Weekend in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica
Excerpt from a recently published article in International Living Magazine.
Over a year ago, I left the U.S. on a one-way ticket to Costa Rica for $131. Having spent the prior 15 months locked away in a tiny room during the height of the pandemic, I had an invitation to come to Costa Rica and live for three months while overseeing rental properties for some friends in Playa Grande. My first thought was that it would be a nice change of experience, perhaps a reset for my overtaxed nervous system, a season along the Guanacaste coast in beautiful Costa Rica. Living in such a manner with all of your worldly possessions in one bag requires a great amount of flexibility and willingness to move about with uncertainty. This, for me, is where the adventure and the freedom come with living such a way of life. As of this writing, I have now been living in Central America for over a year as a nomad and expat. I’ve enjoyed leisurely seasons along the Guanacaste Coast in Playa Grande, with its laidback surf town vibe and epic sunsets, and alternatively, I have lived for months in the mountains within the Central Valley, surrounded by hectares of coffee during the rainy season.
View from the Road
November marks the end of the six months of rainy season or winter in Costa Rica. As the U.S. makes its way into the cold of winter things are drying out here and the sun is coming up around 5am. Each morning I walk out to this view of trees to sit with my morning coffee and watch the various birds beginning their day.
Field Notes
“And so it is that most people have no idea how beautiful the world is and how much magnificence is revealed in the tiniest things, in some flower, in a stone, in tree bark, or in a birch leaf. The grown-ups, going about their business and worries, and tormenting themselves with all kinds of details, gradually lose the perspective for these riches that children, when they are attentive and good, soon notice and love with their whole heart. And yet the greatest beauty would be achieved if everyone remained in this regard always like attentive and good children, simple and pious in sensitivities, and if people did not lose the capacity for taking pleasure as intensely in a birch leaf or a peacock’s feather or the wing of a hooded crow as in a mighty mountain or a splendid palace. What is small is not small in itself, just as that which is great is not—great. A great and eternal beauty passes through the whole world, and it is distributed fairly over that which is small and that which is large; for in such important and essential matters, no injustice is to be found on earth.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
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