So while I'm in my last week here on my adventure in south East Asia I'm posting the last of my Costa Rica posts, so many ends. But this was a pretty great end to an amazing six weeks. For my last week in Costa Rica I ended up at Peace Retreat Costa Rica which is a yoga retreat about a fifteen minute walk from Playa Negra.
Normally I change the order of my pictures but for this I kept them in Order. I have to say that it was both an exhausting and relaxing experience. The yoga we did was ridiculously hard (well for me anyway I'm a weakling) and I went from being around loads of pepole 24/7 to being alone a lot of the time. Bit of a change but a nice one. 
And it did put good things into routine, I've done yoga every day since I've been back home (something I've always wanted to do) so good things came.

So first I have a few pictures of the retreat itself. It's a super pretty space. I had my own little cabina which the wind blew through at night and and made it feel like I was sleeping outside. it was very nice going from sharing a room with eight people to having one to myself.
There was actually a Canadian retreat there while I was there which I kind of ended up joining a bit? Well not fully I was just at their yoga classes and went ot the beach with them sometimes. It was good though ebcause the yoga teachers they had for their retreat were really great, though the yoga was slightly above my strength level being the weakling I am. It was a challenge though and sometimes halfway through an hour class I was read to give up but I was always surprised at how much my body could endure even though my brain was going "this is not comfortable".
And the yoga studio was beautiful, it was a pretty big space with a screen as one wall which had plants and trees behind it. One day there were howler monkeys just sitting in the trees watching us do yoga, I turned round to see an adorable little face looking at me. So cute.
The food was damn good too but it was a bit hit and miss as to whether there was a lot of vegan food, plus I didn't realise that not all meals were included so had a biiit of a panic the first night, but I survived, I got food. And it was good, so good. And no one else there really liked rice and beans so I got it all (y love for rice and beans is real).
Then these photos are from Playa Avellanas where we went on my third day at the retreat. It is a seriously beautiful beach, the beach bar isn't cheap but they have pretty good food and hammocks! On the beach! If you've read some of my other Costa Rica posts you'll know my love for hammocks; and hammocks on a beautiful beach is just another level of amazing.
This was an amazing day, I spent a lot of it wandering around the beach filming and taking pictures; reading my book; and running into the sea. We stayed to watch sunset and I ended up doing headstands in the sand while the sun was setting which was just beautiful. Highly recommend.
Now we're onto Playa Negra, which was the closest beach to the retreat, about a fifteen minute walk through beautiful fields with baby horses. This beach wasn't as nice as Avellanas as it didn't have as much shade but it was still freaking beautiful and I spent most of my day getting engulfed by waves and eating yuca fries (yuca is life) and plantain nachos. No complaints.
The area around Playa Negra is one of the driest places I've been, Costa Rica has a very diverse range of terrains and this was like nothing I've seen before. It was like it was winter, very few of the trees had leaves on them. But it wasn't due to lack of sunlight it was because they weren't getting enough water. Only trees on properties, where they were watered, had any leaves. This meant there were quite often howler monkeys stealing mangoes from the trees next to my cabina ;and throwing them at you as you walked past. It wasn't so nice being woken up at 4am by them shouting but I'd gotten used to that sort of thing at the rescue centre, plus it only happened once.
San Miguel was also a really different. It was very much a farming community and as I got my taxi from the bus station to the retreat I could see farmers riding their horses down the roads and tying them to trees as they went to meet friends. I wasn't expecting it and it was wonderful.
Overall the week was amazing but a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, a good one. It was positive for the most part but having a lot of time to myself and my own thoughts after travelling alone for the first time brought a lot of shit to the surface. It meant I came home feeling refreshed and mentally a lot better off though which is wonderful.
I'm very glad I chose to do a yoga retreat, it's something I've always thought I should and I'll definitely be doing one again in the future. I say more and there are mroe pretty visuals of beaches and hammocks (I love them to much) in my video below so check it out.
Hope you enjoyed this post, I still haven't gotten used to travel writing so sorry if it's a little all over the place. I'll have plenty more to do in a couple months when I'm back from my next trip so I'm looking to improve loads then.
Thanks for reading!