How to enjoy Costa Rica on a budget

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Martha Pierce , a 34-year-old former marketing agency owner, who started her own business coaching practice this year and left Denver, Colorado for Santa Teresa, Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is best known for its volcanoes, greenery and famous wildlife — but the beaches are also worth daydreaming about. Because of its rich biodiversity, there’s a little something for the surfer to the yogi or the casual sunbather. 

Costa Rica is home to everything from steamy rainforests and misty cloud forests, to still-smoking volcanoes and sublime beaches strung along Pacific and Caribbean coastlines.

New York is a beach town if you want it to be—but I didn’t know that when I first moved here four years ago. That first New York summer, I left my Williamsburg apartment, boarded the ferry, and was miraculously lounging on the beach an hour later. As I squinted into the sun, I spotted surfers in the water. Surfing in New York? I couldn’t believe it. The following summer, I signed up for lessons with Locals Surf school, and have since spent almost every single weekend flinging myself into the waves at Rockaway Beach.

For generations, designers have adopted towns, villages, and other enclaves as second homes and visited them again and again, imprinting a touch of their own sensibility on their chosen place—and importing something of its essence into their own work. It’s the kind of symbiosis that Coco Chanel and Le Corbusier, who summered in neighboring homes, enjoyed with the Cote d’Azur’s Rouquebrune Cap-Martine, or Yves Saint Laurent with Marrakech and Tangier. More recently, Christian Louboutin popularized the Portuguese village of Melides, eventually opening Vermelho Hotel there earlier this year. Here, five designers on the places they go, and why they continue to be pulled back.

It’s been hidden from public eyes for more than a hundred years. But in a few weeks time, the former Old War Office in London, Whitehall will finally open its doors after a multi-million-dollar transformation.

It turns out that luxury London hotels are like buses. You wait ages for one to open, and then two, or in this case several, come at once.

At the Sustainable Social Tourism Summit (León, 30 August – 2 September), UNWTO welcomed new high-level signatories to the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism. The Secretariats of State for Tourism of Ciudad de Mexico, Queretaro, Guerrero, Quintana Roo, Nuevo Leon, all signed up to the landmark declaration, designed to guide tourism to Net-Zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. They join the Secretariat of State of Tourism of Guanajuato which signed up at the COP27 United Nations climate change conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The Secretary of State of Tourism of Guanajuato, Mr. Juan José Álvarez Brunel, heads the Sustainability Coordination of the National Association of Secretaries of tourism of Mexico A.C. (ASETUR) and led the discussion of climate action in tourism at sub-national level since becoming a signatory.

In the 1991 surf-heist movie Point Break, Keanu Reeves learns how to ride waves in a day. My own experience is a little different. On my first attempt, I banana-skid backwards off my board, catapult into the foam, and swallow about a pint of brine. Next, I dive face-first into the waves; a process known as “pearling.” The phrase sounds almost glamorous when my teacher, Mary Osborne, says it. But I can assure you it is not.

UHNWIs are spending extravagantly on travel; and high-end tour operators are seeing an unprecedented rise in trips with price tags of $100,000 or more.

It must be down there, buried deep. The still-beating heart of National Geographic. The spirit that once inspired every traveler’s soul.

Costa Rica packs a world of adventure into a relatively small area. Limited infrastructure means that getting around can be a challenge, but it’s also one reason that Costa Rica is the wild and wonderful place that it is.