Recently, I’ve had a handful of yoga instructors ask me if it’s safe to travel to Costa Rica, so I thought I’d share about our experience here in Puerto Viejo the past year since the pandemic started. Since March 2020 last year, Callie and I have had the most relaxing year of our lives.

During the entire past year, we haven’t known of anyone personally who has contracted the virus in our local area. And we buy most of our groceries from small vendors alongside the road or at the Saturday morning market and we have the rest delivered.

All of the restaurants have been open since Sept 2020 as have Costa Rica’s borders. We have gone around exploring the rest of Costa Rica. And most of the cases of the virus have been in the big city areas.

Meanwhile we’ve been hanging out with the monkeys and the sloths. We’ve been hiking to the waterfalls, exploring the local caves and snorkeling at the beach.

Our kids have been able to go to an outside school program where they both have thrived. So we haven’t had to be contained in the same place with our kids 24/7 while also trying to work.  We’ve had friends over, attended ecstatic dances and other workshops locally without fear of the virus.

We have truly felt blessed to be in this protective bubble that is Puerto Viejo during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the USA and Canada haven’t been so lucky. It’s funny because the CDC typically tells Americans and Canadians which countries to avoid traveling to.  But they can’t list the country they’re already in.

If it was me and I was telling people what to do, I would tell people to come join us in paradise here in Costa Rica and enjoy the pure vida lifestyle.