Aug 06, 2020

Santa Teresa | A little slice of heaven

Santa Teresa in Costa Rica is quite simply - magical. A place where mangoes grow on the side of the road. Where monkey's play in trees above as you walk past. Where the water is clear and pure and the people are welcoming. Like Tulum 15 years ago or Bali in the 1970's - Santa Teresa is heaven on earth. With all that is happening at the moment, and our ability to travel freely for at least the time being, I thought what better way to take you back to one of my all-time favorite trips.

As lovely as it is remote, Santa Teresa is an isolated paradise, worth every second that it takes to get there. A 5-hour drive on a dirt road through the rainforest took us to this tropical paradise. A remote fishing village, set on the beach.

I have been going to Tulum in Mexico, if not every year every other year for more than a decade. It's an amazing place in the southeast of Mexico, and living in New York it is an amazing and easy vacation spot to visit.

But over the years, as I have heard has happened with Bali through the years, it has been increasingly overrun with other tourists and commercialized. To the point that it was lovingly referred to as "Brooklyn in the Jungle" - for all the people from Brooklyn venturing down there.

Perhaps because I have loved going to Tulum for so long, I put off a trip to Costa Rica and the next "hot spot" Santa Teresa, just because I could not imagine anything being better. But Santa Teresa was.

After flying into San Jose, the main airport, you face a 5 hr drive along a mostly unpaved dirt road through the jungle. It sounded like it would be an adventure before we started, but driving in a beat-up old 4 wheel drive right on the edge of the rainy season through slippery roads made for a daunting if not adventurous edge of your seat drive. And when, after 5 hrs and covered in dirt, we finally arrived, we were not disappointed.

Santa Teresa was truly an edge of the world paradise. Eat, sleep, surf, and yoga. This is about all there is to do in Santa Teresa, and all of them are just amazing here. Pristine beaches. Delicious seafood. Fresh fruit and vegetables.

The most expensive hotel in Santa Teresa, Florblanca, has amazing yoga sessions each day. Surrounded by the jungle and right on the beach. Vinyasa yoga in the morning.

https://florblanca.com/

https://florblanca.com/activities/yoga/

Koji's

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of fresh seafood in Santa Teresa. Before I visited, I had read about Koji's, the best Japanese sushi, and it didn't disappoint.