Yesterday, we left Santa Teresa for Nosara early in the morning. The night prior, we went out to a sports bar to watch the Super Bowl with all of our international friends who seemed to be more interested in the game than Niko and I were. By the time we got home from the game it was already late, prompting us to say our goodbyes to everyone at the hostel, which was surprisingly emotional. We had the absolute best two weeks at our guesthouse, Wavetrotter, with some of the kindest, funniest, and most genuine people. It’s always really hard leaving a hostel, saying goodbye to people you’ve formed bonds with (so much so that we were debating staying, and have certainly considered returning to Wavetrotter soon). Niko put it very beautifully, but sadly: “saying goodbye to people you meet when traveling is like saying goodbye forever”. Sometimes you make plans to meet up with people in their home cities or travel together somewhere new down the line, but oftentimes, you are intercepting their lives at a brief moment in time, going your separate ways forever when the clock runs out. You catch glimpses of their lives during a two week span, only to hope that they are as happy going forward as they are now; but it's easy to become morose imagining all of the dark twists and turns someone's life can take in the future. Life is so hard in so many ways, the number of miseries one could experience in a lifetime exceeds imagination. But as I was mulling over this thought during our bus ride to Nosara yesterday, it hit me that the way our mind goes towards the negative first is a little like traveling, and a lot like life in general. It’s easy to think about all of the ways things can go wrong. Missed flights, lost baggage, homesickness, injuries and illnesses and muggings and crime and being held at ransom and all of the big bad wolves out in the world. Not to mention all of the even larger ways a life can become derailed. But one cannot think like that and continue on in life. We would never leave our houses. Love and be loved by one another. Try and try again and fail again and again at new hobbies and interests. Travel the world. Even drive our cars for god’s sake. We must be inherently programmed to strive towards the positive, despite the negatives, otherwise our species would not have made it this far.

So, with positivity, to all of our new Danish friends: Frederick, Jacob, Stina and Ida, our Swedish friend: Adam, the French boys: Theo, Theo and Nikolas, our Sri Lankan-Canadian: Tito, our fellow American: Chris, and the warm Argentinians: German, Magui, Ariana, and Guero, we wish you all the same happiness we experienced together during our brief interception of one another’s lives. I hope you all get to experience the wondrous joys life has to offer and that those days far outnumber all the bad ones. I believe you will, because that is the only way saying goodbye and moving on is tolerable. It is the only way Niko and I can continue on in our travels, the only way we can leave family for so long, the only way we can live a life truly worth living. Looking towards the sunshine, always.