Reading suggestions · Central America

We’re heading to Costa Rica together—a Central American destination that’s a dream for many French travelers and attracts crowds from France.

We’re going to have our hot-air balloon baptism over the Teotihuacan site and the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon! We had to give up on this experience about a dozen years ago in Myanmar, over the temples of Bagan, for budget reasons. In 2019, we were supposed to do it over the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, but the unpredictable weather (too much wind) didn’t allow the flight to go ahead. So this year, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity.

Hi everyone!

That was about all the Spanish I could say before we left... Luckily, Tom, 15 and in high school, gets by really well! And Caroline did a year of Duolingo before we left... Anyway, after 55 days in the American West three years ago, it’s Mexico’s turn for this second long trip.

Before heading to Mexico in the summer of 2023 with my family (my partner and our two boys, aged 18 and 16), I honestly don’t even remember why, but I thought the Yucatán was too touristy, too cliché, too expensive, and overrated! The country didn’t really appeal to me, but faced with my wife’s insistence—she’d been there years ago, before we met, and had promised to show our sons the place—my arguments didn’t hold much weight.

I'm restarting my travel journals with my 2023 trip that took me from Costa Rica all the way to Suriname in a month and a half. First stop: Costa Rica. I arrived in San José at the end of September—a city I know well and never linger in.