"Best Time to Visit Costa Rica" and Other Useless Questions When Planning a Trip

I really dislike it when ultra generic prompts surface all over the internet as the key searches people are making: best time to visit Costa Rica, how many days do you need to know Costa Rica, top 10 best Costa Rica destinations, how much does a Costa Rica vacation cost.

I take two things from all of this. Costa Rica surely has a great country brand and people are interested in getting to know the place, as they should, because it is indeed amazing. But also, the right questions are not being asked when planning a trip, to Costa Rica or anywhere else.

Why we travel in the first place

I love a book called The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, where he explores why we travel, what deep desires we want to satisfy by traveling, and why the destination is not really the point.

He argues that we travel because we imagine that somewhere else we will find something missing from our everyday lives, whatever it may be: beauty, freedom, excitement or meaning. But we often arrive with unrealistic expectations. We idealize destinations, imagine constant pleasure, and forget that our anxieties, habits and moods travel with us.

Ultimately the destination is often not the real point of travel. What matters is the way travel changes how we see the world, and ourselves. Travel can be less about where we go and more about what we notice, what we feel, and what we hope to find in ourselves when we get there.

This is exactly what seems to be lost when those generic questions are raised. My impression is that there is a ton of travel now driven by a post on Instagram, a cool reel, a picture that is amazing, yes, but just a picture, and all of it evokes a craving to visit a place because we want the picture ourselves, to say I was there. There seems to be very little intentionality, no exploration of the questions de Botton raises.

We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go.

Ask what will really move you

Those questions are generic exactly because they stay on the surface of the trip. Instead of asking for the top 10 Costa Rica destinations, ask yourself: what will really move me?

I can share that one of the most amazing experiences of my life was going to Playa Quesera on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica on a bioluminescence trip. It was boarding a very questionable boat at midnight, traveling to the middle of the ocean, and then jumping out of the boat and swimming with the spectacle happening all around you.

If you have never seen bioluminescence, this clip from a different beach gives you an idea. I do not know who the creator is, but it is a great clip.

Watch the bioluminescence clip

On the other hand, my partner at the time hated every minute of it. She was absolutely afraid of jumping into the ocean in the middle of the night, where God knows what lives, so she did not go for the swim and was terrified the whole time.

What I am getting at is that you cannot template experiences. Knowing yourself as the starting point, and going from there, is the only way to really make the best of a trip.

Time and budget, honestly

Same for how much a Costa Rica vacation costs, or how many days you need to know Costa Rica. You can go backpacking and use public transportation, or have a private driver taking you from deluxe resort to deluxe resort. Both will significantly shape your trip experience.

The real question is: how much time do you need to make the best of the experience, and what is your budget? There are no template answers for these questions.

The callout here: know yourself, and use that as the baseline for any trip you ever take in your life.

Enjoy your trip. Make it worthwhile.