Big Revelations From a 2 Month Adventure

This road makes me glad that I sprung for the 4WD.  The car sways and jolts from the ruts and holes in the rocky dirt. The road narrows between two fields with white cows grazing.  

“We’re either gonna run into the main road, or campesinos with machete’s,” I say to my lady.  I round the corner and a smiling machete dude waves with his other hand.  “Aha, both,” I say waving back.  It feels like I am driving right through his yard but I reconnect with the bigger road and everyone seems happy about it. Costa Rica is an amazingly welcoming place.

Something About Travel

I am 25 days into my trip here.  The narrow roads with constant mirror shearing near misses and surprise pedestrians in the road now feels kind of normal.  So much so that I am a little bored and decide to fire up a podcast.  It is an old interview of Anthony Bourdain and he is talking about food and travel.

Anthony Bourdain: “When I first went up this river I was sick with love. The bad kind. The fist around your heart kind. I ran far but there was no escaping it. It followed me upriver all the way. That was 10 long years ago. A previous episode, of a previous series, in a previous life. Yet here I am again. Heading up to that same longhouse in the jungle.”

The interviewer to Bourdain: “…this seemed really personal.  Why did you want to go back to this little village in Borneo after 10 years.”

Bourdain: “I think I wanted to see how things had changed.  Some travel writer said that what you’re really looking at is inward all the time.  The first time I went up that river, the Skrang River, I was heart broken coming off of a love affair that did not pan out the way I had hoped.  I think in a lot of ways the motivation for the second show was to see if it still hurt…you know…to see how I felt.”    

Of course this is true I think to myself. I deftly maneuver around a guy with his dirt bike parked in the middle of the road that had been hidden around a blind turn. When you travel, what you are really looking at when jarred awake by the unfamiliar is yourself. You leave behind the rules and roles that you usually live inside of at home. Then you see what remains of yourself up against something foreign. Often you are the only witness afterward. Many of those things that were accepted as normal at home would seem crazy here. I imagine a Tico might ask why we eat such terrible food in the USA or why Americanos are so nervous and serious all of the time.

An Idiot All Over Again

I love to travel for so many reasons.  One is that I get to be an idiot all over again.  At home, I effortlessly understand all of the context and norms.  Here I don’t know when I’m supposed to tip or even the protocol for pumping gas.  Everyone else knows that a fresh juice sold roadside always costs l mil Colognes and a kilo of dragon fruit is 2 mil.

I, however, walk around like a kid asking lots of questions and learning at a rate at least double my normal day.  Like a kid, I am also granted quite a bit of leeway for all of the moronic things that I don’t realize that I am doing.  After 25 days of speaking mostly broken Spanish I even talk differently.  My English is more terse and to the point because my brain is working that way to communicate clearly.  

The boys were a bit taken aback when we first arrived but they adjusted quickly.  They got to eat fruits they’d never seen, eat lots of casados, spend time hiking through tropical forests, zipline over canopies, and explore waterfalls and a volcano.  We got in loads of beach time, stayed in some very affordable places, and also splurged on some straight up private villas.

Taking Experiences Over Taking Photos

I don’t want to give the wrong impression here that Costa Rica is super exotic or challenging as far as travel locales go but after being US bound through the pandemic, this did do the job.  I also don’t want to just show a bunch of awesome pics and contribute to the concerning trend of narcissistic influencers that portray an unattainable life of beauty and leisure through staged photos.  As I shared in last week’s post and others, I find it sad that good experiences are replaced by great looking photos that robbed the subject from actually enjoying the place and hence now portray a lie.  I try to keep my photo taking as an aside.  This is harder than it seems.  I don’t always succeed. After all, Costa Rica is just straight up jaw droppingly beautiful staged or not.

Travel in The Time of Covid

Having just been vaccinated a few months back and starting to emerge from lockdown in Colorado, it was weird to return to constant mask wearing and a place where very few have been offered the vaccine yet.  There is a sink and/or sanitizer at the entrance to every business and one is obliged to wash before entering.  Masks are required inside.

It was tricky to travel during Covid.  It is not often that everyone in the family can swing a full month of travel.  With the pandemic, there are few places accepting US tourists.  We also had to weigh the risks.  While 3 of us have been vaccinated, there is no approved vaccine yet for my 10 year old.  This meant that we all took extra care when flying or indoors with others. Both for our sake and others.  We were required to get Covid care insurance for the duration of our trip and also had to get tested for Covid before returning to the USA.  We stayed in AirBNBs much of the time and avoided large groups.  The rental car meant no bus rides with coughing strangers and also gave us the ability to get off of the beaten path.  Sometimes, cash can even buy increased safety I suppose.

The Death of Spontaneity?

Awhile ago, I wrote a piece that I am proud of called, “The Most Amazing Place You’ve Never Been.”  In it, I talk about vacation versus travel.  I also advocate leaving room for discovery and learning as opposed to booking everything in advance.  We did leave the last 10 days of this trip unplanned in advance to give room to go back to areas that we liked or take advantage of opportunities and learnings that arose during the first 20 days.  This worked well but I am also changing my view on reservations. 

It feels to me like the days of being able to roll into a town and find hidden gems are kind of increasingly going away as everything is booked online.  Even those last 10 days had to be booked 2-3 days in advance or we would simply be left with the bottom of the barrel and pay last minute premiums. 

What I’ve Learned

Over my life travelling so far to over 25 countries, I have discovered something that I call the Phil Collins Law.  At every hour of the day in every country in the world there is an airport, hotel, or business playing a Phil Collins song.  I swear, that guy seems to have the invisible touch for easy listening international appeal.  No small feat and well done Mr Collins. 

We ended our trip staying at a straight up luxury resort for 4 days.  With the included amenities, free breakfasts, and a 50% low season discount, it was actually a great value.  As we stood in a mostly empty pool with fancy mojo caipiranhas in hand, scarlet macaws actually flew overhead and we looked out over the ocean dotted with a couple of islands.  Phil Collins played somewhere in the background and my lady asked me if I had any insights or revelations from our month away.     

One thing we discussed was our lifestyle.  We had spent most of this trip in the Nicoya which is a “blue zone.” If you’ve never heard of blue zones before, these are areas in the world with a higher than average percentage of centenarians. According to the dudes that coined the term, people may live longer in these areas because of these common factors:

-Plant heavy diet (including legumes)

-Built in exercise

-Close family and friends (social support)

-Sense of purpose

-Having the healthy choice built in as the easy choice

I love this idea of blue zones. However, much of the basis is anthropological observation at only a few cherry picked places around the world. Hence it would be reckless to call this list prescriptive or definitive just yet.  None the less, it had my lady and I discussing how we want our lives to look when we reach 55+ years old.  

Building a Blue Zone?

From my life, I will testify that happiness just doesn’t come from wealth or achievement.  It has to be built and practiced.  It seems that many people don’t start thinking about building a lifestyle for that age until it is at hand.  The lack of retirement savings is a testament to this.  But what else?  What if it takes 15 years to build the strong close friendships and social circles that will support you in old age?  What if it takes literal building of your house to incorporate a garden to shovel dirt and a long driveway to walk for mail and trash so that exercise is incorporated into how you live?  What if it take 15 years to build out a meaningful role in a company or organization that you can still do very part time for the rest of your days feeling needed and a sense of achievement?  That role might take a decade or more to cultivate. 

If we wait until we are 55+ maybe we won’t have the same time and energy to build these things. We may only reap the fruits from what we have built so far in order to sustain us?  My lady and I are in a fortunate position today through investment of our time and money over the years.  Our take away from this Costa Rica blue zone experience and blue zone discussion is that we are thinking more about how making some of these same time and money investments today might build for and support those needs in 15-20 years. 

The Big Revelation

This summer has been almost 2.5 months of solid travel and adventure for me.  The length was not on purpose, things just filled up that way.  I took my boys on a road trip, went back to the midwest to see family, undertook a lifelong dream adventure down in Florida, and now spent a month in Costa Rica.  Often, stepping away on a vacation, you come back with insight into what you might want to change in your job or your normal routine back home.  As we wound down this trip, my lady asked me if I had any big revelations or insights coming off of this trip.

I truthfully didn’t have any big revelations or insights.  I paused and thought about that.  Is there something wrong with that or something very right about that.  I kind of spent the whole month in the moment.  This time being with family and enjoying the trip is the thing.  There was no insight beyond that.  I did not ponder big regrets or yearnings. 

For me, this is not a vacation.  As far as money generating work, I do some real estate and investing. And after a Covid break, I will return to teaching a couple of classes at the University this fall in what I call fun-employment. However, it has been over two and a half years since I left my formal startup role to pursue much of what I’ve shared on this website.  

If I feel like taking another role in the future I will.  I may also have projects.  However, I hope not regrets.  When I left my job 2.5 years ago, I recognized something. If I got cancer tomorrow, I would not regret if my career ended up being only 15 years instead of 20 or even 35.  However, I would regret time lost with family while my kids were young.  I would regret weakening some of my relationships that I assumed I had infinite time to repair someday.  I would regret not having done some of those childhood dreams, travels, and, adventures.  I don’t know how much time I have left in the bank but I get to make choices that build what the future looks like. I am grateful for that opportunity. As my own needs change over time, I hope to pursue them without grand revelations or regret.