Travel Inspiration & Expert Insights

I want to start by saying something that might seem counterintuitive coming from someone who plans travel for a living: I understand the appeal of an all-inclusive resort. I really do. You have limited vacation days, a significant amount of money on the line, and no desire to spend the week before you leave making complex decisions about transfers and lodges and regional itineraries. An all-inclusive feels safe. It feels simple. It feels like the risk has been removed. But he

Growing up in Costa Rica, I never thought about where to stay in terms of ratings or airport proximity. I thought about how a place felt at 6am when the birds started, whether you could hear the river from your bed, whether the kind of quiet a place offered was the kind you actually wanted. That's still how I think about it when I'm building someone's trip. Deciding where to stay in Costa Rica is genuinely one of the most important decisions you will make, and it shapes far m

There's a version of a Costa Rica trip that people describe as stressful and rushed, where they saw a lot but felt very little of it. And there's another version where the howler monkeys woke them up at dawn, the afternoon rain came through while they were already settled somewhere beautiful, and they flew home thinking about when they could come back. The difference usually isn't the destination. It's a handful of planning decisions made before anyone booked a flight. I grew

Honestly? It depends on where you go. That's the answer I give when clients ask about Guanacaste, and it's not a dodge. It's the truth. The region covers a lot of ground, and the experience in Tamarindo and the experience in Playa Potrero are close enough on a map that they look like the same answer. They're not. Having grown up in Costa Rica and spent years helping travelers plan trips here, I've seen Guanacaste land both ways: exactly right for some travelers, a disappointm

The most common question I get from first-time visitors is also the hardest one to answer without knowing more about you: where should I stay? There's no single right answer. Costa Rica doesn't have one best base. It has regions, each with its own character, its own climate, its own rhythm. The question isn't which one is best. It's which ones belong together for the kind of trip you actually want. Here's how I think through it for first-time visitors, and what I usually end

Costa Rica is one of the destinations I feel most confident recommending to families. I've sent a lot of families here over the years, different ages, different comfort levels, different ideas of what a great trip means, and the consistent thing I hear when they come back is that it was easier than they expected and bigger than they imagined. That combination, easy to navigate and deeply rewarding, is what makes Costa Rica so well-suited to family travel. But it's not effortl

Thoughtful insights from a Costa Rican travel designer specializing in slow, custom journeys through my home country. If you're researching a custom Costa Rica itinerary, you're probably trying to answer a few big questions: how much does a well-designed trip actually cost? When is the right time to go? Which regions make sense together without turning every day into a transit day? What actually needs to be booked in advance? This guide walks through those questions the way I