Costa Rica is the destination Chris chooses for a year away from college, imagining farm work as a way to travel and make her own path. It never becomes a setting visited on the page; instead, it acquires meaning through conversations in which Chris’s plans unsettle Lara Jean’s expectations about graduation, college, and what comes next. The destination stands for possibility, but also for separation: the adventure Chris anticipates is one Lara Jean will have to watch from home.

A Year Away and a Different Timetable

Chris explains that she intends to take a year off and work on farms, where five hours of labor earn room and board. She knows nothing about farming, but expects to learn on the job; the point is not prior expertise but the willingness to work and the freedom to go somewhere new. Costa Rica is one possibility among others she imagines, including working at a surfing school in New Zealand or learning to make wine in Italy. Her plans put movement and experiment where Lara Jean has expected the next step to be college.

The difference is not simply that Chris has picked a destination while Lara Jean has picked a school. Chris’s route is deliberately open-ended: she presents a range of places and experiences rather than a settled educational plan. Lara Jean initially responds with disbelief at the prospect of Chris leaving, and later warns that Chris may regret missing prom while working on a farm in Costa Rica. The warning imagines a future moment when a high-school milestone might matter more than it does now; Chris laughs off the prediction rather than accepting Lara Jean’s priorities as universal.

The Destination in Conversation

As Chris’s departure approaches, she takes pleasure in looking down on American life, a change Lara Jean associates with the Costa Rica plan. Yet their disagreement is not a simple contest between staying and leaving. On the drive to Chapel Hill, Lara Jean insists that they are only going to look at the college and that she still intends to attend William & Mary. Chris answers with the principle that options are everything, a phrase Lara Jean recognizes from Margot. The idea offers a counterweight to Lara Jean’s attempt to hold herself to one plan: looking is not the same as committing, and a possible future need not be discarded just because another has been named.

The trip to Chapel Hill brings the difference between their paths into sharper focus. Chris says she wishes she could come there with Lara Jean, either to college generally or to the University of North Carolina in particular. She is excited about Costa Rica, but wonders whether she is missing out by not going to college at the same time as everyone else. Lara Jean reassures her that college will still be there next year or later, treating education as an opportunity that can wait rather than vanish. Chris, in turn, can picture Lara Jean at the university. Lara Jean replies that her plan remains William & Mary for a year, then the University of Virginia. Each recognizes something attractive in the other’s possible life, even as their plans point in different directions.

Friendship, Departure, and Uncertainty

Their talk gives Costa Rica an emotional dimension beyond travel. Chris’s question about falling behind reveals that a year away is not only an adventure; it also means stepping out of the shared schedule by which many of their peers move from high school directly into college. Lara Jean does not dismiss that uncertainty. Instead, she tells Chris that college will remain available whenever she wants it, offering reassurance without asking her to abandon the year abroad. Chris’s wish to come to college with Lara Jean, and Lara Jean’s effort to keep her own William & Mary plan in view, make their parting feel mutual rather than a rejection by either friend.

After the Chapel Hill visit, Chris drives Lara Jean home, arriving just after three in the morning. Lara Jean pleads for her to come inside, but Chris refuses because she must go home and deal with her own mother. They hug goodbye. The ordinary practical limit on Chris’s company lands alongside the larger separation approaching between them: the destination is still ahead, but even before the departure, each friend must return to her own household and plans.

Later, Genevieve congratulates Lara Jean on getting into Chapel Hill and remarks that Chris is going to Costa Rica, calling her lucky. She also observes that Chapel Hill and Lara Jean’s home are far apart and questions whether Peter will remain devoted to Lara Jean. Her remarks connect Chris’s travel with Lara Jean’s own coming distance from home, while turning the prospect of separation into a test of a different relationship. Costa Rica is thus one strand in a wider transition: friends and partners are imagining lives in different places, and the future offers no guarantee that affection will make distance easy.

Meaning Within the Larger Transition

Costa Rica’s importance lies in what its off-page journey makes visible. Chris is not required to follow the college schedule to which Lara Jean initially measures the future; she can delay college and still regard it as an option. That possibility gives weight to the exchange in which Lara Jean tells her that college will wait. Their routes are distinct, but neither is presented as the only valid way to become an adult.

The contrast also resists turning a destination into a complete answer. Chris is excited about the year abroad and still wonders whether she will miss college; Lara Jean reassures her while continuing to follow a plan that she herself is revising. Costa Rica therefore signifies both freedom and uncertainty. It is not simply an escape from home, nor a resolution to the friends’ separation, but the place that gives their questions about timing, opportunity, and belonging a concrete horizon.