A PRIVATE BOOK-INSPIRED EXPERIENCE IN PUERTO VIEJO, COSTA RICA
Curating book-inspired journeys is always a delight. Designing experiences that people love and want to come back is a dream come true. In July 2024, we curated a custom, private experience for one of our BOOKED Trips alumni, Rhonda and twelve of her friends that highlighted the Afro-Caribbean experience in Costa Rica. Rhonda participated in last year’s BOOKED Trips Costa Rica experience inspired by Tricia Hersey’s book “Rest is Resistance” and wanted to recreate the magic with a group of her friends discussing one of her favorite books “The Seasons of Beento Blackbird” by Akosua Busia. We partnered with Soul Life Travel, an Afro Costa Rican, woman-owned company based in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica to design a unique 5-day experience in Costa Rica that highlighted the food, culture, and vibrant Black entrepreneurial ecosystem that’s been built in Puerto Viejo. We’ve recapped highlights from our trip below.
OUR OPENING DINNER
Each BOOKED Trips experience begins with an opening dinner to welcome our participants and create community through food. After being personally welcomed at the airport by Jalisa, the Founder of BOOKED Trips and checking into the Gran Hotel, a centrally located 4-star hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica, we had a 3-course custom menu at Hotel Presidente in San Jose, Costa Rica. To ensure Rhonda and her friends had a special welcome, we made custom “BOOKED Trips Rhonda-vous centerpieces, menus, and even made flowers out of book pages as a little surprise to welcome the group to Costa Rica.
WELCOME TO PARADISE: A JOURNEY TO PUERTO VIEJO, COSTA RICA
After a 4.5 hour drive from San Jose, we stopped for lunch at Lidia’s Place, a Black woman-owned restaurant with some of the best Caribbean food in Puerto Viejo. Lidia started the business almost 30 years ago and it has now become a family-owned Business that has expanded into a second restaurant, Sendero’s Beach Club that we visited later in the trip for our Black expat chat.
After lunch we settled in at Sonora Jungle & Yoga Retreat, a woman-owned hotel in Puerto Viejo. We were welcomed with BOOKED Trips branded coconut water as folks settled in, took naps, and lounger by the pool.
Later that evening we had a welcome sound bath with hand and foot massages and live musicians to get our travelers calm and grounded.
We ended the night with a Caribbean dinner where we had rondón, a stew dish with Jamaican origins. This traditional dish is very popular in several Latin American countries that share a coast with the Caribbean Sea. Its expansion occurred after Afro-Jamaican immigrant workers, who migrated in the early 19th century to work on projects like the Panama Canal and the Costa Rican railroads, brought Rondón from Jamaica to Latin America. The soup is made up of different types of seafood (fish, crabs, small lobsters or shellfish), with coconut milk, plantain, vegetables, peppers and spices.
A BOOK DISCUSSION IN PARADISE:
We had the pleasure of hosting a private book discussion of “The Seasons of Beento Blackbird” by Akosua Busia we were graciously hosted by Kim, a Black expat who moved from Washington, DC to create a new B&B, Mecca, in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. This labor of love is a safe haven for travelers, especially HBCU alum and Black women. The property has 3 bedrooms and is just a 6 minute walk to the beach. The name Mecca honors Kim’s Howard University legacy and Muslim faith. She has been featured on House Hunters International and has curated a beautiful space that can be rented on Airbnb or booking.com.
“The Seasons of Beento Blackbird” tells the story of Solomon Wilberforce, a magnetic man who writes bestselling children’s books under the name Beento Blackbird and who has dedicated himself to educating the far-flung children of African descent about their glorious heritage. And it is also the story of the three women who love him: Miriam, the Caribbean midwife who delivered him into the world when she was nine years old and is also his first wife Ashia, his second wife who awaits him in her native village in Ghana, and Samantha, his beautiful, talented, and utterly modern New York book agent.
Solomon spends one season a year with each of these very different women. But when a family tragedy brings him to New York out of season, he finds that the neat compartments that once separated Miriam, Sam, and Ashia begin to fold in on one another. In a life that was once ordered by the cadence of nature itself, suddenly nothing is certain – and Solomon and the women he loves will never be the same again.
Our discussion got SPICY and folks had strong feelings about this book so the balance of great tunes, strong drinks, and delicious snacks at Mecca were a much needed counter balance.
PRIVATE BEACH EXPERIENCE
Our client Rhonda LOVES the beach so we had to design a private beach experience for her. We had the perfect beach day at Playa Chiquita in Puerto Viejo at Keep It Green Experience. We were welcomed with a plant medicine workshop, live DJ, open bar with an excellent bartender that kept the drinks flowing, and the best food of the trip thanks to the excellent staff.
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The inspiration: In the “Seasons of Beento Blackbird” the main character Solomon spends each season with a different woman in his life. His are spent on the Caribbean island of Cape Corcos with his first wife Miriam.
To bring our private client Rhonda’s favorite book to life, we recreated Solomon’s time in the Caribbean and we spent a day in Manzanillo and the less visited Punta Mona nature reserve on Costa Rica ‘s Caribbean Coast. We enjoyed a nature walk, fresh fruit, and time to relax with refreshing coconuts on what felt like our own private island.
MEETING LOCAL BLACK EXPATS
A big focus of our trip to Costa Rica is highlighting the afro Costa Rican culture of the Caribbean Coast. We gathered at Sendero’s Beach Club with a community of Black entrepreneurs, mothers, healers, and creatives who have made their home in Costa Rica to learn more about their experience. We spoke with Samantha Thornhill @ladygriot‘s story of recently moving to Costa Rica from the U.S. with her two sons. In our panel chat she talked about her life as a writer, reasoning for leaving the US, and the intentional community of mothers she is found in Costa Rica. We also heard from Sadie of @soullifetravel, @Monifamillermusic @jameelahcreates, and Essence of @escencia_24 who talk about their reasoning for moving to Puerto Viejo in particular, the community they’ve found in other Black women, and some of the challenges of being a Black expat in Puerto Viejo and things you should prepare for. Highlights from the conversation are below.
ZIPLINE EXPERIENCE
“The Seasons of Beento Blackbird” by Akosua Busia follows Solomon Wilberforce as he flies between the Caribbean, New York and Ghana for a season with each of the three women who love him. Our trip focused on the Caribbean season as we explored the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica – this time from the sky.
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It was many of our travelers first Zipline adventure and they dove right in thanks to the expert guidance at Nativo – a company committed to conscious and responsible development. They have built their platforms on top of the trees without cutting down or altering the forest. All of their platforms and bridges are made of recycled plastic wood or wood harvested in the forest. Their cables are made out of carbon fiber that does not produce noise pollution in order to respect the fauna that live in the jungle.
CLOSING DINNER
We held our closing dinner at Gigi O’s, a new Black-owned restaurant in Puerto Viejo. The restaurant has an onsite museum that highlights the stories of locals from Puerto Viejo and was the perfect location to end our trip.
Want help designing your dream trip? We plan private experiences! We have existing group itineraries in Cape Town, South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Accra, Ghana, Cartagena, Colombia, Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City, Mexico, and Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica that can be customized. Fill out our private trip interest form or email jalisa@bookedtrips.com for more information.
