I didn’t know what lay ahead; but the present was pretty darn perfect

This adventurous spirit had defined our friendship over the last twenty-five years. We had met our first day of college in New England, and soon forged a bond that would carry us through the rest of university, moving to New York City to be roommates, surviving countless boyfriends and jobs, finding our careers and our husbands, having children, and making our forever homes, all while living within a few miles of each other. Throughout those years, we had probably gone to about a thousand concerts and performances, eaten dozens of cuisines at hundreds of restaurants, tried several drugs, drank thousands of cocktails, and traveled to various places like India, Panama, and California to hike to waterfalls, sink into mud baths and hot springs, ogle the Taj Mahal at sunrise, suffer through overnight bus rides, and ride camels through the desert.

But our defining trip was most definitely Costa Rica, twenty years ago. The summer after we graduated college, we stuffed our Gregory backpacks full of shorts, bathing suits, Lonely Planet guidebooks, and CDs (these took up the bulk of the space), and set off to Central America, with a plan to traipse through Costa Rica over five weeks. We stayed in sketchy hostels where we met strangers from around the globe, ate gallo pinto (rice and beans) and fried plantains at “sodas” (Costa Rican mom-and-pop cafes), swam in the ocean, glimpsed monkeys and sloths on rainforest hikes, and did several things that would make our mothers blush.

Now, we’re both mothers ourselves, squarely in our forties, with demanding careers and full-speed-ahead New York City lives. When I realized it had been several years since we’d last traveled together and that 2024 would be the twentieth anniversary of our last trip to Costa Rica, I knew we had to return. Perhaps we could recapture some of our youthful energy, try-anything boldness, and pre-motherhood carefree attitudes.

So while it was tempting to lounge by the pool and beach the whole trip, noses in the books we’d been trying to finish for months, instead we wanted to discover how our friendship had evolved since we’d last been here—and find out if we could we go back to the pure, unfettered joy of our twenties.

While this could have meant booze-filled nights of partying, even we’re not dumb enough to try and pull that off now. These days, joy for us seems to be a hot cup of good coffee, and since Costa Rica has some of the best, we decided to see where it came from. We went to Los Jilgueros, a family-owned farm in the hills of Cedral in Pérez Zeledón that grows and processes its own coffee beans. There, we wandered through the verdant farm, which aside from dozens of small coffee trees was also home to various fruit trees, vegetable plots, and bright flowers. We also toured the processing plant, drying beds filled with beans baking in the sun, and the roasting area. Finally, we sat down for a tasting of the various roasts, accompanied by some homemade snacks. I found that I knew which roast my friend would like best, how much sugar and milk she would add to her coffee, and that she would ask for seconds of the fried plantains (and so would I). In turn, she reminded me to get a bag of beans for my dad, who she knew loves coffee.

Another day, we ventured to the protected and gated forest of Peninsula Papagayo where we rode electric off-road bicycles through mangroves, estuaries, and rainforest, spotting birds, iguanas, and monkeys. We were both reminded of the bike ride we had done in Puerto Viejo two decades ago. That time, it started to pour, quickly drenching us on our decidedly non-electric bikes. We both have never forgotten the sound of the spooky wails of the howler monkeys we could hear but not see as we rode along in the rain. This time, it was bright and sunny, and we stopped at a newly built treehouse, constructed by the luxury community of Peninsula Papagayo Club & Resort Community, which we were allowed to access as guests of the Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo. These communities didn’t exist in Costa Rica twenty years ago—and even if they did, we wouldn’t have had a clue how to enter one, nor would we have wanted to. Had we lost our edge? A little, but we appreciated the opportunity to respect the land that was so endangered, clinging to the hope that it would still be here for our children to enjoy. And let’s face it: without an e-bike we probably wouldn’t have made it up the hill to the treehouse.

After our bike ride, we walked up the hundred-or-so outdoor stairs to the Four Seasons’ Wellness Shala, an outdoor wooden pavilion with swoopy curves that frame the sapphire ocean below. Awaiting us was, let’s be honest, one of the handsomest men in Costa Rica. Instructed to lie down on the plush, padded mats, we made ourselves comfortable and closed our eyes. We could hear the waves softly hitting the shore below, and soon the harmonious sound of singing bowls filled the air. While at one time in our lives, trying to alter our states of being might have meant experimenting with psychedelic mushrooms, now it meant embarking on an all-encompassing sound bath together. I felt a vibrating glow that seemed to envelop my friend and I, sealing us in a bubble of love that I knew meant we’d be friends for many more years.

Waiting at the top of the hundred-foot tree was a hammock-like netting stretched along the tree’s uppermost branches, above the rest of the forest canopy. I could see the edge of it from where I hung, but then I quickly reminded myself not to look up or down, only to focus on what was in front of me. This idea had been told to us the day before, by our yoga instructor, as we attempted to balance in tree pose. She said, if you look down or behind to the past, you can’t go back. If you look up to the future, you can’t go there yet. To overcome the current challenge, just look straight ahead, be present in the now, and focus on what’s right in front of you. In front of me was my friend, smiling with her “I-can’t-believe-we’re-doing-this-grin” and a look of sheer determination in her eyes that I’ve come to know so well. I knew we couldn’t go back; I didn’t know what lay ahead; but the present was pretty darn perfect.