🇨🇷 Costa Rica: Paradise, Changing
I’ve been lucky enough to visit Costa Rica twice with my family — both times to a small town on the Nicoya Peninsula, a place that feels almost suspended between simplicity and change. It’s a town built around surfing, salt, and slow mornings — but also one now caught in the complicated wave of tourism and development.
🌅 A Day in the Life
Every day followed the same rhythm — one that felt perfectly in tune with the ocean.
I’d wake up around 6 a.m., grab my board, and surf for an hour before the sun rose too high. The water was always warm, the waves clean and steady, the beaches almost empty except for locals and a few early risers.
By 8 a.m., we’d sit down for breakfast — fruit so fresh it almost didn’t taste real, coffee that belonged nowhere else but there. From 9 to 11, I’d tan, read, or walk along the shore before heading back out to surf again. Afternoons were for naps, exploring, and wandering through town — stopping at small shops, grabbing smoothies, or renting ATVs to ride through dirt roads lined with palms and music.
We’d hike, swim in hidden coves, and chase sunsets that felt like paintings. Evenings always ended the same way — a family dinner outdoors, the air heavy with salt and sound, the whole day behind us but still glowing.
🏄♀️ Beauty and the Shift Beneath It
Both trips were incredible — warm, freeing, and full of color — but each time I came back, I noticed the changes more clearly. The same beaches that once felt local now feel curated. New hotels rise where small surf shacks once stood. Cafés charge in dollars, not colones. It’s beautiful, but it’s also bittersweet.
This town, once shaped by local rhythm and community, is slowly being overtaken by wealth — by outsiders building vacation homes and digital retreats. The rich are buying the view, and with it, pushing out the people who built the place’s soul. Prices rise, access shrinks, and suddenly, what used to be everyone’s beach feels private.
Locals still smile, still share waves, still make it all work — but the shift is visible, and it says something bigger about how paradise changes when the world starts paying attention.
🌴 What I Carry Home
Even with that tension, Costa Rica remains one of the most grounding places I’ve ever been. There’s something about how mornings start slow, how nature sets the schedule, how the ocean decides the plan.
When I think back on those two trips, I remember sunlight, salt, and family — but also the responsibility that comes with travel. To see, to appreciate, and to understand that beauty means more when it includes the people who’ve lived it the longest.
These are my frames of Costa Rica: waves and warmth, but also change — a reminder that paradise is fragile, and so are the people who keep it alive.