5 Glimpses of a Detour
I’m so glad we hated Sámara. It was supposed to be our last stop of the three-week journey across the “land of pura vida”, a relaxing beach spot to “escape from it all” and recharge before heading home. But a bad experience ruined the vibe for us so we abandoned ship two days early and went astray. If Sámara had just been okay and not terrible, we probably would have stayed.
Instead we ended up somewhere completely unplanned that kinda felt like winning a sweepstakes, at a house that looked like no place I had ever been.
Perhaps better suited for a FOMO-inducing Instagram post — which I swear is half the reason people travel anywhere — but instead I will share it with my three whole subscribers here.
I love dwellings like this that mold into the Earth. Maybe my ancient DNA just misses cave life and this is the modern form of it. The house is carved out of the actual mountainside on one end with a full wall of glass sliding doors on the other, a deck wrapping around the back side facing an infinity pool and tub that were both fed thermal waters from volcanic springs.
This region was all about its volcanoes — four of them could be seen from the mirador (lookout point) just in front of the house: Miravalles, Rincón de la Vieja, Tenorio, and also Arenal on the clearest days.
Less thrilling than previous adventures — viper hunting, sea turtle nesting, getting chased by a motorcycle — but perfect for a “total escape from it all,” and it was just an hour from Liberia airport where we would fly out in three days.
Here are five glimpses of our time there. Buckle up, I kinda got carried away and went on some tangents. But in the spirit of detours, let’s get into it.
1. Meeting Lorenzo (Homo sapiens)
Usually I’d scroll right past a place like this when exploring lodging options, like walking past a Ferrari shop on my way to buy a Honda, but the owner named Lorenzo (name changed for privacy, not that this is a big exposé or anything) — an Italian guy from Miami building out his apparent dream project on 400 hectares of land outside Rincón de la Vieja Volcano National Park — cut us a deal we couldn't resist after we reached out about a promotion and booked directly instead of on the listing website.
Most parts of the wider property weren’t complete yet — the reception, and the clubhouse, and bocce ball courts, and a lazy river with thermal waters he said would be built. And pretty much everything else. And the drive up was extremely rugged for a luxurious housing project. So maybe that explains the discount.
Works for me. My inner caveman will take a little slice of paradise that looks like this no matter what surrounds it, except maybe an oil field or nuclear site or something.
Lorenzo was an interesting fellow. I’m always fascinated by the wide variety of ways humans live and survive, and the idea of someone somehow landing in a place like this where they are carving a bunch of houses out of a mountain is a pretty unique one.
It was easy to get to know him. He had a big personality with a thick Italian accent and talked a lot (he made a point of mentioning that he’s Italian and that he talks a lot a few times within minutes of meeting him). It felt like I could ask him anything and he’d respond with a sentence that wouldn’t end until you said something, which is fun for someone who enjoys brain-picking as a hobby. For things to do, he listed off a bunch of recommendations to explore in the area, following each with “why not?” I pulled out my phone at one point to jot them down, and he gestured for me to look at him and goes, “Oh I’m going to need your full attention. I talk a lot.”
He told us how he owns a construction company in Miami and designed most of the property himself. Raised in Italy by a family of hotel owners, you could tell he’s a perfectionist by how he talks with pride about each detail and thought that went into it like it was an art piece. After showing us the ground coffee — which he said he’d harvested himself on the property, he told us “it’s not quite up to my Italian standards, but let me know how you like it.”
When we told him we’d be spending our last night at a hotel by the Liberia airport he chuckled and said as if it was a total no-brainer, “ha, oh definitely cancel it. We have an apartment unit I can move you over to that’s still available that day that you’ll love.”
When I asked if it had a similar design, he assured me, “of course — it’s beautiful,” and quips, “cuz I designed it.”
Sure why not?
He also mentioned the word “humility” at least three times — saying “humility is everything for me” and “humility is power” — with the same conviction he had in his design skills, because humans are fascinating like that (and his design skills seemed pretty good so I’ll believe him).
2. Our Pura Vida Day
The next morning I looked over Lorenzo’s list of suggested activities: the river hike on the property, a waterfall about an hour away, a restaurant that we “simply have to go to” next to a puma rescue center, mud baths, natural springs, and more.
But we had already done so much exploring, and what better place to kick back and get that R&R?
Our only outing was dropping by the cute little town of La Fortuna (in Guanacaste province, not to be confused with the ‘La Fortuna’ near Arenal Volcano we’d visited earlier in the trip) about 10 minutes away. The town was just a little bigger than Sámara, and it looked and felt like the pura vida everyone talks about, slow-paced and calm, but still with sparks of life as you’d see at least a few people just sitting outside chatting on most blocks in the town center. The holas were warm and welcoming. A fruit market sold the juiciest dragon fruit I’ve ever tasted along with a bunch of fruits I had never seen. The next-door meat market sold “bistec” — the go-to basic cut of beef that came with pretty much every traditional Costa Rican meal and the workers explained how to make it like they do.
At least that’s the glimpse I got. Totally possible for someone else to have the opposite experience and meet the nicest people in Sámara, then come to La Fortuna and get chased by a motorcycle.
For us it was all good vibes, and for the rest of the afternoon, we kicked back and hung out in the pool and lounged without a plan, then capped it off with a barbecue in the evening.
The contrast from our experience in Sámara was almost comical. Pura vida at its best.
And by “pura vida,” I of course just mean what I think pura vida is. It’s one of those phrases that every tourist learns and loves when visiting Costa Rica. Look around and you’ll see it plastered on items at every souvenir shop, and you can hear it in the air at every tourist spot. I’ve been trying to unpack its meaning throughout the trip.
Of course it literally translates as “pure life,” but it can’t just be that simple. When was the last time you were in a situation and just uttered “pure life”?
What even is pura vida and why does it show up so much in Costa Rica?
They say it has lots of meanings, and we heard it all over the place. The most common use that I noticed was after you tell someone thank you. Pura vida is the response. A waitress described it almost like a blessing, saying it’s “something good, and you say it for pretty much everything. When you say good morning, thank you, goodbye … it’s pura vida.” A grounds worker told me they just love life, so they express it through saying pura vida. I asked if it can mean “thanks” as well, and he said it’s more of a response to being thanked, like a “phrase for giving” as he put it (“una frase para dar”).
Here’s how I saw it defined on a t-shirt:
I’m fascinated by words and phrases like this that are more prevalent in a certain place, or in some cases don’t even have an English translation. It’s like words are little slices of a culture, with all kinds of layers that are only truly understood within that culture. So I’m not sure if it’s even possible for you or me to fully understand pura vida.
This extends across many languages. Why do the Germans have Schadenfreude? Why do Brazilians say there’s no word for saudade in English? Why do the Dutch have gezellig (literally translated as “cozy” but they will say it’s just not the same)? Is their gezellig cozier than our cozy?
On the flip side, I’ve heard the idea of hustle in American English can be tough to convey in non-English languages, a term so closely tied to the chase for the American Dream and our flavor of entrepreneurial ambition.
So yay we get to hustle and Costa Rica gets pure life.
My favorite use of pura vida is when you greet someone, like a cashier, with “hola, cómo estás”, and they respond with a light shrug and “pura vida.” I just love the idea of answering “how are you” with “pure life.” What a sweet, sweet phrase.
Whatever it means, I dig it.
3. Our Detour Day
One diversion we took from our R&R time was an impromptu tour of the property with Lorenzo between the pool time and BBQ, a “quick” tour that extended about three hours and led to being invited to their son’s school and lunch the next day.
Why not? Moments like these can peel away layers of a place hidden from the guidebooks and give a peek into everyday life from a person who has lived in both the U.S. and Costa Rica.
Lorenzo wasn’t able to join us, but we met up with his wife (we’ll call her Sarah), an American who grew up in Florida and their two young kids. Her tour of the school took about 10 minutes and I thought about how long it might have gone had Lorenzo come. Their 5-year-old son kept tapping on us to tell us random facts and stories, like how they had a hamster at school but his leg got stuck in the hamster wheel and he mysteriously died the next day.
“Always talking like his daddy,” Sarah laughed.
We dropped by a couple restaurants — which looked more like residences, each on a beautiful finca (ranch) with bright green rolling pastures that looked like a dream — but both were unexpectedly closed, so we drove 45 minutes to the restaurant Lorenzo said we "must" try and the nearby puma rescue center.
When I had first looked up these spots, the map routed us along the main highways on the flatlands, but Sarah took us down a backroad with absolutely stunning and expansive views — even rivaling breathtaking Monteverde — full of vibrant green hills and volcanic backdrops as we wound around them on the mountainside road. It reminded me of some areas of Switzerland.
What a detour. Also like Monteverde, no pic can come close to capturing the depth of the scene and it’s almost not even worth sharing one. But I can’t help myself so here’s a glimpse, with a beautiful power line crossing the scene.
At the restaurant — an open-air setup at an ecolodge, roofed but with sides mostly open — we got to chat with Sarah all about their life in Costa Rica over delicious traditional Costa Rican dishes while surrounded by Costa Rican wildlife like agouti, deer, and iguanas doing their thing just outside (and the food was as good as Lorenzo made it sound). In that short time we got a snapshot of what schools are like for them, their schedules, additional homeschooling, how she spends her time, how it’s been getting to know locals, whether she ever gets bored or lonely or misses the States. She was slow to answer the last one, but said she has a harder time with that in the States than here, and when she’s there it’s here that she misses.
4. Our Time With Jaguars
Next we wandered the puma rescue center where all the animals on site were species native to Costa Rica that had been rescued.
The rescue center gave a nice overview of the country’s wildlife all in one spot, covering species we weren’t likely to see in the wild, but were certainly around us along the way. Like pumas and jaguars.
They also had monkeys, which we surprisingly had seen very few of across the trip, aside from a few howlers in Tortuguero seen from a distance. A Belgian guy I had talked to told me he had probably seen 200 monkeys in his two weeks in Costa Rica, and his route was almost the same as ours. Wildlife is interesting like that. On the flip side, coatis are one species we saw dozens of on various occasions, when some other tourists we ran into weren’t seeing almost any.
Here are some of them we saw near Arenal:
Compared to some other “animal rescue” centers/zoos I’d been to where the animals look sad in their cramped cages, the vibe at this one felt nice and the enclosures were spacious and thick with lush vegetation. Visitors were also accompanied by a guide who shared more about the animals and rescue work.
Each habitat also had a plaque telling the story of the animal and how it got there. A couple monkeys were brought there as babies after their mother was “electrocuted” which I hadn’t considered as a major threat, but of course makes sense with power lines crisscrossing the wild lands.
Birds like toucans and great green macaws (the latter which has 200-400 individuals left in Costa Rica and 7,000 in the world) were confiscated from animal traffickers trying to make a buck. I felt lucky to have seen these colorful macaws back at Tortuguero when we first arrived in Costa Rica, not realizing at the time just how few were left.
Here’s one, with a power line crossing the photo.
5. Hallmark End to a Journey
Ah that part of the journey. The end part. The return part. The part where I get all sad and whiny cuz I don’t wanna go back.
But this time it didn’t really happen. This just felt like the perfect bookend to our time here, after all the thrills of finding wildlife, cloud forest hikes, and 4x4 drives through lush jungles. We even hit the classic oh-shit-moment in Joseph Campbell's “Hero’s Journey” with the motorcycle maniac that led us off-path to delve (shut up, I like the word delve; this isn’t AI) into a place that wasn’t even part of the plan to see new layers of Costa Rica. All I could do was savor it.
For another diversion, cuz my mind is always delving all over the place into the delves, let’s go crazy and see if we can map the trip to the Hero’s Journey, just at a high level:
Something like:
9-to-5 life in USA
Holy shit you have a month off to go anywhere in the world.
Overthink your options and postpone it another year.
Honestly not sure for this one. Actually, probably AI. Narrowing down options, putting a plan together for three weeks in Costa Rica, researching the animals.
Wow this place is great.
Ugh we’re leaving our favorite place.
Ugh this new place doesn’t feel right.
Ugh this new place sucks and someone is chasing us.
Wow this new place is amazing, especially after that last place.
Back home we go. Life is good.
On our last evening, we laid in our thermal tub overlooking volcanoes and reflected on the past few weeks — and on how much more there is to still explore in Costa Rica. The kids didn’t even want to go back, and of course I didn’t either. It just hits all the boxes for me: lush and beautiful landscapes, mountains, beaches, cloud forests, tons of biodiversity, the pura vida lifestyle.
But I also felt a palpable conviction that we will return, which feels better than saying goodbye to a good place forever. It’s not goodbye. It’s see you soon. Wow I just came up with that. I should be a Substack writer.
As if this whole scene weren’t already a classic end-of-a-movie cliche, a massive rainbow arched across the horizon, framing the mountains and volcanoes in the distance.
Which I’ll take as a good sign.
With love from Planet Earth,
Doug