In the places where I grew up, fall is the time when leaves leave their trees after blazing out in a gorgeous way. In Costa Rica, these same months are when thousands of baby turtles leave the beaches and set out into a vast new life.
I celebrate them on Travel Thursday not because so many of us travel to visit them, but because they themselves are taking such an incredible trip, unimaginable from land. We are lucky to be there at the start. We are also lucky that people like Susan Jackson, who took this photo and is a part of Tambor Bay Turtles, are around to protect these babies from warming sand and other threats.
Here’s to Susan, to turtle champions everywhere, and to you, babies! May the waves be always at your back.
Read more about Tambor Bay Turtles here: https://www.amigosofcostarica.org/affiliates/tambor-bay-turtles.
I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! You can also find me churning out small, square poems on any topic under the sun (here on the site, on Instagram or Twitter).
When I asked an array of Costa Rican travel experts for their best advice last year, my favorite tip was a way to save precious suitcase space while also supporting local businesses and giving useful to someone who needs it. A triple boost, if you will.
The travel hack, which I’m paraphrasing from Pip Kelly of Casitas Tenorio in Bijagua (and one of last week’s Changemakers), was as follows: unless your Costa Rican trip will include some rigorous hiking, rubber boots, or botas de hule, will probably fit the bill much better than expensive, heavy hiking boots. What’s more, they’re pretty cheap and readily available around the country. So save that room in your suitcase, buy a pair upon arrival, splash around in some puddles and muddy trails – and at the end of your trip, simply donate them to your hotel, tour operator, or a local family. They will be put to good use, because every man, woman and child in Costa Rica needs to own botas de hule. It’s an essential.
Have you done something like this when traveling, in Costa Rica or elsewhere? Are there certain items you “forget on purpose” so you can buy them locally? Are there items you plan ahead to leave behind when you head home? I love this idea and would love to hear more.
I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook!
Though school starts in February in Costa Rica, I still think of September with that back-to-school fondness, aided by the fact that this cool, rainy month does give me some autumn vibes. And what better place to celebrate back to school than a cozy independent bookstore?
If you’re reading this, you almost assuredly love bookstores. You might even own one, and if not, you’ve definitely imagined yourself owning one, probably in a picturesque fishing village where you would wear hand-knitted sweaters and gaze out at the storm-tossed sea in between customers (right? I’m not the only one, am I?). So I’m not convincing anyone here. But this is a love that had gotten away from me, and when I wandered into La Librería Andante for the first time in a long while – it’s a gorgeous, lovingly curated little bookstore in the university district near my house – I felt so many knots inside me come loose. In a world of noise, it’s a quiet place; in a fast world, it encourages you to move slowly and to browse, which is such a lovely, relaxing and somnolent word, browwwwse; in a world of technology, it is timeless; in a world of foolishness, it is an oasis of wisdom and beauty. As I wandered through its offerings, I set myself the second challenge of this year (the first being to get to know more artists): to visit all the local bookstores I can find, and to redirect as much of my shopping to them as I possibly can.
Why is the bookstore or the library more magical than being surrounded by our own bookshelves at home? I think it’s the sense of possibility. If books have altered the course of the life or the way you see the world in the past, then standing in a bookstore makes your nerves tingle, because you know that the next game-changer might be within your reach at this very moment. It could be behind that beautiful, glossy cover over there. It could be wedged into an undignified corner of the used book stacks. You might find it today – you might not. You might walk right past it, not knowing. But it’s there, and that’s such a comfort. As the poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes put it (oh yeah, I’m just nerding all the way out today – it’s that bookstore air), there’s “something holy in the darkness… and as rich moonlight may be to the blind, unconsciously consoling.”
If you can, go to a bookstore or a library this week and bask in that consolation, that knowledge that whether you read them today or this year or not, there are wise words waiting for us. There’s something holy in the darkness. Tucked away, bound and covered but ready to break free at any moment – there is light.
(If you’re a sucker for an incredible library story, check out “The Gift of a Public Library” by Deborah Fallows in The Atlantic, featuring beautiful libraries doing the impossible to keep their doors open in small towns including my mother’s: Eastport, Maine.)
Katherine Stanley Obando
I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook!
katherine stanley obando 