Day 3 - Butterflies and Becoming

Day 03 — On Butterflies & Becoming

A butterfly farm, four hours on the road, and the kind of crying that apparently requires a Costa Rican highway.

I woke up to the rainforest feeling rested.

Rain had done its thing.

The river had done its thing.

The hammock had absolutely done its thing.

And after one last moment of pretending Villa Natura was my permanent residence, it was time to pack up and keep moving.

Today was the day.

Puerto Viejo.

But I had a five-ish hour drive ahead of me, and because Past Me occasionally makes excellent decisions, I'd planned a little stop along the way.

A butterfly farm.

Cute, right?

Walk around.

Look at some butterflies.

Take a few pictures.

Learn a fun fact.

Continue to the Caribbean.

Simple.

Except this trip was apparently no longer interested in giving me experiences without attaching a lesson to them.

So...About Butterflies

What I thought would be a quick little butterfly-sanctuary moment turned out to be genuinely fascinating.

The sweet owner Roberto walked me through the life cycle of a butterfly—from these impossibly tiny beginnings to the beautiful creatures floating around us.

Egg.

Caterpillar.

Chrysalis.

Butterfly.

We always talk about the butterfly.

She's pretty.

She's free.

She's transformed.

Everybody wants to be the butterfly.

Nobody is putting the chrysalis on the vision board.

And yet...

That's where the work happens.

In the weird part.

The quiet part.

The part where the old form no longer fits but the new one isn't ready yet.

Well.

Shit.

Here we go.

I hadn't come here looking for a metaphor.

I came to see butterflies.

But standing there, fascinated by their beginnings, I couldn't help thinking about my own.

Maybe becoming isn't supposed to look beautiful while you're in the middle of it.

Maybe sometimes it just looks like your old life no longer fitting.

And maybe you don't always get to see what's forming next.

Very profound.

Very inspirational.

Very trust the process.

And then one of those enormous blue morpho butterflies flew toward me and I nearly lost all composure.

Because apparently...

I am afraid of large butterflies.

Who knew?

They're beautiful.

Majestic.

Symbols of transformation.

And they can transform over there.

Thank you.

I left fascinated, slightly humbled and still thinking about beginnings.

It was time to head east.

The Long Road to Puerto Viejo

If you're driving to Puerto Viejo, give yourself time.

Then give yourself some more.

Five hours on Google Maps does not necessarily mean five hours in Costa Rica.

There are stretches where the road narrows.

Traffic slows.

You may find yourself behind a chicken bus.

Or a moto.

Or something moving at a speed that suggests nobody involved has anywhere particularly urgent to be.

And honestly?

Maybe they don't.

At first, I was good.

Music on.

Windows down when the weather allowed.

Road ahead.

That familiar little high I get from realizing:

Look at you. Driving across another country by yourself.

I felt independent.

Capable.

Free.

And then somewhere along that long road...

I got lonely.

This Time, Being Alone Felt Different

I've traveled solo before.

I genuinely enjoy my own company.

The night before, I'd been completely content with a hammock, a book, the rainforest and me.

Full.

But loneliness doesn't always ask whether you like being alone.

Sometimes it just arrives.

And somewhere on that drive, it did.

For the first time I could remember on a solo trip, I yearned for someone in the passenger seat.

Someone to look over at.

Someone to laugh with.

Someone to say, Did you SEE that?

Someone to share the road.

And if I'm being truthful, I knew exactly where that ache was coming from.

Earlier that year, I had walked away from a relationship that had held ten years of my life.

Ten years is a long time to love someone.

A long time to build routines.

Memories.

Expectations.

A version of the future.

And even when you know leaving is the right thing to do...

your heart doesn't necessarily get the memo.

That was the tear I had been living inside.

What I knew was best for me...

and what my heart had learned to love.

Both were true.

I loved.

And I needed to leave.

There was no villain required.

No need to rewrite ten years into something terrible just to justify choosing myself.

Sometimes love exists.

And sometimes love still isn't enough reason to stay somewhere you've outgrown.

That truth hurt.

Apparently We're Crying Now

So there I was.

Somewhere between the rainforest and Puerto Viejo.

Driving.

Crying.

Singing.

Then crying some more.

I had 5 songs on repeat. Five.

Don't judge me. Apparently heartbreak required a very specific soundtrack.

You know when a song finds the exact wound you've been trying not to touch?

Yeah.

That.

I sang until my voice cracked.

I cried for the relationship.

For the life I'd thought I was going to have.

For being alone.

For the part of me that still wished things could have been different.

For the part of me that knew they needed to be.

And maybe most of all, I cried because choosing yourself can be lonely before it feels liberating.

I had spent so much time knowing I'd made the right decision.

That day, I finally let myself grieve the fact that the right decision still cost me something.

There is a strange freedom in crying alone in a car.

Nobody tries to fix it.

Nobody tells you to calm down.

Nobody gets uncomfortable and changes the subject.

You just...

let it come.

So I did.

I Choose Me

Somewhere in all that releasing, my prayers started changing.

I wasn't asking for the past back.

I wasn't asking for someone to fill the empty passenger seat.

I started calling in what I actually wanted.

A love worthy of my heart.

A love that could meet me where I was going, not just where I'd been.

A love that didn't require me to abandon pieces of myself to keep it.

And not just romantic love.

A life I could love.

A future I could love.

A version of myself I could trust.

Because at the end of the day, I had made a choice.

Me.

Not because I didn't love what I left.

Because I had to love myself too.

If I don't choose me...

who will?

I didn't suddenly stop crying.

I didn't have some grand highway epiphany and emerge completely healed before the next exit.

But I did feel something loosen.

The grip.

The resistance.

That desperate need to know how everything was going to turn out.

Maybe this was the chrysalis part.

The old shape was gone.

The new one hadn't revealed itself yet.

And maybe my job wasn't to rush it.

Maybe my job was simply to surrender to the becoming.

To close my eyes—

metaphorically, because please keep your eyes open while driving—

and go anyway.

And Then the Road Changed

Eventually, the tears dried.

The playlist changed.

The miles kept passing.

And little by little, the world outside my windows started to feel different.

The closer I got to the coast, the more the atmosphere shifted.

The sounds.

The faces.

The rhythm.

Something was changing.

I had been to Costa Rica four times before this trip.

I thought I knew her.

Then I reached Puerto Viejo.

And realized there was an entire side of her I'd never met.

Maybe there were sides of me I had yet to meet too.

After hours of grieving what was familiar...

I was about to arrive somewhere completely unfamiliar.

And somehow—

it would feel a little like home.

The Details

🦋 Butterfly Farm — Alas del Destino Butterfly Garden. Would I stop again? Roberto turned what I expected to be a cute little break in the drive into one of those unexpected travel experiences that stays with you. Educational, intimate and genuinely fascinating.

🚗 The Drive to Puerto Viejo. Give yourself more time than the GPS estimate. One-lane stretches, buses, motos and slower traffic can add time to the trip. Personally, I'd rather settle in, enjoy the drive and arrive later than spend four hours fighting Costa Rica for refusing to operate on my schedule.

🎧 Road Trip Soundtrack. Some trips have a soundtrack. This one had a therapy session.

💡 Solo Travel Note. Loving solo travel doesn't mean you have to love every second of being alone. You can feel independent and lonely. Brave and scared. Free and heartbroken. None of those things cancel the others out.

Next Stop

Day 04 — Wait...THIS Is Costa Rica? I came looking for Puerto Viejo and found a side of Costa Rica I didn't know I'd been missing.