Between Volcanoes and Waves in Costa Rica

I did not go to Costa Rica to check a country off a list. I went because my body had started to feel like an inbox—always open, always waiting for the next notification. One night, after another late scroll through travel forums, I caught myself pausing over a photo of a small country wedged between two seas, described again and again with the same gentle phrase: pura vida. I booked a ticket before I could talk myself out of it, tracing a loose line from San Jose to a small beach town called Tamarindo on the Pacific coast.

On the flight in, I pressed my forehead lightly to the window and watched the Central Valley appear through a veil of cloud: quilted suburbs, clusters of tin roofs, coffee fields, and the dark shapes of mountains holding everything in place. Somewhere inside that wide bowl of green was San Jose, the capital so many people told me to skip, and beyond the ranges to the west, the line of the ocean where surfers waited for waves and sea turtles rose from the water at night to bury their eggs in the sand. I decided I would let the country introduce itself in that order—city first, then sea.

A Country Between Two Coasts

Costa Rica looks modest on a map, but from the ground it feels like a pocket world. To the east, there is the Caribbean, humid and lush. To the west, the Pacific, bright and wind-streaked. In between are volcanoes, cloud forests, braided rivers, and valleys where morning mist hangs above the fields like a thin second sky. My first taxi from the airport threaded through this variety in miniature—one moment we passed strip malls and billboards, the next a line of eucalyptus trees and distant ridges blurred by rain.

The driver introduced himself simply as a Tico, the word Costa Ricans use for themselves. He pointed out neighborhoods, mentioned which peaks were still considered active, and laughed at the way I kept turning in my seat trying to see everything at once. At a red light near a school, he lifted his chin toward a faded mural that showed children reading under a tree. "Here we spend more on books than on guns," he said. "We do not have an army. We chose classrooms instead." His voice was matter-of-fact, not triumphant, but something in me shifted at the idea of a country that had made that choice and stayed with it.

Later, when I looked up the numbers, I would learn how much of the national budget flows into education and health, how high the literacy rate has climbed compared to many of its neighbors. But in that first ride, what reached me was simpler: a feeling that this place had decided that ordinary lives were worth investing in. It colored everything that followed, from the way strangers greeted each other in shops to the quiet confidence of teenagers in school uniforms spilling out onto the sidewalks at the end of the day.

First Mornings in San Jose

San Jose greeted me with the smell of rain on concrete, traffic, and coffee all at once. The city did not try to be charming; it was busy and a little frayed at the edges, the way capitals often are. From my small hotel near the center, I could hear buses sighing at the stops, vendors calling out the names of pastries, and reggaeton leaking from someone's open window. It felt like a place that had things to do and no intention of dressing up for visitors.

Before I arrived, I had read conflicting advice. Some travelers insisted there was nothing to see and urged me to head straight for the beaches. Others warned me about crime and insisted San Jose was dangerous after dark. The truth, as always, lived somewhere in between. At check-in, the woman at the desk drew a small map on the back of my receipt. "Walk here, here, and here," she said, circling three streets. "Keep your bag close. If you feel unsure, take a taxi. But don't be afraid to look up. There is beauty here, it just hides in small corners."

So the next morning, I stepped out with my hands empty except for a small crossbody bag. The air was still damp from an earlier shower, and the clouds sat low over the mountains, like a reminder that the city belonged to the valley and not the other way around. I walked past shoe stores and pharmacies and little groceries stacked with plantains, trying to notice what someone who lived here might look at automatically: the bus routes painted on the sides of the vehicles, the way people flowed around street vendors, the rhythm of the traffic lights. I was a visitor—not invisible, but not the center of the story either.

A City Held by Mountains and Fault Lines

In San Jose, you are never allowed to forget the landscape. Even in the middle of downtown, if you pause at an intersection and glance down the cross streets, you can see mountains rising at the edges like deep green walls. On clear days, the ridges are crisp and close. On others, they fade into a bluish haze. Locals will point out the peaks by name and tell you which ones have sent ash and tremors through the valley in their lifetimes.

One afternoon I rode a local bus up to a mirador on the outskirts of the city. From there, the capital looked less like a chaos of traffic and concrete and more like a scattered constellation of neighborhoods, stitched together by roads and power lines. The earth beneath my feet felt solid, but everyone I spoke to had a story: a childhood memory of plates rattling in cupboards, a crack that appeared overnight along a wall, a night spent outside in case something stronger followed. "You never really own the ground here," a man told me, leaning against the railing. "You just borrow it while it behaves."

That sense of borrowed ground gave the city a certain humility. It showed up in the absence of tall, showy towers and in the way people talked about home, not as a perfect place but as a place they were willing to rebuild, again and again, if necessary. Walking back down into town, I found myself wondering how my own life might look if I held it with that same loose, resilient grip—aware that everything could change, but still choosing to plant things, still choosing to stay.

Cafes, Markets, and the Sound of Spanish Rain

On my favorite day in San Jose, the sky opened while I was inside a café, and I watched the rain rearrange the street. The café was narrow, with mismatched wooden tables and a long counter lined with bags of locally roasted beans. A barista with a soft voice and a sharp eyeliner flick asked where I was from, and when I told her, she laughed. "You came a long way for this coffee," she said, setting down a cup so fragrant I wanted to close my eyes before I tasted it.

A couple of hours later, when the rain had softened, I wandered to the Mercado Central. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of fried empanadas, fresh herbs, and fish on ice. Stalls were piled high with spices, plastic household goods, soccer jerseys, religious candles, and jars of something bright and red I never quite identified. At one small soda—a family-run eatery squeezed between two souvenir shops—I sat at the counter and ate casado: rice, beans, salad, sweet plantains, and a piece of grilled fish, all on one plate. The woman behind the counter asked if I was traveling alone, and when I nodded, she simply said, "Then eat well and walk with purpose. That way, even the streets will respect you."

There was nothing particularly spectacular about that afternoon if you measured it by guidebook standards. I saw no famous monuments, no postcard-perfect viewpoints. But I learned the weight of local coins in my palm, the taste of cilantro in the broth, the way Spanish bends around everyday jokes. I watched teenagers share a single umbrella, laughing as they hopped over puddles, and old men argue gently over soccer in the corner. It felt less like sightseeing and more like sitting quietly at the edge of someone else's life, grateful to be allowed a glimpse.

Crossing the Country Toward Tamarindo

When it was time to leave for Tamarindo, I packed my small suitcase with the practiced movements of someone trying not to leave anything behind—not a charger, not a favorite shirt, not the feeling of walking out into San Jose's noisy mornings. The bus station was crowded and warm, full of people heading in different directions: families with babies, surfers with boards, grandmothers carrying careful plastic bags of pastries. I found my seat and watched the city slide past, block by block, until the buildings came less tightly and the sky looked bigger.

The road toward the Pacific unfolded in stages. First, suburbs with car workshops and roadside sodas. Then patchwork fields, where cows flicked their tails in the shade of trees and schoolyards sat at the edges of small towns. As we descended toward the coast, the air grew drier, the colors shifted from deep green to a dustier palette, and the trees changed shape, their branches reaching wide and low over the hillsides. Somewhere along the way, my phone signal dropped, and I realized with a sudden, light relief that I did not really mind.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant for a break. A television in the corner played a telenovela, and dogs slept under the tables, twitching in their dreams. I stood outside with a plastic cup of tamarind juice, looking at the ribbon of road we had just traveled and the one we still had to go. The ocean was close now. I could feel it in the breeze: a faint, salty promise carried inland, reminding me that my days in this country were about to shift from mountain-bound to tide-marked.

Learning the Tide at Tamarindo Beach

Tamarindo announced itself first with heat, then with light. When I stepped off the bus, the sun felt direct and insistent, and the air smelled of salt and sunscreen. The town, once described in older blogs as sleepy, was busy now—lined with surf shops, cafés, tour agencies, and small hotels. English floated around me nearly as often as Spanish. For a moment, I felt a small pang of disappointment. Had I simply traded one kind of noise for another?

I walk the wet sand as Tamarindo waves fold around my ankles.

That feeling softened the first time I walked down the main street and saw the beach open up at the end like a long exhale. The sand stretched wide, the water shone in bands of blue and silver, and the curve of the bay held everything in a loose, generous arc. Surfers waited beyond the break, their boards bobbing like patient punctuation marks between waves. Closer to shore, children ran in and out of the water, squealing as the foam chased their ankles.

In Tamarindo, the clock that mattered most was the tide. Locals talked in terms of swell and sets, of mornings when the waves were gentle and afternoons when they were better for surfing. I signed up for a beginner lesson and spent an entire morning learning how to fall: flat, relaxed, eyes open. The instructor, a man with a sun-faded rash guard and a kind smile, repeated the same advice each time I surfaced spluttering. "You cannot fight the ocean," he said. "You listen. You read. You try again." By the end of the day, my arms ached, my knees were scraped, and I could stand for only a few seconds at a time—but something inside me had unclenched.

Under the Moon with the Sea Turtles

The most quietly powerful hours I spent in Tamarindo happened far from the surfboards and beach bars. One night, I joined a small group heading to a protected stretch of sand near Las Baulas Marine National Park, just north of town. Leatherback turtles, older than our cities and borders, come ashore here in the dark months to lay their eggs. I had seen photographs before I arrived—grainy images of huge, armored backs glistening under red light—but nothing, not even my nervous anticipation, prepared me for the real thing.

We met our guide at the edge of the beach, where the pavement ended and the night began. He checked our names off a list, reminded us of the rules: no flash photography, no bright lights, no loud voices, no approaching the turtles from the front. "We are guests," he said. "They do not come here for us. They come because they have always come." His tone held a kind of tenderness that made me feel ashamed of the way I had framed the experience in my own head, as an item to cross off a list.

For a long time, there was only the sound of the waves and our own footsteps, hushed by the sand. Then the guide stopped and lifted his hand. There, just ahead, was a shape moving slowly up the beach: enormous, deliberate, shimmering faintly under the filtered red light he carried. The leatherback dug her nest with astonishing patience, sending arcs of sand behind her with each movement of her back flippers. We stood at a respectful distance, a small semicircle of strangers watching a ritual that had been repeating in this place long before any of our home countries existed.

As she finished covering the nest and began her slow return to the sea, I felt an unexpected wave of sadness. Not because the moment was ending—though it was—but because I knew that for every respectful, guided visit like ours, there were other nights when too many people crowded the shore, when flashlights startled nesting turtles, when noise and carelessness turned a sacred cycle into a spectacle. Walking back along the dark path, I promised myself that whenever I told this story, I would emphasize the responsibility more than the wonder.

What Development Changes, What It Cannot Touch

By the time I had settled into Tamarindo's rhythm, I had heard many versions of its origin story. Older residents remembered when the town was little more than a handful of houses and a few places to sleep, when the roads were rough and hardly anyone came from abroad. Younger workers in hotels and cafés had grown up with tourists as a fact of life, their childhoods shaped by the seasonal ebb and flow of visitors chasing waves and sunsets.

One afternoon, I shared a bench with a local man watching the water. He gestured toward a line of new condominiums rising behind the palms. "That used to be empty," he said. "Just trees, some cows. Then the surfers came, then the money. Good jobs for some, headaches for others." I asked if he wished the town had stayed small, and he shrugged. "I miss some things. The silence, the stars at night when there were fewer lights. But my nephew works at one of those hotels now. He speaks three languages and wants to study marine biology. Nothing is simple."

His words stayed with me. It was easy, as a visitor, to romanticize an imagined past version of Tamarindo—quiet, untouched, undiscovered—but that fantasy often ignores the realities of local livelihoods. Development brings traffic and noise, yes, but it can also bring better schools, more clinics, and opportunities that keep young people from having to leave home to make a living. Walking through town that evening, past souvenir shops and surf schools and restaurants offering vegan options alongside gallo pinto, I tried to hold both truths at once: grief for what had been lost, gratitude for what might now be possible.

What development could not touch, I realized, was the way the tide pulled in and out with stubborn regularity, the way the pelicans skimmed low across the water at dusk, the way the turtles returned each year to do what their ancestors had done before them. Those continuities did not erase the tension; they simply held it in a larger frame, reminding me that the story of any place is always being rewritten, sometimes gently, sometimes with a heavier hand.

Carrying Costa Rica Back into Daily Life

On my last morning in Tamarindo, I walked the beach early, before the heat thickened and the town fully woke. A few dedicated surfers were already out, dark silhouettes against the pale water. A dog trotted along the high-tide line, nose buried in the seaweed. I stood with my feet in the foam and tried to memorize the feel of the Pacific on my skin, the smell of salt, the sound of palm fronds moving against each other in the light breeze. It struck me how ordinary this moment was for the people who lived here, and how extraordinary it felt to me.

Travel has a way of shrinking once you return home, collapsing into a handful of stories and a folder of photos. I knew that if I was not careful, Costa Rica would become only the highlights: the leatherback nesting under the red light, the first time I managed to stand on a wave for more than a heartbeat, the mural in San Jose reminding me that classrooms can be chosen over guns. But the trip had also changed smaller, quieter things in me, and I did not want to lose those.

Back in my own city, I found myself seeking out small patches of green with a new tenderness, listening more closely to how people spoke about safety and community, paying attention to where my own country invests its resources and what that says about our priorities. I brewed coffee more thoughtfully, remembering the hands that had cultivated it on hillsides I had glimpsed from the bus. I tried to bring a little of that pura vida spirit into my days—not as a slogan, but as a practice of pausing, of noticing, of choosing presence over performance.

Costa Rica did not hand me a new life wrapped in palm leaves. It did something subtler and more durable: it reminded me that a place can be honest about its complexities—about crime and inequality and development pressures—and still offer deep, everyday kindness. Between San Jose's restless streets and Tamarindo's patient waves, I remembered that it is possible to live with both uncertainty and care, to stand on borrowed ground and still decide to plant something that might outlast you.