Costa Rica
Isla San Lucas
A prison island that held inmates for 118 years, now reclaimed by jungle and howler monkeys.
Cell doors stand open to the sky. Vines thread through window bars, and howler monkeys sprawl across roofless walls where inmates once served their sentences. The jungle that has retaken Isla San Lucas has not erased the weight of what happened here — it has absorbed it.
The island in the Gulf of Nicoya was a working penal colony between 1873 and 1991, and its cell blocks and guard posts now stand as a protected historic centre inside a national park. Its most famous inmate, José León Sánchez, wrote 'La isla de los hombres solos' about the years he spent imprisoned here — one of Costa Rica's most widely read novels. Authorised boats cross from Puntarenas, and guides walk the ruins while howlers and returning wildlife move through forest that grew back once the last cell emptied. Book ahead, take the history seriously, and let the monkeys keep the walls.
Solo
The layered history — punishment, literary defiance, ecological reclamation — rewards a visitor with time to absorb each ruin at their own pace.
Friends
Standing in a roofless cell while monkeys bark overhead sparks the kind of conversation that outlasts the boat ride back.
- The prison ran from 1873 to 1991, and its buildings are now a protected historic centre in a national park.
- José León Sánchez wrote 'La isla de los hombres solos' from his imprisonment here — a national classic.
- After closure the island became a refuge, and the forest and its wildlife took the buildings back.
- Access is by authorised boat from Puntarenas, with advance booking through the park.
A Churchill on the Puntarenas paseo — shaved ice, syrup, condensed milk and fruit stacked into the port's own dessert.
Vigorón porteño — yucca, cabbage and pork crackling, eaten while the gulf ferries cross.
Sète
France
A canal-laced fishing port where jousting boats clash and Brassens's songs drift along the quays.
Mahakam River
Indonesia
The river is the road: Borneo's barges, ferries and stilt houses all face the Mahakam.
The Ring Road
Nauru
Salt air and rusting pillboxes line the road that loops an entire country in seventeen kilometres.
Tulagi
Solomon Islands
The old capital's harbour still holds the flying boats the war left on its floor.
Corcovado National Park
Costa Rica
National Geographic called it the most biologically intense place on Earth. They undersold it.
Barra Honda National Park
Costa Rica
Descend by ladder and harness beneath a hill of ancient coral to stalactites gleaming by headlamp.
Barra del Colorado
Costa Rica
A roadless river delta where tarpon explode from chocolate-brown water and jaguars patrol the banks.