I was fine. I had a perfectly tiny apartment in the perfect D.C. neighborhood of Adams Morgan. I knew exactly where to brunch and when to brunch and what shoes to wear to brunch. I had a great job as an educational trainer and an environmental-lawyer boyfriend who spoke of a “ring.”

This ring, an imaginary thing, left me with questions. Questions I asked at happy hour, where people always seemed to have the answers. How did you know you were ready to get married? Why do we work so many hours? Don't you want to travel? Everyone had answers, but those answers left me with more questions. Still, I was fine. Totally fine. I juggled life exactly how I was supposed to juggle it in this city where people, I had recently noticed, don’t smile. So when my cousin announced he was getting married in Costa Rica, I knew it was time for a break and decided to make a vacation out of it.

I spent the first three nights in a historic hotel right in the middle of Costa Rica’s bustling capital, San José, but I wanted to see the jungle beaches I had seen online. With my guidebook unopened, I asked a smiling waiter where I could find them. He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down one word: “Montezuma.”

The ride to the remote beach town was bumpy, too bumpy to read my still-unopened guidebook, so I arrived with no expectations. Monkeys and iguanas, lush greens and endless blues, and swinging vines greeted me as soon as I stepped off the bus, and I found my way to a colorful hostel that cost $8 a night. There, the elderly owner did not get up from her rocking chair, and in lieu of English, she checked me in with a smile. When we were done, a young girl handed me a coconut and straw (if you've never tried a fresh coconut, you must) and took me to my room.