Costa Rica changed something in me: Part II - Monteverde

Leaving Tamarindo was bittersweet in a way I didn’t fully expect.

Just a few days earlier, everybody there had been complete strangers. And somehow, by the time I was climbing into the shuttle toward Monteverde, it already felt like I was leaving behind a version of myself that had briefly existed there in the sun - barefoot, uncomplicated, and fully present.

But despite the sadness, I was excited for what came next. Or maybe more accurately, I was excited for something different.

I knew Monteverde would not feel like Tamarindo. There would be no salty air, no surfboards leaning against walls, no loud groups gathering for sunset before accidentally ending up at karaoke bars. In my mind, Monteverde existed as mist and quiet. Cloud forests, rain, greenery in every imaginable shade, and solitude above all.

I had intentionally booked myself a private room there because I tend to do that on longer trips. Usually I’ll stay in hostels throughout when I travel solo but halfway through the trip, I will retreat into my own private room before eventually finding my way back outward again. It’s almost like a reset within the reset.

And honestly, the shuttle ride there already felt like the beginning of that transition.

Funny enough, I was the only person on the shuttle. No conversations around me, no headphones leaking music from nearby seats, no strangers squeezed beside me. Just me, the driver, and the road ahead.

As we got further away from the coast, everything slowly began changing. The dry heat disappeared and the landscape became impossibly green. The higher we climbed, the denser the vegetation became, like the rainforest had suddenly swallowed everything whole.

And maybe because I was alone in that shuttle, I was finally able to fully absorb it.

There were no distractions. No conversations. No noise. Just me sitting there watching an entirely different version of Costa Rica emerge outside my window.

When I arrived at the hostel, I felt the shift immediately.

There were a few people sitting quietly in the common area when I walked in, but the energy of the place felt entirely different from the Surf House. There was no music drifting through the windows, no loud laughter echoing off the walls. Everything felt softer. Slower.

I think I needed that.

I settled into my room, grateful for the giant bed and my own bathroom, already sensing how differently this part of the trip would unfold. Less movement. Less chaos. More time spent retreating inward.

That night, I ended up signing up for a rainforest night tour with a few people from the hostel. Before heading out, we all grabbed dinner together at a little soda nearby, and once again I found myself realizing how quickly strangers can begin feeling familiar while traveling.

Then we headed into the rainforest.

We were handed flashlights and guided into the darkness, and honestly, one of the coolest parts of the experience wasn’t even the animals themselves - it was the darkness.

Every now and then, our guide would ask us to turn our flashlights off while only she kept hers on so that she can guide us to look at particular spots. And in those few seconds between all of our lights disappearing and hers turning back on, everything became completely black.

Not dim. Actually black.

The kind of darkness that reminds you how dependent we are on light to feel safe.

Standing there in the middle of a rainforest, hearing sounds you couldn’t identify and seeing absolutely nothing beyond what your flashlight could create, I remember thinking how unbelievably small we really are.

There is so much life existing beyond us, around us, underneath us, above us - entire ecosystems breathing in darkness while we move through them believing ourselves to be significant.

And there was something strangely comforting about that realization. Humbling in the best possible way. By the time we got back to the hostel, I was ready to retreat into myself again. And unlike at home, where solitude can sometimes feel restless, here it felt peaceful.

I think that was the biggest difference between Monteverde and Tamarindo. Tamarindo constantly pulled me outward. Monteverde allowed me to come back inward.

The next morning, I came downstairs without much of a plan and ended up talking to a Jordanian girl that lives in Spain. We bonded almost immediately and decided to spend the day together.

But what stuck with me most happened maybe thirty minutes into knowing each other.

I mentioned wanting to stop at the grocery store to grab something small for breakfast before we headed out for the day, and she immediately offered to share her groceries with me.

That moment really stayed with me.

Because here I was with someone I had barely met, and already she was offering to share what she had with me. No hesitation. And in that moment, it felt like I stumbled upon one of the love languages of travel.

There is something incredibly beautiful about the way travelers share with one another. Not just food, although sometimes it is as simple as that, but stories, recommendations, time, company - little pieces of themselves. There’s this unspoken understanding between people who are all temporarily existing away from home and trying to experience the world while also trying to find connection within it.

Travel strips so much away from people. The pressure to appear important. The invisible hierarchy people cling to in everyday life. In hostels especially, everyone simply exists as they are. Something about that feels deeply human.

Later that day, we headed off to a waterfall together. And honestly, the hike leading there was unexpectedly special. What I really admired about her was the way she moved through the world. She was the type of person who genuinely stopped to notice things. She didn’t treat the hike as simply the annoying thing standing between us and the waterfall. She appreciated everything along the way too.

Because what if all of it is special?

And honestly, it was.

At one point during the hike, we spotted these enormous blue butterflies fluttering through the rainforest, and they were so unbelievably beautiful they almost didn’t look real.

Moments like that made me realize there truly is so much beauty in slowing down enough to notice what’s around you.

Not just the big moments.

Everything.

The waterfall itself was incredible too, mostly because we practically had the entire place to ourselves. It wasn’t some huge tourist attraction - just one of those little local spots casually recommended by the hostel.

So there were no crowds, no pressure to move along quickly, no fighting for pictures.

We swam, climbed around the rocks, and eventually just sat quietly listening to the waterfall.

That silence felt incredibly full.

I think that moment shifted something in me a little bit because we are so conditioned to believe that if we are not documenting every second, then somehow we are not fully living it.

But honestly, the best part of being there had nothing to do with taking pictures.

It was simply sitting there.

Being present enough to let the moment exist without immediately trying to turn it into something consumable afterward.

That night, I called it an early one and spent the evening alone in my room watching a show. And once again, the simplicity of it all felt strangely healing.

Monteverde kept teaching me that sometimes existing quietly is enough.

The next day was my last full day there, and the same Jordanian girl, an American guy we had met, and I decided to hike through a cloud forest.

The hike started gently enough. At first, we moved slowly through the trails, stopping every few minutes to admire unusual plants, insects, massive trees, and tiny details hidden within the rainforest. But before long, we somehow drifted onto the harder trails. And in hindsight, this may have been slightly ambitious for someone like me, whose definition of hiking is usually just “a very long walk.” What I hadn’t fully prepared myself for was how difficult the elevation would feel once combined with the humidity of the rainforest. It wasn’t necessarily the climbing itself that challenged me - it was the thickness of the air, the constant moisture, the feeling that every breath required slightly more effort than usual.

And because I have a history of positional vertigo, the shifts in elevation, humidity, and rain started catching up with me pretty quickly. There were definitely moments where I thought, “I genuinely don’t know if I can keep doing this.” But something in me refused to stop.

Partly because I wanted to be able to say I had actually hiked through a cloud forest, but mostly because I knew how rare that experience really was. Realistically, how many times in my life would I get to do something like this?

So I decided I would stop as many times as I needed to stop, but I was going to finish it.

And to make things slightly funnier, we had unknowingly chosen some of the outermost trails in the park, meaning there wasn’t really an easy shortcut back anymore.

At some point, whether gracefully or not, I simply had to figure it out. And eventually, I did. Between the mud, the exhaustion, the rain, and the vertigo, I found myself pushing through anyway.

Even the viewpoints became funny in their own way because what exactly do you expect to see from a viewpoint in a cloud forest other than clouds?

And yet, it was still breathtaking.

The sounds alone felt alive. Birds echoing through the trees, rain falling somewhere in the distance, entire shifts in vegetation depending on elevation. Massive moss-covered trees, leaves bigger than my torso, insects and birds I had never seen before.

Everything felt wild in the purest sense of the word.

Untouched.

By the end of the hike, our shoes were so caked in mud that we genuinely questioned whether they would ever recover. So when we finally finished, hosed them down, and sat at a little café waiting for our shuttle back, the reward felt absurdly satisfying.

I ordered a fresh fruit smoothie and an empanada, and I swear that first sip alone made every difficult moment worth it. Because that’s the funny thing about experiences like that. When you’re in the middle of them, exhausted and uncomfortable, they can feel endless.

And then suddenly you’re sitting somewhere warm and still again, holding a smoothie in your hand, and the pain already feels distant. Like your body has immediately decided it was all worth it.

And honestly, it was.

That night was my last night in Monteverde. By then, I had made a handful of friends there too, even if the connections felt quieter and softer than the ones in Tamarindo. A few of us decided to go watch the sunset from one of the higher viewpoints before grabbing dinner together afterward. Funnily enough, that dinner ended up being one of the best meals I had during the entire trip.

But more than the food itself, I remember sitting there realizing that once again, I was sharing a final meal with people I had met less than seventy-two hours earlier.

Somehow, that had become enough time for them to matter to me. To know that I would miss them. Later that night, after exchanging my goodbyes and retreating back to my room, I just sat there reflecting on everything. Another chapter of the trip was over. The next morning, my shuttle would arrive at 8 a.m. and I would head toward the final leg of the adventure: La Fortuna.

And while I was excited for it - excited to reunite with Sirena, excited to pick up the pace a little again - there was still a sadness sitting quietly underneath it all. Because there was still so much more I wanted from Monteverde. More time to sit inside that lush, mossy stillness. More time to disappear into the quiet.

I’ve always said that one day I would love to do one of those silent retreats with Buddhist monks - the kind where you spend seven or ten days speaking to nobody at all. Maybe that’s because silence has always felt slightly outside my comfort zone.

I am an extrovert by nature. I love people. I love conversation and laughter and connection. But Monteverde reminded me that solitude can be beautiful too. That there is something deeply valuable about sitting quietly with yourself long enough to actually hear your own thoughts.

And so the next morning, after saying goodbye to everyone and climbing onto yet another shuttle, I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude.

Not just for the trip itself, but for the privilege of being able to experience it at all.

To have enough time off.

Enough money.

Enough freedom to explore the world this way.

Because there is something profoundly transformative about doing this kind of inner work alone in another country. And I don’t take that privilege lightly. Not for a second.

Once I was settled in the shuttle and on the road, I remember thinking the same thing I had thought so many times throughout Costa Rica already:

How lucky I am to exist in a world with this much beauty in it.