Esteban Cairol

Today marks the start of week six of my first sabbatical. It’s been quite an experience of discovery, reflection, and surprise at having so much free time.

The first week was about getting used to the slower pace, but I also used it to knock out a bunch of pending errands: car and house repairs, and paperwork and bureaucracy I’d been putting off.

Weeks two, three, and four coincided with my kids’ mid-year school break. Here in Costa Rica, the long vacation runs from December to February, but between June and July, schools get a short break too. For my kids’ school, it’s three weeks, so I have had lots of family time these past week weeks.

These weeks also overlapped with the World Cup, which worked out perfectly since my kids love soccer and got to watch every game. I’ve never been much of a soccer fan myself, but the World Cup always has great matches.

For the final, we invited family and friends over, and I cooked paella for the first half and Argentine choripanes for the second. We had a great time that day, and everyone loved the paella.

Fun fact: I learned to make this paella at a Team Meetup in Madrid in 2024. It was part of our team activities, and I enjoyed it so much, but I couldn’t replicate it until now.

My wife also took a week off, so we went to the Nicoya Peninsula for five nights, to a town called Montezuma. It used to be one of my favorite beaches to visit with friends, and we spent a couple of nights there on our honeymoon too. Its one downside is the ocean; it’s pretty rough (we actually had a small accident, thankfully nothing serious), but the place we stayed had a big pool at a great temperature, and there’s plenty nearby to explore:

• Santa Teresa, for instance, is just 20 minutes away and is a major surf town. We stayed in Santa Teresa back in January and loved the town and the vibes.
• Montezuma itself (where we stayed) is more of a hippie old town; it also has a monument honoring the Scandinavian couple Karen Mogensen (Danish) and Olof Wessberg (Swedish), pioneers who founded Costa Rica’s first protected area, the Cabo Blanco Absolute Nature Reserve; their remains actually rest at that same spot. People stack stones there as a tribute, and we built a few ourselves.
• And finally, there’s the fishing village of Cabuya, where low tide exposes an island that’s actually a cemetery. I was struck by how many foreigners are buried there. It’s an odd thing to find, since the town itself isn’t touristy at all, but I liked the feeling of knowing how many stories might be behind each grave.

Besides the beach, we also used the break to visit an amusement park, where we enjoyed water rides and roller coasters.

One nice thing I did that week was attend a spontaneous afternoon with friends from the neighborhood where I grew up, some of whom I hadn’t seen in 10+ years. We went to one friend’s house near Barva Volcano and did a little improvised hike around the area.

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The lazy mornings and pajamas until 3pm are over, though. The kids went back to school last week, so my mornings and part of the afternoon are free again.

I’ve been cooking a lot.

To my surprise, I’m also really enjoying going to the gym. Getting in shape was one of my sabbatical goals, but I expected it to be harder to stick with. Last Sunday night I caught myself thinking “nice, tomorrow I get to go to the gym,” and that genuinely surprised me. To be fair, it’s the sauna I expect the most; the gym is just the price I “have to pay” to use it.

The opposite happened with music: I thought I’d spend the day playing instruments and recording some home videos I’ve been wanting to make for a while, but in practice I’ve only picked up the guitar and the concertina a couple of times a week. Still, I’m sticking with my goal of recording something and putting it up on YouTube, nothing professional, just to start the habit of documenting my progress.