“One must still have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

There are places that overwhelm us with life. Others quietly show us who we are within it. I met both in Costa Rica.  Somewhere along the journey I realised that every landscape leaves its echo within us.

Only a few days earlier I had been walking through a cloud forest, where every step seemed to awaken another sound. Birds hidden high above the canopy. Mist drifting through ancient trees. Water falling from moss-covered branches. The air was so rich with life that silence simply did not exist.

Above the Clouds, Where the Clouds Touch the Forest… Costa Rica is home to some of the world’s most remarkable cloud forests, rare ecosystems where persistent mountain mist nourishes extraordinary biodiversity. Although they cover only a small part of the country’s landscape, these forests shelter thousands of plant species, orchids, mosses, birds and mammals found nowhere else on Earth.

Then, one evening, everything changed. I found myself standing alone on a deserted beach.

There was nothing. Only the ocean. The wind. And a horizon so vast it seemed to erase every thought I had carried with me. After days surrounded by movement, that silence felt almost unfamiliar. Later that night I heard whales somewhere beyond the darkness. I couldn’t see them. Only their distant calls travelling across the water. Their voices carried an extraordinary power… and strangely gentle at the same time.

I remember sitting there long after sunset. I wasn’t waiting for anything. For the first time in a long time, arriving somewhere no longer felt important. Listening was enough.

It was then I realised how often we try to choose between two worlds. One filled with movement, noise and constant becoming. The other with stillness, space and quiet reflection. We often believe we must belong to one or the other. Perhaps we were never meant to choose.

Perhaps we need both.

For a long time I believed I had to know exactly who I was before I could move forward.

Standing there, I realised something gentler.

It didn’t matter that I couldn’t define myself that evening. For the first time in a long time, I simply allowed myself to exist. Without a destination. Without certainty. Without the pressure to become someone else.

Perhaps that is what travelling, when we truly allow it, quietly teaches us. Not where we belong. But that we can belong to more than one landscape. To the forest and to the sea. To chaos and to silence. To the woman who keeps searching… and to the one who finally stops searching for a while.

Sometimes…

Sometimes the most meaningful journeys are not the ones that take us somewhere new. They are the ones that remind us we were never only one thing.

The cloudforest never asked me to stay. The ocean never asked me to leave. Both simply reminded me that there is a season for movement… and a season for stillness. We do not have to choose between them. We only have to notice which one is calling us today. Because sometimes home is not a destination. Sometimes it is the quiet place within ourselves that finally feels like a home. 

Still WithIN HER

The girl who left before she was ready. The woman who keeps finding her way home.

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BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.

BEYOND THE STORY. Field Notes.

Costa Rica occupies less than 0.03% of the Earth’s land surface, yet protects almost 6% of the planet’s biodiversity. Within a journey of only a few hundred kilometres, landscapes transform completely, from volcanic peaks and cloud forests to tropical beaches, mangrove estuaries and two entirely different coastlines.

The photographs below are only fragments of a much longer road. They were taken while travelling by car through Monteverde, La Fortuna, Puntarenas, Nandayure, Santa Cruz, the Nicoya Peninsula and the Pacific coast, often on narrow roads with little or no phone signal, where the map became less important than intuition. Some roads disappeared into mist. Others became rivers after heavy rain. Many of the most memorable places were never planned stops at all. They simply appeared along the way.

Looking back, I realised that Costa Rica is a country of beautiful contrasts. Not because one landscape replaces another, but because they constantly invite each other into the same journey. Every new road felt like stepping into another world…

Into the Cloud Forest

Monteverde is one of the few places on Earth where a true cloud forest can still be experienced.

Unlike tropical rainforests, cloud forests exist at higher elevations, where warm humid air rises from the lowlands and cools against the mountains. Instead of seasonal rainfall alone, much of the forest is nourished directly by the clouds themselves. The result is an extraordinary ecosystem draped in mosses, orchids, bromeliads and giant ferns, with trees that seem to disappear into the mist. More than 2,500 plant species, hundreds of birds, mammals and amphibians thrive here, including the resplendent quetzal, one of Central America’s most iconic birds.

Walking through Monteverde feels different from walking anywhere else. Sound travels differently. Light changes from one minute to the next. Mist becomes part of the landscape rather than the weather. Sometimes the only sound is the rapid beat of hummingbird wings, appearing for a brief moment before disappearing back into the clouds. Monteverde is home to more than thirty species of hummingbirds, making it one of the best places in the world to observe them in their natural habitat.
Among ancient trees, orchids bloom from branches instead of the ground, colourful land crabs emerge after the rain, and every path seems to disappear gently into another layer of cloud.

It is a place that rewards patience rather than speed.

The longer you stay, the more the forest chooses to reveal.

Where Two Oceans Meet One Country.

Few countries allow you to experience such dramatic contrasts within a relatively short journey.

Costa Rica stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea in little more than 300 kilometres, creating two coastlines with remarkably different personalities.

The Pacific, where Playa Pelada, Manuel Antonio and much of the Nicoya Peninsula are found, is shaped by volcanic landscapes, wide beaches, dramatic sunsets and one of the world’s rare opportunities to witness two separate humpback whale migrations each year. During the migration season, their songs can sometimes be heard from the shore long before the animals appear above the water. Costa Rica is one of the few places in the world where humpback whales arrive from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. As a result, they can be seen along the Pacific coast for much of the year, with the best opportunities usually between July and November, and again from December to April, depending on the region.

The Caribbean tells another story altogether. Warmer waters, coral reefs, dense tropical rainforest reaching the coastline and a vibrant Afro-Caribbean culture give this side of the country an entirely different rhythm.

Travelling across Costa Rica means crossing far more than geography. It is a journey through climates, ecosystems, cultures and ways of experiencing nature.

Perhaps that is why this country feels like it belongs to more than one world.

Cloud forests and volcanoes.

Rainforests and empty beaches.

Silence and movement.

And somewhere between them, travellers often discover that the greatest distance covered was never measured in kilometres.

This journey and the textures of the mist inspired Aggi S to create the original sculptural canvas the Whirlpools collection. Discover the artwork here.