We’ve been back from Costa Rica for a little over a week, and already it seems a lifetime ago. After our first few days in Playa Potrero, we drove our rental Suzuki through serpentine roads and rutted gravel to the interior of the country to La Fortuna. We stayed in an Airbnb just outside of town, and when we were hiking in the rain forest or strolling around town, we cooled off in the pool or walked the gardens on the property. We drank lots of Costa Rican coffee, ate lots of fresh mangos and smoothie bowls, and we saw sloths!

I could not get enough of the vegetation. I wanted to photograph every broad leaf, every palm frond, every moss, every epiphyte. I could not do this, since there were hundreds of them. But I I photographed quite a few!

The vistas were pretty nice too. We could see the Arenal volcano from pretty much everywhere, whether we were on a hanging bridge, at our Airbnb, on a sloth hike, or in the town La Fortuna, looking at the church with the volcano behind it. And the sloths weren’t the only wildlife. We saw leaf-cutter ants marching in long trails along the footpath or up the trunks of trees, funny lizards darting on the forest floor, and a coati mundi meandering along the people-path on the hanging bridge trail.

After La Fortuna we drove west to the Pacific coast again, this time to Tamarindo Beach, about 30 km south of the first beach we went to. Tamarindo was more of a beach and resort town than Playa Potrero, so we did a little bit of shopping there, had some nice meals on the beach, ate more smoothie bowls, played cards in our airbnb, and I sat by the pool in our little grotto and closed out the vacation with some reading.

As I sit by an open window in Virginia and listen to the wind blow through the leaves, I am grateful for where I live. Costa Rica is a beautiful country, lush with vegetation, wildlife, and natural beauty. When we were there among the greenery and mountains, it was funny how much it reminded all of us of Virginia, but tropical. Obviously the plants and animals are different — our indoor houseplants grow wild there — but the green landscape felt familiar. And we loved it there as we love it here. Only here at home, we have our windows open and are cool without the air conditioner running, and my skin is not sticky from sunscreen and bug spray and sweat. I miss the mangos, though.