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© Adam Sievering / RumBum.com

Downtown Athenas.

With the three most popular tourist destinations checked off our to-do list, my brother and I hopped a bus back to the “Mayberry of Costa Rica.” I had captured the rainforest, the coast and all of our travel buddies on my camera and I enjoyed browsing them on the ride “home.”

The spectacles we were fortunate enough to behold were certainly great to look back on, but I still had a sour taste in my mouth over the commercialism of natural beauty in Costa Rica. There were people we met who were from opposite ends of the world and would leave Costa Rica with identical, prefabricated ecotourist experiences. I took great pride in the fact that my brother and I would leave with something more by staying in a place of which they had never heard.

We were welcomed back to Atenas with a meal and an invitation to the extended family’s Christmas celebration, which was held atop a hill that overlooked their property. They seemed to get a kick out of having two Americans crash their party and made sure that our wine glasses were never empty.

In the course of the raucous evening, I realized that my brother and I had become part of the family in some way. The group of us had even developed a strange hybrid language of Spanish, English and dramatic hand gestures, which gave us something to laugh about together. This language we created allowed us to communicate and understand one another in a way that facilitated friendship, which has lasted even beyond the trip.

As our final days in Costa Rica flew by, my brother and I decided not to hop on another bus for one last tourist destination. Instead, we enjoyed hanging out at the house, exploring the property and acclimating to the family’s tranquilo lifestyle. It became a ritual every day to visit the pulperia, a tiny grocery store operated out of the owner’s home less than a quarter mile from where we were staying. There were always a few familiar faces there and before our last day we knew each of them by name.

I expected nothing like this experience to evolve out of our total lack of preparation. I had no expectations period, aside from good times in a new environment with new people and new things to do. In this light, I’ve learned that sometimes having no plan only broadens the spectrum of possibilities, ironically giving the haphazard traveler an advantage over the faithful guide book consultant.