After hearing from many Americans about how wonderful the beaches are in Costa Rica, I knew it was a must to see a beach and stay at a resort.  When I see advertisements of sparkling blue pool along with smoothies and fruits and, I often thought they were exaggerations.  But they were truly not exaggerations.  When I first arrived at the Flamingo Beach Resort, a staff member handed me a mango smoothie with pineapple clipped to the cup.  Wow!  The smoothie couldn’t be any more delicious.  The water in the pool was sure sparkling blue.  Looking out from the pool, there was the beach.  The beach couldn’t be any more beautiful – big hills and trees were part of the coastal line along with the sand.

As I am typing this, I am not going to deny that I am falling asleep.  I’ve probably put you guys to sleep.  Yes, it’s nice to have a memory of relaxing in a paradise, but there is no truly real great story to tell about this part of the trip.  No drama happened.  Nothing extraordinarily different happened during my two days stay at Flamingo Beach in Gaunacaste.  I just waded in the pool.  I drank smoothie.  I watched the sunset.  I ate food.  Although I did have one small drama.  I accidentally dropped one of my sound processors in the pool, but I picked it up right away and it continued to work like a miracle.

Anyway, the lesson of these moments is that travel adventures that have a lot of drama, especially unplanned dramas where lots of events go wrong, are far more interesting stories to tell.  When I share crazy stories, I find people are more amused and enjoy listening to them more.  I even personally have more fun sharing those stories.  While one may feel angry and upset during the unpleasant dramas, our feelings about the drama change a week later.  We change our feelings from frustration and upset to humorous and thrilling.