Costa Rica is a good place to visit for your first time out of the country or if you are particularly fragile yet desire some adventure. It’s somewhere easily accessible with friendly people. Spanish is the language, but a lot of people speak English or are patient enough to try and communicate with you while you gesture and point. I mean look people – it’s a popular destination for teenagers on spring break, there are US citizens retiring here in droves – Costa Rica is becoming another Florida!!

But not everyone can hack it.

cow tongue

Costa Rica is too jarring for some people, which came as quite a shock to me. Of course I know there are people who are too fragile to travel or maybe they just lack the desire. I’m talking about people with dreams of traveling who come to Costa Rica and run at the first sign of a different culture.

That’s right. Costa Rica has a different culture than the United States. Shocker!

Maybe this post should be titled “Traveling is not for everyone.” I mean, seriously, who travels to a Spanish-speaking country and complains about the language barrier?! Who travels outside of the US and complains that the foreign country is not more like the US?! What exactly was the point in leaving the US to begin with?

Advice for this type of closed-minded person: start your journey within the US. Leave the small US town to travel to a slightly larger town, eventually make your way to Chicago, LA, New York, maybe Miami, and THEN leave the country. Maybe start your first journey outside the US to another developed country instead of coming to a developing rainforest country to complain about the dirt. Hello, it’s a jungle.

Life is about opportunities. You can be a Yes person or you can be No person. I wish we could bottle up the No people and drop them in to the sea, leaving them to float in their foggy No bottles to their new home in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, opening up the Yes world to more possibilities, more opportunities for learning, and an abundance of positivity.