We kept coming back to Nosara. The surf. The jungle. The way time moved differently here. Eventually, we stopped leaving.
The first trip was a surf holiday. We'd heard about Playa Guiones from a friend — consistent beach break, warm water, no crowds. We booked two weeks and told ourselves it was just a vacation.
We came back the following year. Then the year after. Each visit got a little longer. We started to notice things — how the mornings felt unhurried, how people here seemed less anxious about what came next, how our kids, when they finally came with us, ran into the jungle and didn't want to leave.
"We kept asking ourselves the same question on the flight home: what exactly are we going back to?"
New York had given us everything we'd worked for. Good careers. A great apartment. Restaurants we loved. But somewhere around the third or fourth trip to Nosara, we kept asking ourselves the same question on the flight home: what exactly are we going back to?
Our first child was born in New York. When our second arrived, the question got louder. We were doing the calculation every parent in a big city eventually does — the school, the apartment, the cost of it all — and realising that what we wanted for our family was somewhere quieter, slower, and closer to the water.
We gave ourselves nine months. A trial. If it didn't work, we'd go back. By the end of the first month, we knew we weren't going back.
Nosara is in the Nicoya Peninsula — one of only five Blue Zones in the world, places where people measurably live longer than anywhere else. Researchers point to the diet, the movement, the sense of community. We think it's simpler than that. People here wake up and go outside. They know their neighbours. They eat what grows nearby. The pace of life isn't slow because nothing happens — it's slow because people have decided that's how they want to live.
We built Nalu because we wanted to share what we'd found. Not as a resort — we were never interested in that. More like the best version of what it would feel like to live here for a week or two. A private villa with a pool, a real kitchen, a studio in the jungle, someone who actually knows Nosara to help you find the right surf break or the restaurant that doesn't have a website.
Studio Saxe — Benjamin Saxe's firm, which has been working in Costa Rica for years — designed all eight villas. We gave him a brief: open to the outside, built from what's here, nothing that fights the environment. He came back with something better than anything we'd imagined.
"A private villa with a pool, a real kitchen, a studio in the jungle — the best version of what it would feel like to live here."
We've been full-time residents for eight years now. Our kids go to school here. We surf in the morning. We know every restaurant in town and most of the people who run them. Nosara still surprises us — a turtle nesting season, a swell that comes out of nowhere, a sunset that makes you put your phone down.
People ask us whether we ever miss New York. Occasionally — a restaurant, a bookshop, the energy of it. But not in a way that makes us want to go back. What we wanted from New York, we had. What we wanted from life, we found somewhere else.
If you're reading this because you're thinking about Nosara — for a holiday, or for something longer — we hope you feel a version of what we felt. The surf is real. The jungle is real. The pace is real. And Pura Vida, which locals say every single day, is less a greeting than a philosophy: eternal optimism, go with the flow. Let whatever comes, come.
That's what Nalu means. That's why we stayed.
With love from Playa Guiones,
The Nalu Nosara familyLife in Nosara, one post at a time. Follow along.
@nalunosara