I carried an engagement ring through the Costa Rican rainforest. I just didn't know where I was going to propose.
March 3, 2009.
The day I got engaged.
Growing up, I imagined proposals happening the way they do in movies.
Dinner. A surprise. The ring appears at exactly the right moment. She cries. Everyone applauds. Roll credits.
Real life is a little different.
There is the ring. The planning. The nerves. The question of when to actually do it.
And, in my case, there was the added challenge of carrying an expensive diamond around Costa Rica without Sandra discovering it.
Waiting for the Moment
We'd been traveling around Costa Rica, and all week I'd been looking for the right opportunity to propose to Sandra.
I didn't want to force it.
But on March 3, I woke up determined that this was going to be the day.
So I took the ring with me.
In my swim trunks.
This seemed like a reasonable idea at the time.
It became considerably less reasonable when I remembered everything we planned to do that day.
Ziplining With an Engagement Ring
We started the morning with a canopy tour through the Costa Rican rainforest.
That meant traveling from tree to tree on cables while the ring was still hidden in my swim trunks.
So while everyone else was presumably thinking about the rainforest and the thrill of flying through the canopy, part of my brain was repeatedly checking one very specific question:
Is the ring still there?
During a break we walked to a beautiful waterfall.
I thought about doing it there.
The setting was beautiful. It would have made sense on paper.
But the moment didn't feel right.
So I kept the ring hidden and waited.
A Walk Along the Beach
Later that afternoon, Sandra and I decided to walk along the beach.
We were walking along the beautiful white sand when we passed a resort with hammocks hanging near the ocean.
I've always been fascinated with hammocks, and Sandra knew it.
So we stopped.
It was quiet — really quiet.
Nobody else was around us.
All we could hear were the waves and seabirds.
It felt like paradise.
We spent about half an hour doing absolutely nothing.
Eventually Sandra walked over and joined me in my hammock.
Then she suddenly said:
"I have an idea. Stay here."
The Camera on the Log
Sandra grabbed our camera and found a log that happened to be positioned perfectly in front of the hammocks.
She balanced the camera on it and we started taking pictures of ourselves.
And that's when the lightbulb went off in my head.
Suddenly, I knew.
This was the moment.
Not the waterfall.
Not a fancy restaurant.
Not something I'd carefully staged in advance.
Two hammocks. An empty beach. The Pacific Ocean. And a camera Sandra herself had just placed on a log.
I told her it was my turn to set up the camera.
Then I asked her to close her eyes.
Now or Never
Instead of setting the camera for another photograph, I switched it to video and started recording.
Then I quickly ran back toward Sandra and got down on one knee.
She peeked a little.
Fortunately, she didn't peek enough to see the ring.
When she finally opened her eyes, there I was.
An African king asking for his queen to be.
She laughed.
She cried.
She smiled.
We kissed.
And she said yes.
And the Camera Was Still Rolling
One of my favorite parts of the whole story is that the camera captured it.
Sandra had unknowingly created the setup for her own proposal.
If she hadn't decided to put that camera on the log, I might have kept waiting for another supposedly perfect opportunity.
Instead, the moment presented itself and I finally stopped overthinking it.
The Rest of the Day
Eventually, the excitement settled into the realization that we were actually engaged.
We celebrated with a nice dinner after a full day of adventures.
And somewhere between the rainforest, the beach, the hammocks and that little camera sitting on a log, our lives had changed.
Looking Back
I had spent the week imagining how I might propose.
I carried the ring through the rainforest.
I almost proposed beside a waterfall.
And after all that planning, the actual proposal happened because we stopped walking and decided to be lazy in a couple of hammocks.
That's probably why I still love the story.
It wasn't perfect because I'd planned every detail.
It was perfect because I hadn't.
Sometimes the moment becomes perfect precisely because you stop trying to make it perfect.
March 3, 2009.
Costa Rica.
The day Sandra said yes.
The Day Sandra Said Yes
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