It’s hard to believe that my last major overseas trip was right before the world utterly transformed, less than a year and a half ago.
It was January 2020: for six months, I had planned on traveling to Costa Rica to get a certification to be a yoga teacher. I was pursuing the certificate partly for my own self-development, but also in part because I would like to one day integrate yoga with some future teaching goals.
I spent a little over three weeks in Costa Rica. It was my first major vacation in a while. Although I was busy with my studies during the week, on the weekends I explored the spectacular jungles around Uvita, on the country’s southern Pacific coast.
I was fascinated by the flora and fauna. The flowers were stunning. Many relatives of the orchid grew wild. I also saw relatives of common garden flowers like zinnias and petunias growing like weeds around the town. We walked past mango trees (just coming into blossom by the time I left), guava trees, elegant banana trees, coconut trees, and endless papaya trees that grow wild and free in Costa Rica, cropping up like weeds everywhere. The fresh air, green, and overall sense of life was invigorating.
On my last night (had I known the world was about to shut down and change forever, I might have stayed for three “last nights”), I stayed about an hour outside of the San Jose airport in the mountains overlooking the city, near Poas volcano, in a village called Altura. While I never saw the volcano (again, had I known what was about to happen, and had I known the region was so beautiful, I would have stayed another day or two), I was treated to spectacular sunrise views that I will never forget. I also loved the fresh, cool mountain air, which was so welcome after three weeks in the jungle, and a visit to a coffee farm that morning, which had an unreal view of a verdant valley and waterfall.
I also created a series of three videos on my YouTube channel about this trip, which you can view here: part 1, part 2 and part 3.
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