I'm fine, and 'decent bloke' — Costa Rica's national phrase, holding down six grammatical jobs at once.
Related lesson: Costa Rican Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
—¿Cómo le va? —Pura vida, gracias a Dios.
'How's it going?' 'All good, thank God.'
—Gracias por todo. —¡Pura vida!
'Thanks for everything.' 'No problem!'
Ese mae es muy pura vida, siempre ayuda.
That guy is really sound — he always helps out.
What It Actually Does
Forget the translation — pura vida is defined by its slots, not its meaning. It is a greeting (¡Pura vida! on walking in), a farewell (pura vida, nos vemos), a thank-you, a “you’re welcome”, the standard answer to ¿cómo está?, and an invariable adjective applied to people and plans (una fiesta muy pura vida). “Pure life” is what the words say and almost never what the phrase is doing.
Where It Comes From
The commonly cited account traces it to Pura vida (1956), a Mexican comedy whose hapless hero — played by Antonio Espino, “Clavillazo” — repeats the phrase as his catchphrase through every disaster. The film played in Costa Rica, the tag stuck, and by the 1970s it was thoroughly national. That chain is the standard story rather than a documented one; what is certain is that it is a twentieth-century arrival, not the ancient indigenous philosophy the tourist brochures like to imply.
How Natives Use It
Constantly, and flatly. Ticos use it with each other far more than they use it at visitors, in registers from a text message to a radio phone-in, and the tone is usually low-key rather than sunny — it is the verbal equivalent of a nod. It stacks happily with the rest of the shelf: “Diay, pura vida mae” is a complete Costa Rican sentence containing almost no information.
Common Pitfall
Over-deployment. Visitors who have read one guidebook say it in every third sentence and with far too much enthusiasm, which is how a pleasantry turns into a costume. It also does not replace real courtesy: buenos días on entering a shop and con mucho gusto after thanks still matter — see the Costa Rican Spanish hub for the rest of the politeness register. And keep it out of bad news — answering pura vida to a funeral notice is exactly as odd as it sounds.