Travelers’ Tales Central America – In Search Of Zen

Cabañas Tranquilas, on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, lies on a dirt road in an unnamed town between Dominicalito and Uvita. There are no telephones or electricity and the bus passes by only once a day. Literally “the hidden cabins,” Cabañas Tranquilas is as much about the landscape (both physical and mental) which obscures it as it is about the cabins themselves.

It is about mango trees depositing their overripe fruit in pockets of mud on the jungle floor, filling the air with the perfume of fermentation. It is about the steady downpour of a summer rainstorm mixing with and becoming indecipherable from the sound of the ocean. It is about the world at 5 a.m. when the sun first appears and the polished black surfaces that give night its sense of mystery are replaced with color and familiar textures, with edges. Caba’s Tranquilas is all this and the negation of it all. It is the absence of scent and sound and sight that occurs during meditation, the way, when you focus on yourself so intently, location ceases to exist.

Cabañas Tranquilas is where I went searching for myself when I thought, by definition, being a wanderer meant you were lost…