Touching Down at Sunset: How a Nine-Seat Plane Over Costa Rica Changed Everything for Olga Leonetti

There are trips you take, and then there are trips that take something from you, something like a layer of assumption, a reliance on maps and logistics, a belief that you already understand a place before you have ever stood inside it. For Olga Leonetti, a travel advisor with thirteen years of experience, that trip was Costa Rica. And it did not begin the way she expected.

A Decision Made on the Ground

Leonetti and her travel companions touched down in San José, the kind of city that greets you with noise and movement before you have even collected your luggage. "Flying into San José, it's like Toronto times 10 in traffic," she recalls, and that single observation set the tone for everything that followed. Rather than renting a car in the capital and grinding through hours of congested roads to reach the Nicoya Peninsula, Leonetti made a call that would define the entire journey. She headed to the domestic airport and booked seats on a twenty-five-minute flight to Tambor, a coastal village where the pace of life moves to an entirely different rhythm.

It was a practical decision. It was also, as it turned out, a transformative one.

Nine Seats and a Setting Sun

The plane was small enough that passengers could feel the landscape beneath them as a living, breathing thing rather than an abstraction seen through a porthole. Flying low over the Costa Rican countryside, with the Nicoya Gulf glittering below and the jungle canopy spreading in every direction, Leonetti experienced something that no international flight could have offered. "That's something you can't see on a regular flight coming in," she says. "We flew right over the countryside. We touched down in Tambor as the sun was setting. It was just a beautiful experience. That nine-seater jumper plane."

The image she paints is vivid precisely because it is specific: not a sunset in general, but that sunset, over that particular stretch of green and gold, felt through the thin walls of a nine-seat aircraft. It is the kind of detail that lives in the body long after the journey ends.

Pura Vida, Lived From the Inside

From Tambor, Leonetti and her group picked up their rental car and explored the peninsula on their own terms, eventually taking the ferry back as the return route. What she encountered along the way challenged her in ways she had not anticipated. The surprise was not the wildlife, the cloud forests, or even the roads, which she now describes with the frank authority of someone who has navigated them firsthand. The surprise was the people.

"They may not have a lot, but they're always smiling," she says. It is a quiet observation, but it carries weight. The Costa Rican philosophy of Pura Vida, pure life, is something visitors hear about before they arrive. Leonetti found that hearing about it and feeling it directed at you across a roadside conversation or a simple transaction are entirely different experiences. "Pura Vida is definitely there," she says. "And they live life to the fullest." The phrase, she now knows, is not a slogan. It is a practice.

The Knowledge That Only Travel Gives

The professional value of that trip became clear the moment Leonetti returned to her desk. Costa Rica is not a single destination but a country of distinct regions, each with its own character, infrastructure, and ideal traveler. Knowing the roads, the domestic flight options, the difference between the Caribbean coast and the Pacific, and the texture of daily life across the peninsula gave her something no brochure or supplier briefing could replicate.

"When a client calls and asks me, I now know what they will expect," she explains. "When they give me answers of why they want to go to Costa Rica, what they want to see, I know where to put them in the country, where they should be going to get the experience they want there." That precision, the ability to match a traveler's desire to a specific corner of a complex country, is the kind of expertise that can only be earned in person.

Her advice on who belongs in Costa Rica is equally grounded. The destination rewards those drawn to culture, wildlife, nature, and wellness. It is less suited, she is candid about this, to the traveler who believes they can "see everything from an all-inclusive resort." Costa Rica, Leonetti will tell you, is for the curious. It asks something of you in return for what it offers.

A Philosophy Built on Immersion

That belief extends to Leonetti's broader philosophy as an advisor, one shaped not just by Costa Rica but by thirteen years of helping people find their way through the world. For her, the difference between a forgettable holiday and a life-changing journey comes down to how a traveler approaches the experience. "Travel is more than just a destination," she says. The depth of a trip, she believes, is determined by a willingness to indulge in the local culture, history, and cuisine of wherever one goes, not as a checklist of activities, but as a genuine act of curiosity and presence.

It follows, then, that the clients who are not a natural fit for Leonetti are those who want the postcard without the place. Someone who wants to visit Thailand, for instance, but has no interest in its culture, its food, or its people, is someone she would gently point elsewhere. Her practice is built for travelers who want to dive beneath the surface, and Costa Rica, with its nine-seat planes and its sun-drenched landings and its quietly smiling people, is perhaps the destination that best illustrates why.

Looking ahead, Leonetti shows no sign of slowing down. The trip to Costa Rica was not a beginning or an ending but a deepening, one data point in a long career of firsthand learning. She continues to travel, to gather the kind of knowledge that lives in the senses rather than on a spreadsheet, and to bring it back to every client conversation that follows.